Shaadi ka Khel - Part 2

August 2nd is the D-Day in the life of Rakhi Sawant. The great Indian Swamyamwar is all set to end on Aug 2nd and Rakhi will choose her Bakara from the three contestants left in the final stage. It is almost certain that Elesh (businessman from Canada) is all set to become the biggest bakara, let us wait & watch. As one of the newspaper rightly said, Rakhi changes her mind every 2 hours, so one may be in for a surprise on August 2nd :-)

Rakhi for once was fooled by one of the contestants. Manmohan used Rakhi to get all the publicity he wanted in his hometown. There were big processions, big posters of him & Rakhi, thousands of people gathered at airports, mandir to catch a glimpse of this hysteria. Finally when Manmohan realized that he has got enough publicity, he told Rakhi that he cannot marry her :-) Oh, smart guy I must say.

Anyways, let us wish Rakhi and her husband a long happy married life on August 2nd :-)

Meeting the Celebrities

Last weekend, we were in a lovely resort - Golden Palms spa resorts - owned by Sanjay Khan. It was some promotional event followed by dinner. Just as we were around a sports complex in Golden Palms resort, we bumped into Sanjay Khan face to face. Uh, it is difficult to deal with celebrity. We know them, they don't know us and what do we tell them we meet a celebrity? Just shook his hands and blabbered something like "Its a pleasure meeting you sir". He was much more relaxed and chatted with us for few minutes, especially on Poorvi and the dress she was wearing.

Flash back. I've met many celebrities and everytime I have the same dilemma as - should I talk to them or leave them alone, as if I have not noticed them? Even they need their privacy.

Airports are the best place to meet celebrities :-) I have met Ajay Jadeja (before fixing days in 1998 :-) ) & Sha Rukh Khan (in 1999) in airports. Both these times, I hardly had a pen/paper to get their autographs :-) Had to convince Ajay to sign on the backside of my visiting card.

In the mini forest at JP Nagar, I also meet Girish Karnad regularly. Again, not knowing how to react, I just ignore and carry on with my workout.

Still remember one interesting incident that happened on our flight from Zurich to Brussels. There were a bunch of youngsters who boarded the plane alongwith us. They were making lot of noise and generally having fun. We just ignored them to be the college friends traveling together. Only when we boarded the plane and took to our seats that we came to know they were football players from some club and they had won some championship. Flight attendant announced on the addressing system that it was pleasure having them on board and congratulated them on winning the championship!!! Many co passengers were so excited to see them and got their autographs. Being totally unaware of who they were, we just slept as usual, hoping to catch up with Indian Cricket team like that on some day :-)

Art of Writing

Poorvi's homework saga continues. There were quite a few challenges with small "g", small "e", but somehow by every Sunday evening Poorvi ensures that her homework is done :-)

The biggest problem for Poorvi at this point is to write "b", "d", "p", "9" without getting confused on where to put that "circle" after writing the "standing line". It is very common that when she writes "b", it looks like "d", "p" looks like "9". Sometimes she gets so confused that when she writes a "standing line" and a "circle", it looks like lolly-pop :-) But the good news is that, she has started enjoying the writing. Even when we insist her to stop writing and take a break, she wants to just continue writing. I remember she had the same problem with coloring as well, initially she hated it and now, our home is so "color-full" :-)

It seems, Poorvi is also going to learn about "cursive" writing in the second half of this year. I feel cursive writing is a curse on the mankind, especially in this generation of computers. I have hardly touched any "writing devices", eversince I wrote my last exam in 1996. It is only nowadays that to teach the "art of writing" to Poorvi, I have started holding the pen again. Anyways, it is in her syllabus so she has to do it and it is also a good opportunity for me to re-learn these forgotten art.

India Eclipsed....

