Live from the Indian Jungles

We had done some birding at the Ragihalli sheet rock area and had come into Ragihalli village, to visit the pond. (yes, yes, I *will* post the actual birds-and-other creatures pics soon.)

I wanted a hot cup of chai, so we stopped at my usual lady's shop, said hi to the lady, her grand-daughter and a neighbour's kid called Monica, and had chai and biscuits (in keeping with its being a nature expedition, I bought...Tiger biscuits!) and while we were munching and sipping, I looked into the house opposite...and caught this lovely vignette.




I don't know if the photograph is clear enough...but it shows one woman ready to comb out and plait another's hair.

This habit of sitting for a relaxed few minutes while someone else combs out and plaits your hair seems to have all but disappeared in today's fast-paced world...I instantly thought back to the days when I had hair that I could sit on. (Really. I have a photograph to prove it.)

My mother would sit me down in front of her and the part I totally hated was that she would pour on the hair oil (coconut oil). I always detested the greasy mess it made of my hair...and I think my life-long preference for very short hair stems from this dislike.

But...it was very relaxing to have her gently comb out my hair (except for the odd "ouch" when the comb got caught in a tangle)...and there was one style of plaiting, called, in Tamizh, "kodalai pinnal", which was very much admired by my Bengali friends. (Alas, it would be done only when I'd had an "oil bath" and needed to get my hair dry.) There were also plaits with 5 strands rather than the usual 3, and the French plaits..and when I had two plaits, I had "Y" plaits where the two plaits would be joined together, and a "W" plait where that "Y" was looped back and tied to the top of one plait with a ribbon...and of course the regular two-folded plaits as my hair was too long, even plaited, to be let to hang down.

The difficulty, of course, was that it was my mother who would decide how much of oil would go into my hair, and what style of plait I would have....and I actually treasured the moment when she started letting me plait my own hair. To me, it was one of the signs of growing up...how little I knew of adulthood, to think that plaiting my own hair was entry into this state!

Loose hair was totally looked down upon. "parattai thalai" (unkempt hair) was the very epitome of bad grooming! It was a well-knnow fact that Bengali women and girls let their hair loose, and the words "parattai thalai" was often amended to "parattai thalaiyum, bangALa vEshamum" (unkempt hair, with the looks of a Bengali).

No loose plaits were allowed, either. The hair was tightly scraped back and tied into tight, severe plaits....and finished off with ribbons. T

The ribbons would get greasy, too, and had to be washed. I had to come for "thalai pinnal" ..plaiting the hair...with a large-toothed comb to detangle it, a fine-toothed comb to give the final neat appearance, and ribbons that matched my clothes.

What I loved about others' caring for my hair was, visits to Chennai to my grandmother's house, where the maid would oil my hair thoroughly every Friday, and wash it out beautifully with hot water and shikAkAi powder (soapnut powder).

Then my hair would be spread over a basket set over a mud vessel in which "sAmbrANi" (a kind of resin, I think) would be smoked...the hair would dry and get the delicate smell of the sAmbrANi

And after that, my hair would be silky and smooth and fragrant and would frame my face...and for those few hours (until the next morning's oiling and plaiting!) it was worth it to have long hair!

Thoughts in 140 characters

• 10:55 Kooli Kelsa begins. #

Yesterday I was chatting with my friend

Chandu

as he and Ramesh were supposed to come birding with me. He said, "Ramesh can't come as his wife has gone out and he has to take care of the maid."

"Oh," I said, "I understand. Yesterday, someone I went birding with had to run home to catch the cook."

...then we both just broke up laughing!

I saw, on the bngbirds egroup, that someone called

R. Padmanabhan, a doctoral student at IIT Madras

....who belongs to the Madras Naturalist Society, had asked if anyone could go birding with him to the Bannerghatta Forest area. To me, this is like someone asking if I want chocolate. I promptly emailed him, and this morning, he came with three friends of his who were going for the first time. (Of them, it turned out that Sandhya was my daughter's junior at Sacred Hearts School, and has been reading my blog.)

Yesterday at Bheemannakuppe was FRY day not Saturday, as the temperature was uncomfortably hot...so, naturally, today was chilly and it was so misty that it took quite an hour or so before the birds on the Ragihalli route even woke up!

