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.