It was solar eclipse day yesterday. There were mixed reactions among the people in India. Some people wanted to get a glimpse of this supposedly-long-eclipse early in the morning (around 6:30 AM). Some others felt going out at this time (during eclipse) is a big time sin, so they stayed back home. Even the maid servants who usually come early in the morning, worked overtime on previous evening to avoid coming early in the morning on eclipse day. Even some of the schools declared holiday. May be some schools did so to enable the students to view the eclipse and others to avoid ill-effects of the eclipse. But the kids had a good day off yesterday, just enjoying a totally unexpected holiday.

There were also some mails floating around on possible earth quakes to happen on July 22nd and also a threat of Tsunami. Thankfully nothing like that happened. "snopes.com" was right again, indicating these rumors as just rumors and there is no truth.

All in all, it was a disappointing day for everyone (well, for most of them). People who wanted to see the eclipse could not see, people who were expecting the Tsunamis and earth-quake, it did not happen. But, there were other bunch of happy people like me, who took advantage of this situation :-) while some people are gazing at the sun and others hiding at home, people like me took almost half the time it takes on a normal day to reach the office yesterday :-) Wish there will be many more such days in future :-)

Note from Wiki-Pedia:

A solar eclipse occurs when the moon passes between the Sun and the Earth so that the Sun is fully or partially covered. This can only happen during a new moon, when the Sun and Moon are in conjunction as seen from the Earth. At least two and up to five solar eclipses can occur each year on Earth, with between zero and two of them being total eclipses. Total solar eclipses are nevertheless rare at any location because during each eclipse totality exists only along a narrow corridor in the relatively tiny area of the Moon's umbra.

A total solar eclipse is a spectacular natural phenomenon and many people travel to remote locations to observe one. The 1999 total eclipse in Europe helped to increase public awareness of the phenomenon, as illustrated by the number of journeys made specifically to witness the 2005 annular eclipse and the 2006 total eclipse. The recent solar eclipse of January 26, 2009 was an annular eclipse (see below), while the solar eclipse of July 22, 2009 was a total solar eclipse.

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Historical News?

Three news items caught my attention today in the morning while I was reading the news paper. I felt all these three are kind of historical news in its own way.

First one is something that affects you and me directly, second one is something to do with nation and the last one is just nothing to do with India at all. I just tried to capture these news in brief below :-)

The heights of Toor-Dal :

Yes, the first news was on the price of toor dal. Once known as poor man's rich food, it is now all set to become like gold, difficult for even the rich people to afford :-) In the last 6 months, the prices have risen from 36 Rs/kilo to around 100 Rs/kilo now !!! And it is still going up.

I am just wondering if the hotels are still having ever popular "Dal Fry" on their menu or not? Another interesting comparision is that toor dal will become costlier than chicken in coming days. Don't be surprised, if these "Dal Fridays", "Dal Tadka" hotels turn into "Chicken Sunday" and "Chicken Tandoori".

Kasab's confession:

Hmm, not much options left to defend himself anymore, Kasab finally confessed to his crimes in 26/11 attacks. Now the big question is, what will happen next? We have all the evidences, terrorist has confessed, what else is still needed for the court to pass the orders and then "execute" the order? Will it ever happen in India? Or are we going to support this terrorist for some more years with Roti & "Dal fry"?

Ashes - The Famous English win:

It took Englishmen 75 years to beat Aussies in a test match in their own backyard, mecca of cricket at Lords. This series has already seen so much of excitement that people are already betting it to go in the way of the greatest Ashes series ever played back in 2005 at Australia. I am keeping my fingers crossed and supporting Englishmen to win one more Ashes, just the way they did it in 2005. With three more tests to go, Aussies will bounce back strong, let us hope Englishmen will overcome this challenge and make 2009 one more historical year in Cricket.

Devara Betta - Enchanting hills

Last week, some of us in the apartment (Hitesh, Ramesh, Mukund and me) decided to go on short treks atleast once a month. We decided to have our first such outing on yesterday (Sunday, 19th July 2009).