So while I was waiting....I took the birders:





The sun was in bed, too, on a fine mattress of mist:




It was rather reluctant to come out:





And even when it did, it had fine veils of mist over it, like a shy woman covering her modesty with filmy cloth :





Mist may make for lousy bird photography...but the scenery does make me misty-eyed!

The

BLACK-WINGED KITE

(earlier called the Black-Shouldered Kite, which I think is more accurate)

is easily one of the most handsome common accipiters in the Bangalore outskirts....

You can see the black shoulders clearly as it lands on the insulators of the power cables:





( this kite flies itself )


But back it came, to land on the wire again:




More photos from our Bheemanna Kuppe Kere trip (thank you Sangeetha!) on Saturday....coming up as soon as I can upload them...! We were 4 NTP members in a group of 7.

Originally published at Mind over Matter. You can comment here or there.

My wife had heard about some temple near Channapatna on Mysore Road and we had been planning to go there since sometime. Today was finally that day and we decided to drive down. I had got my car from its 1^st service yesterday and it was all set and dying to be taken out for a long drive. I never took my 800 for long drives since I was not really confident of its highway prowess. However the Vista was a totally different story and it is meant to be taken out on long drives. A lot of things had to be checked on the car during services and since it was under warranty, they had conveniently replaced a good number of parts making the car almost like brand new.

So we started off from home at around 7:30am. We had to drop off some stuff at BTM and since that was on the way, we made a quick detour and continued on our way like we had never stopped. As soon as we were nearing the Jayadeva flyover, we had our first ‘near miss’. We were overtaking a BMTC bus when it suddenly swerved to the right right into our car. I braked hard and jammed down the horn and the bus too braked I suppose. Turned out that some autorickshaw (as usual) on the left side of the bus was the culprit and he might have suddenly turned or tried to get onto the road. Anyway, the bus stopped a few inches from the left side of my car and I stopped a few cms from the divider on my right. Thankfully there was no damage to scratch on the car. I was quite impressed by the braking of the car. Although it didn’t have any ABS, it stopped quick and in a straight line. I was at about 30-40 I think and I don’t think the brakes locked. First test for the car and it passed with flying colours.

We then continued on our way and we decided to take it a little easy until our nerves calmed down. I had planned on taking the NICE road to Mysore road and so we got on to Bannerghatta road. The right turn to the NICE road was just after the Gottigere village and the road construction is something that you will not miss. We paid the toll of Rs.29 to Mysore road and continued on our way. Enroute, we stopped at a lay-bye and clicked a couple of snaps of the car. It was the first photo shoot for my car since I bought it almost over a month back. I think it was then that we noticed something wrong with the car. Earlier in the day, the Low Fuel lamp was flashing although I had just tanked up my car the previous night. After a few minutes however, it switched itself off. I was telling my wife then to keep an eye on the instrument cluster for any malfunction lights turning on. Back to the present moment, I was shocked to see that the fuel gauge had dropped to the End level. For heavens sake, I was almost at full tank and this was no time to be showing that I was out of fuel. I was in the middle of NICE road without a soul in sight.

The thought passed my mind that maybe some fuel would have leaked, but I quickly dismissed that thought. I then saw the ICD light had turned on. This indicated that there was some malfunction in the Instrumentation Cluster. Well, there was nothing that I could do about it and I had just got the car serviced the previous day. I was thinking that this is what people usually call ‘Tata reliability’ and ‘Tata quality check’. I was wondering whether I should turn around and take it to Concorde for a check up, but then we had planned this trip for sometime and I didn’t want to miss it. Thinking about it, I consoled myself with the fact that only the Instrumentation Cluster(IC) was messed up and there was nothing else wrong with the car. Of course the scary thing was what if there was an engine or some other malfunction and I couldn’t be made aware of that since the damn IC was down. Maybe the ICD lighting up is more serious than an Engine Malfunction indicator lighting up.

The horn and the indicators however were still working and there was seriously nothing else that I could find wrong with the car. I stopped to the side for a few minutes and turned the car on and off a couple of times, but it was still the same. We shrugged it off and decided to continue on our journey. I would have gone to Concorde on my way back home.

Then came the fun of driving on the NICE road. The road was beautiful and smooth and I enjoyed the drive. There were only a few trucks on the road and a very few number of cars and I was constantly driving at around 80-100kmph on the right lane. The direction to Mysore showed that I had to go straight ahead. Then I saw a car reversing on the left lane and yet again I wondering how dangerous Indian highways are. Previously we saw enough two wheelers and Sumos coming down the wrong side in the lay-byes. As we passed the reversing car, I saw the sign for the exit to Mysore road. I zipped by the exit ever before I could read the sign completely. So much then for the awesome NICE road, typical of Indian highways without prominent exit signs. I had to drive down almost 10 kms till I reach the next toll gate, as there was no place for taking a U-turn until then. I think I almost reach the other end of Bangalore and it kept saying that this was the exit for Magadi road. I would have reached Magadi road faster had I gone through the city. I got out of the toll gate and took a U-turn and got back into the entry toll gate. This time I had to pay a toll of Rs.19 and got back on to the NICE road. I was supposed to take the ‘second’ exit to the left to go towards Mysore. I saw the first exit and it said that this would lead to Mysore road, towards Kengeri/Bangalore, which was in the opposite direction that I wanted to be going. I slowed and looked ahead but there was no exit or signboard in sight and I decided to take this exit and then take a U-turn on Mysore road to go towards Mysore. I didn’t want to miss the exit again and go back all the way to Bannerghatta road.

Thankfully the U-turn was not too far away and we got on to Mysore road heading towards Mysore. The drive then was smooth and relaxed and in about an hour we reached Chennapatna where we wanted to go in the first place. But that journey was not without an interesting incident. We stopped near a town for breakfast. Wifey had packed some Tomato Rice and we ate that voraciously. I finished eating before her and I started up the car and prepared to drive since we wanted to reach the temple, to which we were going, before it closed for the noon. The IC which was down until then, suddenly switched on and all the indicators and gauges lit up in the way that it was supposed to work. I was finally shown that I had almost an 80% tank of fuel and the ICD light too had turned off. The malfunction disappeared automatically. My car wanted me to have breakfast and then drive it seemed.

The miracle didn’t cease there. My windshield wiper has 4 settings – single, intermediate, slow and fast. Single, slow and fast wipes were always working, but the wiper never worked in intermediate setting. I had raised this complaint while giving it for service but hadn’t fixed it. The service sheet said PNA, which I assume is Parts Not Available. Very Funny. So, I still didn’t have any intermediate wiper and in case of light rains, I would have to continue doing a single wipe every now and then. So, I started off the car after scolding it for behaving erratically, wrt the ICD. My wife asked me not to scold it after it had rectified itself, so I apologized to the car and got onto the road. The car became happy I think, as the wipers automatically started wiping the totally dry windshield. We were surprised to say the least. My wife thought I must’ve flipped some switch or lever, but I knew what was wrong. I had left the wiper lever in the intermediate setting the previous night after testing and since it never worked, the wiper remained switched off. Now suddenly when it started wiping, I immediately knew that it was in the intermediate setting and when the car self-healed its ICD, it healed the wipers too.

This, a problem that I was faced with for a month and which the service center was unable to rectify or correct for want of spares, was correctly automatically by my car. I never tested the wiper after turning it off, but the wonder of it working for even a few second is enough of a miracle for today. Finally we reached the temple, we had our Darshan and saw the Abhishekam. I am not a temple person, so I will wait till my wife blogs about that part of our trip and then I will add a link to this post, else if you are the impatient types, you can keep checking http://www.allyouwannaknow.net for her blog to be updated. On the way back, we stopped at Kamat Lokaruchi, near Ramanagaram, for lunch and I had my fill of an unlimited North Karnataka thali with hot hot Jolada Rotis and yummy Spiced Buttermilk. We also had a look into Janapadaloka which was next to Kamat and then continued on our way.

I had planned on stopping over at Ramanagaram hills for some bird watching on the way back. But we were quite tired and I decided to call it off until the next time. I had a look to where the Ramadevara Hills were and also were the Kanva Reservoir was. That is were I want to go and have a look at some of those Vultures that populate that area. Maybe I will do that once I have a nice DSLR. Note: I have not planned to buy any DSLR, but I am hoping that some nice miracle or unplanned event will happen soon and I will finally have a DSLR in my hands.

We reached BTM around 3pm and I went off to sleep at my in-laws place. This time I avoided the NICE road, as I didn’t want to miss the Bannerghatta exit and end up in Chennai. The drive through the city was quite peaceful and traffic free. I slept for an hour and a half and then drove back home after some much needed coffee. And finally here I am, typing this blog.