It was early in the morning, as early as 5:30 AM that we started our drive towards a place called "Devara Betta", situated somewhere close to Anekal, but in Tamil Nadu. Initially I had this feeling that its gonna be real cold and I was ready with jackets, monkey cap (if needed) etc. But surprisingly it was not that cold.

Hitesh had been to this place many times before and thanks to his sense of directions and memory for remembering the roads and crosses, we reached the destination by 6:30 AM. One more pleasant surprise awaited us - Hitesh had packed some hot hot tea for all of us. Wow, it was so refreshing to drink the tea and start the trek.

The place is having some monolithic rock formation, few small hills and ample forest across the hills. It was really picturesque with green covers everywhere. Added to that, weather was so pleasant.

After having the tea, we took the path leading to the forest, just to explore the area. None of us had any idea about where each of those trails will lead us, but we just followed on. We could hear so many different kinds of sounds and songs from so many different birds. Hitesh being a veteran in bird-watching, he named many of those birds, none of which I can remember :-) We walked for almost one hour going past many "decision points". Typically after somtime, each of the trails used to fork into multiple different routes. We had a thumb rule that "when in doubt, take the right" and went on :-)

After one hour, we kind of reached a dead-end, where we could see the valley and a thick forest range of Bannerghatta. We enjoyed this scenery for about 15 minutes and started trekking back. This time, we took some short cuts, did some rock climbing to reach to the top of one more hill nearby. We relaxed there for some time, had some "chikkis" which Mukund had got and walked back towards our car. By 8:45 AM, we had finished our morning walk in the forest and were all set to return.

We took a different way while coming back. There is a place called "Thalli", about 5 KMs from Devara Betta where we stopped by and had some yummy breakfast. Then we took Maralawadi--Harohalli--Kanakapura road -- NICE road -- Bannerghatta road to reach home by 11 AM. The drive from Thalli to Harohalli is just fantastic, passing by forest range, agricultural lands, lakes etc. For miles together, we were the only ones on the road. With some Kishore Kumar numbers being played on the FM and a fantastic weather, it was definitely a drive to remember. If you want to try this weekend get-away, you can get more information in this link:

http://www.dreamroutes.org/southern/devarabetta.html

Next, we are planning for a jungle trek in Bannerghatta national park sometime during August.

Thank you for the music...

I had a gift voucher to purchase 100 songs from an upcoming music store. So, I started browsing the store for all my favorite music. It is not an easy task to choose the best 100 tracks of your choice ranging from English, Hindi, Kannada and even Tamil. Especially when there is a huge collection of music from all genres and all types of music.

Most of the songs I chose used to take me back in time to some place, some incident or some situation. I guess many of you would have experienced the same, when you listen to some song.

I think the first and foremost song which created any interest in me towards music was a song from "Qurbani" - "Aap Jaisa Koyi". Every time I hear that special music, it takes me go back to 1980, when I was a kid of 5 years. This music was played round the clock in my neighbor's house and I was so much attracted to this music. I guess this is the only thing I still remember about our neighbors back then. Even now, my heart skips a beat to hear to this great song. During that generation of 1980s, may be this music would have created flutters.

Other song(s) which I can never forget are the songs from Roja. Uh, the music defied the tradition and it completely stood out from the rest of the music in 90's. Every time I hear this music, I go back to my hostel days in engineering college. Every room you enter, at any time, this song was always on. For so many days, weeks and months, we just listened to these songs from Roja in that hostel. First time ever I became a fan of Tamil music and first time ever I watched a Tamil movie.

One more incident which I can never forget is "Jayciana" - our college festival. It is in one of these festivals that I heard the song - "Pyaar hame kis mode pe le aaya". Uh, it created an unbelievable "mode" and instantly this became one of my favorite songs. Similarly I cannot forget "Dil tadap tadap ke" song sung in one of the Wipro day functions back in 90's. Again, added to my favorites.