Originally published at Mind over Matter. You can comment here or there.

There were some incidents, discussions and revelations over the last few days that got me thinking in the direction of the dressing sense of various people. It is not a secret, but one does tend to think many a times that certain kinds of dresses will not suit him/her. This may be the case even though when the person actually wears it he/she do look quite good in that particular dress.

For example, right from childhood I have felt comfortable in certain kinds of dresses whereas I used to think that I don’t look good in other kinds. There were stages during my schooling days when I used to wear only formals. Then there were times when I used to wear tees with only vertical stripes. For ever I have worn loose dresses since I have always tried to cover the excess weight that I have been carrying around since childhood. In the recent past, especially when I go to malls and large chains of cloth stores I have liked a lot of different types of dresses, but I have never had the courage to wear them since I always used to think that it will not suit me and that I will not look good in them.

But at one point, I decided to just go and buy some radically different types of tees and pants that what I am usually seen around with. I got myself a nice shirt but which was short sleeved as I later discovered, and also a long sleeved, but a little tight fitting tee. I also got me tight fitting jeans than the usual baggy jeans that I normally wore. At first I was quite conscious when I wore them and I felt that it was a little too tight and that it would not suit me. Then I decided that it would indeed suit me and that I should not be unnecessarily conscious. When I wore that and went to office, I was really surprised by the comments of many of my friends and teammates. Almost everyone that I met that day came up and told me that what I wore was looking very good on me and other compliments. Partly the comments were due to the fact that I had worn something so different from what I had been wearing for the last few years, but the great thing was no one told me that I was too fat to wear such stuff. And I have enough friends who won’t miss an opportunity to poke fun at me and they didn’t tell anything bad about my dressing style, so I knew that what I was wearing was actually suiting me and didn’t look bad.

On the other hand, there were some types of dresses that I think look good on me, but common dressing sense says that it should not. For example, I think business suits with solid colored shirts, like red, blue, and without tie look nice and as long as the occasion doesn’t call for really formal dressing attire, it is not totally inappropriate. However, my wife is of the opinion that business suits are usually worn with light colored shirts(contrasting with the dark colored business suits that I have) and doesn’t look good without a tie. But then, I feel confident wearing these business suits in an informal fashion and I carry it off well since I am confident about the way I dress.

Remembering these incidents again got me thinking. Even if one does indeed look good in certain types of dresses, if he/she is not confident about his/her own dressing style and is always of the opinion that it is looking awkward then for sure he/she will not be able to carry it off well and everyone will feel that something is wrong just because of the way the person is carrying off the dress. When I had started wearing tee shirts, I used to always walk with a slouch since I didn’t want the shirt to stick to me and hang loosely. If someone had seen me like that, for sure they would have thought that there was something wrong with either me or my dress. This recent time when I got those tight tees and jeans, I really didn’t care what other thought. I looked at myself in a mirror and I felt that I look good in that dress and I carried it off confidently.

So dressing style is not just about what suits you or what others think you look good in, but dressing style is actually feeling comfortable in what you are wearing. If you don’t feel comfortable in certain kinds of dresses, then you just shouldn’t wear them. I have come to believe this.

Many international magazines have rated Britney Spears dressing sense as atrocious, but then if she is comfortable wearing what she does, then who is anyone else to stop her from doing so?

LiveJournal: The First Decade

Just in time for holiday shopping, we're thrilled to announce the release of our ten-year anniversary anthology. Published by Blurb.com, the book showcases a decade of extraordinary talent drawn from LiveJournal users around the world. This must-read compilation features stories, memes, photos, comics, editorials, graphic content, and more, including:

1. Excerpts from Oh No They Didn't (a/k/a ohnotheydidnt), the largest community on LiveJournal, covering celebrity gossip, entertainment news, and pop culture
2. A look at post-Katrina New Orleans from the journal of Poppy Z. Brite
3. Gripping narratives, including a poignant reverie on a blind date
4. Photography that spans the globe, ranging from old-fashioned Polaroids to underwater photography
5. Mouthwatering dishes from food_porn

What began as a late-night inspiration back in Brad Fitzpatrick's college dorm in 1999 has grown to encompass nearly 25 million users worldwide, with journals and communities covering every conceivable hobby, passion, and topic. To get your copy, please visit the Blurb Bookstore. For updates and entries from book contributors, please join lj_turns10.

Tweaks and enhancements

• You can now ban a user from all of your communities and journals at once. To access this feature, hover over the person's userpic and choose Ban user everywhere from the drop-down menu.
• Follow LiveJournal on Twitter!

Give a little to help a lot!

In honor of National AIDS Awareness month, we've added a new charitable vgift. For each red ribbon you purchase for $2.99, we'll donate 100 percent of gross proceeds to IAVI.org (the International AIDS Vaccine Initiative) to support the development and global distribution of an affordable HIV vaccine (we'll cover credit card fees). You can read more about IAVI at lj_cares. While we're on the subject, we raised $740 from our November fundraiser for Love Without Boundaries, which supports emergency healthcare and adoption of Chinese orphans. We thank you for helping us help others.

Photos of the week

We're back with more incredible pictures from our super-talented LiveJournal photographers. Congratulations to ilya_gorokhov, who is the winner of our very first lj_photophile poll.

We hope you'll continue to post, vote, and comment! A gentle request: Please post only one photo at a time and limit size to 350x350 (so images display properly on friends pages). And now, without further ado, get ready to cast your ballot and view more awesome user content after the jump!

( Read more... )

Curtains

Thanks, again, for joining us. Stay safe and snug out there!

Here's the radiant bride:




The handsome groom:



And one of the ceremonies (in Aryan culture, the important one) that makes them husband and wife:

pANi grahaNam ("acceptance of the hand")

(see the wedding rituals )





the bride's hand,holding a sacred coconut and betel leaves, is placed in that of her father, and then placed in the groom's hand...the bride's mother then pours sanctified water over it...as the water pours from the bride's hand to the groom's, her care and welfare passes from her father to her husband.

Though the small streets and the lanes he goes,
His voice echoing around.
He calls aloud, this sharpener of knives:
They hear him, the mothers, the sisters, the wives:
Each busy housewife knows
That he'll set the wheel on the ground:
The sparks will fly as he steps on the pedal:
Sharper and sharper gets the now-shiny metal:
He pockets the small sums that he's paid,
Perhaps drinks a cup of tea that someone's made...
Then he's off again, with his clarion call,
Whoever needs his work...he goes to serve them all.


I heard his "clarion call" (in Chennai, what he calls is, "katthi shAAAAAAAANAAAAA!") and rushed out on to the balcony to photograph his retreating form...my sis in law didn't want any knives sharpened that day!

On the way to visit the Jayamangali Blackbuck Sanctuary, we were negotating a badly dug-up stretch of highway, and I found this notice:





Now,


this link

tells me that Pune is 835km (about 519 miles) from Bangalore....

I wonder if the guy who put up the notice HAD to give the way to Pune, but doesn't WANT us to go there....?

**EDIT Thu Dec 3 23:24:15 UTC 2009 **

Hey Everyone, we are about to run the last alter job that we need to on our database servers. This will effect userpics / scrapbook / vgift images for the next few hours. Have no fear, your images aren't lost, there is just a really intensive process running on the servers which store the information for mogilefs. Thank you for your understanding and all the LJ love...

Hey LJers,

I just wanted to let you all know that we are going to be performing some mogilefs maintenance over the next few days. We will be upgrading our current version to latest stable as well as changing some db config information to better handle the amount of files we are currently hosting. This shouldn't cause a big impact on site stability, but you may see some minor delays with userpic / scrapbook images appearing or other requests associated with our mogilefs. We would love to not have that happen, but unfortunately with some of the steps we need to take we have to cause a delay with images. I figured this was a better solution than taking down all of LiveJournal because well lets face it, we all need our daily LJ fix ;)

Thanks,

Originally published at Mind over Matter. You can comment here or there.

Previously I had written this post about how arranged marries are weird and something that I don’t really approve of. Over the last few days or weeks though, I have met many couples who have had arranged marriages and who are quite happy and are not missing anything in life. In fact if one didn’t know the history behind their marriage and met them for the first time, then one would indeed feel that the marriage was actually a love marriage and the couple knew each other from much before when they got married. Now if people can really be happy and enjoy life after an arranged marriage, then definitely everything cannot be wrong about an arranged marriage.