Listening to so many lovely songs over the years, only one thing comes to my mind : Thank you all the composers, musicians for the music. It is always so special. Long live these lovely music.

Changing times....

I remember, as a kid, I used to play almost till 7 in the evening, when the light was not sufficient anymore to sight the ball in the game of cricket. Typically our evening games used to start around 5 PM (after the school hours) and go on till it gets dark. All our home-works and other studies used to start only after 7 PM :-) (actually I was wondering, if we were to have the extended daylight during summer, we would have played till 10 in the night :-) )

Nowadays, in our apartment, I see children playing all the way till 9 in the evening. I was really wondering about the "school-life" balance of these kids :-) When do these kids study? When do they do their homework?

Last week, after a late-night basketball match with these kids, some of us (uncles :-) ) were talking to these kids. It seems, most of these kids come back home by 4 in the afternoon from schools. Immediately they do their homeworks and study all the way till 7 in the evening. They come out only by 7 and play till 9. Their logic was simple. "We cannot do studies after playing uncle" :-) So true. This 7 to 9 schedule also suits their parents, who can watch their favourite serials on TV, without much bothering about kids' homework and studies. Hmm... Changing times, Changing life style, all for good I suppose.

Great Expectations...

This incident happened while I was having a chat with my cook some days ago. He asked me "aap Nokia phone use karte hai na"?. I nodded my head. Then he asked me for a favor. "Idhar se Orissa ke liye sasthe main phone karne ka plan batha dena". Uh, I don't know if he has an Airtel SIM or Vodafone or in fact Tata Docomo :-) So, I told him he has to talk to the operator like Airtel or Vodafone. He was not convinced. Probably he did not know the SIM and what has gone into his phone. He again asked me back - "Aap office main kya karte ho? Aap ke office main pooch ke bata dena Nokia phone se sasthe main phone kaise karna hain". Umm, I could no longer argue with him, I told I will try to find out. Just to end the conversation, he had one more question " Nokia mobile se hi sasthe main call kar sakte hai na, doosre mobile se mehanga padta hain"? This question is like asking a barber if one needs an haircut. What else can I tell him?

For once, I felt he should have been in US of A to get that user experience of integrated mobile and tariff package :-)

Same cook goes to one of my friend's apartment. His wife happens to be a dentist. Again last week, our cook had fever. So, he goes to the dentist and asked for some medicine to cure his illness. Rightly, she refused to give him any medicine. Our cook was shocked and could not believe that people are so against him. One person is not giving right "tariffs", other one not giving "medicines" to cure his illness. He was complaining to us "Kis taraf ki doctor hain wo, dawayee nahi deti, hamare Orissa main tho aisa nahin hain, sab bheemari ke liye, sabi doctor dawaayi dete hain", his list of complaints continued forever.

I am sure he would have had similar expectation on me, for sure he would have cribbed in similar lines elsewhere :-)

I think this kind of expectations from people are not new to us, right? There were times when Veena was asked which Petrol bunk she works for (HP), whether we made Shikakhai soaps (for Wipro) etc. If you can explain your position and clarify these doubts, well and good. Otherwise, learn to live with these great expectations :-(

A lovely, unwelcome visitor

Yesterday night, we were just walking around our apartment complex, when few of my friends had gathered at one place and looking at something with amusement. Poorvi and me went to see what it was. The annual visitor to our apartment was back. Last time around it had created a little havoc when it accidently had hit a visitor on the head. But whatever it is, this is a lovely bird called "Barn Owl", which unfortunately is on the verge of extinction.

Have a look at the picture taken during the day time, this owl has a nest in one of the cozy corners of our apartment. But this owl visits our apartment only once-a-year and stays here for couple of months.

Yesterday it was sitting on one of the balcony grills in one of my friend's apartment. Whole of yesterday it had been kind of "shoot at sight" for them, trying to capture the images of this special visitor from different angles. Hope this time around this visitor does not cause much problem like what it did last year.

Note from Wiki-Pedia:

The Barn Owl is a pale, long-winged, long-legged owl with a short squarish tail. Depending on subspecies, it measures c.25-45 cm in overall length, with a wingspan of about 75-100 cm. Tail shape is a way of distinguishing the Barn Owl from true owls when seen in flight, as are the wavering motions and the open dangling feathered legs. The light face with its peculiar shape and the black eyes give the flying bird an odd and startling appearance, like a flat mask with oversized oblique black eyeslits, the ridge of feathers above the bill somewhat resembling a nose.

GSM War - TATA DOCOMO

From last couple of days, there have been ads (in the paper, on the bill boards) about Tata Docomo. Wow, one more operator into already crowded service place? Not a bad move and not a bad timing to enter this market now in my opinion.

First of all, Docomo is a BIG name in Japan. I still remember the times when we used to work for a NTT-Docomo competitor in Japan and how Docomo virtually wiped off that competition (with able support from us also :-) ).

Secondly, with number-portability option coming into place, I guess people will start moving across operators, while retaining the same phone number. So, not necessarily Tata-Docomo has to find "new" subscribers, but can as well pull other "existing" subscribers from other operators. With schemes such as 1 paisa/second billing, it is surely an attractive proposition. As their Ad says, if you talk for 12 second, you pay 12 paisa and not that minimum amount / minute. Good. Pay for as much as you speak.

Looking at these rates, my memory goes back to exactly a decade ago, back in 1999 when I owned my first mobile phone. Rates used to be around 8 Rs per minute for outgoing calls and around 2 Rs per minute for incoming calls (Yes, I used to pay for incoming calls too ) :-( Compare it with 60 paisa per minute outgoing calls and absolutely Free incoming calls !!! Who cannot afford a mobile these days?

Lastly, Docomo is also known for lot of value added services in Japan, hope they will bring all those into India as well. Hmm, watch out Airtels and Vodafones, a new giant is coming :-)

(BTW, real "wiki-pedia" says that Docomo actually stands for "Do Communication over Mobile", it is a passe now, communication is taken for granted, people are asking, what else?)

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Shaadi ka Khel

Have you been following the biggest pre-wedding show happening on television? It can put some of the big movies and some soap operas to shame. Yes, I am talking about "Rakhi ka Swayamwar" on NDTV imagine, a reality show to choose a groom for Rakhi :-)

Some of the scenes reminds one of "Hum Aapke hain Kaun", while other episodes have so much masala into it, even Ekta Kapoor would not have thought about it; already married guy (with three kids) being there in the race to marry Rakhi, another guy kissing Rakhi while dancing (which made into the headlines on one TV channel yesterday) :-) Uh... the twists and turns continues.

The whole show seems to be well stage managed. May be there were multiple round of rehearsals. I really wonder, if this is really a reality show? Will Rakhi really marry someone at the end of this show? Whatever it is, going by the TRP of the program, for sure Rakhi would have made a fortune for her life through this program. All that remains to be seen is "who is going to be the biggest bakara" at the end of the show, is it one of the guys in the show OR audience like us :-)

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King Federer: "Unbelievable" Story

King is here to stay, he is back in the "rank" he deserves the best: Number ONE. It was a memorable day for all tennis buffs yesterday when Fed-ex created the history - for being the king of grandslam 15 times, what an achievement in just 6 years (compared to Sampras who took 12 years to win 14 grandslams). Uff... its really an "unbelievable story".

What a match it was yesterday. Both Roddick and Federer were matching each other to the last point played. 5-7, 7-6, 7-6, 3-6, 16-14 !!! The score speaks for itself. Federer served 50 odd "Aces" and would have uttered the word "unbelievable" same number of times in the post match ceremony. Just think of the great comeback by Federer. He had lost the first set and in the second set, he was on the brink of another loss (trailing 6-2 in the tie-breaker). But what a come back !!! "Unbelievable", but true.