In fact I think that the scene of arranged marriages have improved a lot these days since the children (i.e. the ones getting married) have a good amount of say in the marriage decision. Previously the parents of the girl and the guy would take all the decisions and while the guy might still have had some say in the, the girl would definitely have had none. The arranged marriage was more of a forced marriage just because the guy and the girl couldn’t go against nature and reached the ripe age where one should get married.

These days thought the scene has changed a lot. The guy and girl talk to each other and hopefully come to a good decision on whether they should get married to each other. More than anything else, the girl now has a lot of say in the matter unlike how it was before. The great thing about an arranged marriage is that one goes in with an open mind about how the future will reveal itself. It makes a lot of sense to approach an arranged marriage pessimistically and try to find all reasons why the marriage might not work out and take a conscious decision about your future life partner and preparing for the worst and also taking that decision to make amends should things not work out as one expected.

This need not be the case in most of the love marriages. In love marriages, the decision is usually made by the heart and not by the head. The need to be with your loved one is so immense that one usually doesn’t think and plan into the future and make that commitment to stick together should things go wrong between the guy and the girl. There are a lot of hasty love marriages where a lot of tension is creeping into the lives of the couples. Either that or one or the both of the couple are making a lot of compromises to make the marriage work.

But this is not to say that arranged marriages have everything going right for them these days. The guy or the girl usually don’t make good use of the freedom and the rights that have been offered to them and in these cases usually the right decision is not made. Sometimes the youngsters are forced into a decision due to pressure from their parents and relatives. If someone doesn’t think that they should get married, then it makes no sense to force them into it. If they have made a conscious decision that they don’t want to get married at this point in time then leave it at that. If you push them, they might get the attitude of ‘Do whatever you want. Go ahead and play with my life, I will not say a word”. This does not bode well for the parents or for the child. On the other hand when one doesn’t want to get married, then he/she must say this openly so that their parents are not put through the stress of searching for a bride/groom. I have come to realize that this search is a really strenuous and one should not put their parents and relatives through such a pain.

So it turns out that nothing forced is a good thing. Whether it be an forced arranged marriage or a hasty love marriage, if things are not thought out well in advanced then when something goes wrong, a lot of lives will be screwed up. So whatever it is, one should thing about what they are getting into and if there is any difference in opinion, then one should always bring that up and work it out and come to a mutual understand amicably and without getting too emotional about it.

It seems like I have been away forever from the world of blogging. There is still so much to show from the trip to Africa in September but I never got around to processing those photographs or even looking at them. Life-changing events (in a good sense!) have kept me busy in the past month and I hope I can get around to processing the remaining photographs from the Africa trip at least. What subject would be better to restart this near defunct blog? Elephants!

Loxodonta africana, the African Bush Elephant. I've waited forever to see the largest land-based animal in the wild and they really look tiny in the massive Serengeti. At least, that's the case until you get close to one of those things and realize how huge they are. When you're used to seeing elephants in the Indian subcontinent you feel that their African relatives would be similar in behavior. Elephants in India need a cautious approach. It is perhaps frequent conflict with men that makes some herds in India aggressive. Charges, mock-charges and tail-twisted flight are all common with wild elephant encounters back at home, but the Serengeti (and Northern Tanzania in general) turned out to be a much different experience. Elephants are calm and at peace with men here and they don't run or charge that frequently. In fact, it is probably safe to say that some of the elephants are rather tame. We had a bull elephant drinking water at our campsite near the Ngorongoro crater and even with people just a few small footsteps away, the bull went about his business and calmly walked out into the wild. It is such a nice experience to watch animals when they aren't feeling scared or feeling the need to attack/defend.





( Six more photographs )

How many of us can so easily get Gold Medals or afford a Rolex?




( some more gems )

Most of all, I loved this sign, which unwittingly gave the message that it IS wiser to wear a helmet... and itsalouwelylife asked if "glass change" meant currency coins that made of glass!

In

one of my posts

I had talked about the joys of bargaining, and asakiyume had said she would never like it...I need to explain this to her'

I buy stuff in two ways. One is...the straightforward way. I look at the price of something, pay it, get the item, and off I go.

But on the other side is the whole wide world of bargaining!

It takes a lifetime here to know what is bargainable,and what is not. (I would never, for example, bargain for 5 kg of rice at the store!) But over a period of time, one...just *knows*.
And then, of course, the pas de deux begins....


( the bargain )


Good bargaining practices are...a form of culture!

Thoughts in 140 characters

• 12:28 Reached Sunnyvale #

In the heart of

Mylapore

past

Luz


connecting North Mada (mAdA) Street and

Katcheri Road

is a small street...lane...called "Maddala )Narayanan Street" (maddaLa nArAyaNan)

Who Maddala Narayanan was, history does not see fit to record (at least, I couldn't find traces on the internet!)..."maddaLam" being a variation of the percussion instrument, the


Mridangam

the instrument being more used for harikathA and yakshagAnA....

but for a long time, many musicians resided on this street or its surrounding areas.

There are still some music shops here, where one can buy veeNAs, tablAs, or repair various instruments...

But MY song, today, is about the small jewellers' shops that also sit on this street, and this particular one:




Can you see the shop there? Yes, it's that tiny little...well, literally window of opportunity that's open next to the motorcycle!

In this shop, for at least thirty years (to my certain recollection) sits Sri T G Purushottaman Achari.

( More about this, with little digressions )

Well...in my grandmother's day, the jeweller would probably have been called home, where he would have spent the entire day on the "thiNNai" (the front porch) in the shade of a neem tree or two, setting and repairing jewellery....my generation went to him to get our work done...who knows how the next few generations (I certainly don't envisage women giving up jewellery in the next few thousands of years!) will manage?

Originally published at Mind over Matter. You can comment here or there.

These days, the most sensational news doing the rounds is that of Dubai in debt and recession hitting dubai. From what I have read, Dubai has deferred payment of its dues and various bonds since it is in debt and don’t have the money right now.

Interestingly, I read somewhere that oil sales in Dubai too has been low of late. But what has been striking about Dubai in the past few years is how they have been building up their real estate in their plans for the future. It is no secret that the oil reserves of the world are set to deplete in the next few decades. When that happens, the only major source of income for the middle east will be exhausted.

Dubai having realized this have gone on a real estate development spree and have in the process created several modern architectural wonders of the world. What else with its Palm Islands, The World Islands, Burj Dubai, Burj Al Arab, and a lot more. The idea behind this all was that when the nations oil reserves are depleted, they can sustain their economy through other factors, most importantly tourism. Dubai and the rest of the Middle Eastern countries have been trying to make their countries a more tourist friendly place. They have even promoted the inhospitable sand by having rallies like Dakkar and built F1 tracks.

It could well be the reason why Dubai has gone into debt/recession. The amount of money that they have put into developing real estate have not quite evened out with the income from tourism and the oil exchange. In fact since the last year, the situation has gotten worse with the amount of spending having reduced drastically. When money is not being spent, then money is not being earned. This is a big domino effect and it has taken its time to hit Dubai.

I sort of feel sad for them. Their are trying to make alternate sources of income, but the alternate source of income relies on people coming over and spending money. However, when people don’t have the money to spend, or are very reluctant to spend big money, then the ones whose income depends on this expenditure are hit badly as well. It remains to be seen what are the repercussion of this Dubai debacle as the world has put it. Though many big financial institutions and ministers have played this incident down, many are definitely wary of what the future holds.

Interestingly, even the US collapse was due to Real Estate. Somehow I feel that the Indian Real Estate scene has been spared until now, but not for long. In Bangalore itself, on the Marathahalli ring road there are score of apartment complexes with many flat lying empty. Maybe it has been bought by NRIs and are left unoccupied, but it is a known fact that many builders are trying to sell off the unsold ones by lowering the cost price to almost what it was 2-3 years back during the time when construction began. It is just a sign of things to come. At least I want a the real estate scene in Bangalore to experience a good shake up so that it wakes up to the needs of the middle class and common man.

Originally published at Mind over Matter. You can comment here or there.

I had merged all my blogs some time back and hence had consolidated all my posts into this blog. However, I also separated quite a few of the posts and created a new blog to put all of that in. This new blog is something that I created where I could put in some tips on simple and generally used technologies, like OS specific, Browsers specific etc. Things that everyone would use on a day to day basis and which might help them out while they go about it.

So with that intro, I give you my new blog EzeePezee. EzeePezee is all about using technology to make your life EzeePezee. I am still struggling to get a good theme and look n feel for the site, but it is a work in progress and should stabilize within a week.

This blog meanwhile will continue to be my personal blog.