I just loved the game yesterday. Not because my favorite Federer won, but the way the game was played. Both the players played like true gentlemen, they had kept their emotions under control, no outbursts, not much of celebrations after winning a great winner or a great game. At the end of the match, I really felt little sad for Roddick, as he had an upper hand initially in the match and gave it away.

I just loved the way each of them came back with big serves. In the final set, many times Federer was down 15-30. Everytime, he used to come back with 3 Aces to just finish any threat of a break. Similarly Roddick, at any of the break points, he came with an Ace or a winner. He saved as much as 6 break points speaks for itself.

During the final set, I was just thinking, if Federer can ever break Roddick's serve? He had never broken Roddick's serve till the last game in the 5th set !!! And it did happen.... in the last game of the last set !!! Uff... Unbelievable.

13 saal baad...

(Article dedicated to Gangu, Harsha and Chinna who made it to this small get-together :-) )

Last week, while waiting for my office cab, in front of our apartment, I met a person with some familiarity. I started mapping this person to someone known in the past. My memory had to go all the way 13 years back to recognize this person as my classmate in the engineering college. It was a real happy moment to get in touch with a good old friend, who was completely out of touch for 13 years(but for some Orkut moments). Immediately we exchanged our contacts and decided to catch up during the weekend.

Last weekend, it was time for a small re-union of classmates. It was a real good time catching up with the old memories - how a classmate of ours had volunteered go give a "drop" to a teacher and actually "dropped" the teacher (accidentally) on the way to college, how another classmate used to memorize each line of microprocessor program and ended up displaying the other college's name (NIE) instead of our college name (SJCE) on the output (as he had memorized the program written by his friend in other college) so on. Obviously, there were lot of discussions about our professors, teachers and others. It was not only just the memories of 13 year back, at the end of the day we all felt 13 years younger :-) It is always nice to catch up with old friends. Hope this kind get-together happen more often and lot more of our old friends join this.

One of my dream is to have a re-union in the college itself, just visiting all those favorite hot-spots in the college - Cycle stand (I guess it is a car stand now :-)), canteen, downs (in front of our college) etc. Hope I don't have to wait for another 13 years for this dream to come true :-)

My experiment with Truth

Here is the continuation of that "Daughter's day" story (refer to my post on July 1st). I wanted to tell Poorvi about Kalpana Chawla, her achievements, how brilliant was she etc. I decided to tell the story, as is, without adding much "masala" into it. Usually all my stories to Poorvi will have some kings or some animals or some of her friends as characters, sometimes combinations of any of these character, with lot of lot of masala in it. For once, I decided to tell a real life story to Poorvi, so, it was a moment for me to experiment with truth.

As usual, dinner time is the ideal time for all these stories. Spicier the story, easier to feed Poorvi. Invariably Poorvi opens the mouth during the story telling (with an expression of shock or disbelief). It is the best opportunity for one to put food into her mouth. But this real life story of Kalpana Chawla did not have so many "shock and awe" effects. May be I did not dramatize much. So, it was a slow paced dinner that day, with absolutely no expression on Poorvi's face. But I did not give up. My intention was to tell Poorvi the importance of daughter's day :-) Story went on for some more time and when the story was "ended" with the burst of space shuttle in which Kalpana was travelling, Poorvi could not really hide her anger anymore. She started blasting at me "What kind of story is this? Is this all the story? Story is over? I am feeling sad now, I don't want to eat anything anymore". Uh, back to square-one. So, I started again with some more masala added into the story. How Kalpana used to answer the questions on solar system, how she used to enjoy the school, how her teacher used to praise Kalpana etc (to make this story session interesting, I asked some questions on solar system, which Poorvi also knew answer). So, Poorvi also felt that she is as great as Kalpana and nothing less. That made her more comfortable in opening the mouth again and me trying to put as much food as possible in this "limited" opportunity.

Umm, this was one of my experiment with truth :-) I failed miserably this time around. I will not give up, let me try again sometime later. Till then, "Asatya-meva-jayathe".

Uthe Sabke Kadam....

Rhymes time is always a nice time. Poorvi is almost singing a different rhymes each day now !!! It is really really nice to hear those rhymes in the kids own way of pronunciations :-)

When Poorvi was about 2.5 years old, one day she came back from school (Kidzee) and started pestering us to teach her the "Dante Shabaru" rhymes. Uh, Dante Shabaru? With some difficulty I can recite "Twinkle twinkle" or "Ba ba black sheep". But Dante shabaru? Was completely stumped. I had to accept the defeat and told Poorvi that I was not aware of any such rhymes. This continued for some more days, almost everyday she was asking us if we know "Dante Shabaru" rhymes. One fine day, Poorvi was playing with her toys and singing " Tava Subha Ashisa Mage, Dante shabaru Gatha". Then we understood, what rhymes Poorvi was really "talking" about :-) We were really surprised to know that she could recite complete Jana-gana-mana at that age (with little support to correct those words though :-)).

Offlate, just last week, similar incident happened. Poorvi started singing "Uthe sabke kadam, tara ram pa pam"... and then some totally strange english words followed which sounded like "I am only ninety nine, I am only ninety nine". We did not know the wordings again and we were thinking this as "Dante shabaru" part-2.

When we met her teacher last weekend and asked her about this "uther sabke kadam" rhymes, teacher said, she is very passionate about rhymes and she is teaching the kids some "out-of-syllabus" rhymes also. Poorvi's teacher said, she gets all these nice rhymes from internet and teaches the students.

Yesterday, Veena did a quick search in the internet about this "new" rhyme and this is what she got:

(This is to be sung in the tune of the popular song from "Baton Baton main")

Uthe Sabake Kadam, Taraa Ram\-Pam\-Pam
Ajii Aise Giit Gaayaa Karo
Kabhii Khushii Kabhii Gam, Taraa Ram\-Pam\-Pam
Ha.Nso.N Aur Ha.Nsaayaa Karo

Said the hundred legged worm, as he began to squirm,
"Has anybody seen a leg of mine?
If it can't be found then I'll have to hop around,
on the other ninety-nine, on the other ninety-nine."

Hop around, hop around,
On the other ninety nine,
If it can't be found then I'll have to hop around,
On the other ninety-nine, on the other ninety-nine

Beautiful rhyme, isn't it? I can very well empathize with this hundred legged worm, exactly knowing the importance of leg (having fractured my leg few times). I was just wondering, if this 100 legged worm really going to miss one leg or can it manage with rest 99? :-)

Daughter's Day

(This blog dedicated to my lovely daughter Poorvi)

Just as Poorvi and me were rushing in the morning to catch her school bus, I saw a mother and daughter hugging each other and mother wishing her daughter "Happy Daughter's day". Oh my... Daughter's day? Here I am, totally oblivious to the happenings around me and completely ignorant about such a day dedicated to the daughters :-( Poorvi was so prompt in wishing me "Happy father's day" other day and lo, I am not even aware of such a day called Daughter's day? Bad :-(

So, back to Google and I found that Daughter's day is celebrated on July 1st (to celebrate the birthday of Kalpana Chawla). This for once made a complete sense to me to have this day as "Daughter's day" to remember a great person like Kalpana and her achievements. I even now remember the day when tragedy happened. We were all in a dawn-to-dusk festival called "Vasantha Habba" when we got this news. It was completely unbelievable to know what happened.

Anyway, I have decided, instead of just wishing Poorvi "Happy daughter's day", today I will also tell her something about Kalpana Chawla and her achievements :-) Not sure, if Poorvi can really understand, but I will tell her anyway :-)

Happy "Daughter's day" to all the women folks reading this blog :-)