I figured why the Indian brides appear shy with their heads bowed down on their wedding day. I did too on my wedding day. Given that this wasn't an arranged marriage and that the groom wouldn't escape if he found out that I was not a traditional shy Indian bride, I had no reason to feel compelled to be *shy*. So no pressure of any sort. However, there I was ... looking & behaving like any bride I had seen. As a kid when I saw weddings I often wondered if the bride wasn't curious to lift her head up & look around, especially at the groom, after all in a typical arranged marriage you would expect high levels of anxiety. Even a kid knows that!

Nobody told me, and may be I am disturbing some layer of something somewhere in the whole Indian matrimony experience thing...by saying some of this, but here it goes. So, in my case I had to start getting dressed at 7.00 am for a 9.00 o'clock scheduled wedding that started after 10.00 am or so. Wait, I didn't have a watch on me, but that is what it felt like. I had some professionals help me with my costume, headgear etc  stuff. The first thing they told me was to visit the restroom as I would not be able to do that the rest of the day. Yeah surprise No. 1. Then the ordeal began. My hair is barely shoulder length and so they started attaching really long fake hair. This was my chance to see how I would look had I been a 18th century classical dancer. I don't know much about classical dance, and if you could tell that, it was no genius. They drilled a whole packet of hair pins & more, used thread to tie things together and pulled things left right & center to make sure things didn't fall off. A Maang Tika was also clamped on to me. The fake hair was probably as heavy as me, and I found it difficult to move my head up. It reached below my bottom, they plaited it and tied it with a parinda making the whole thing even longer. They then attached strings of fresh flowers to my hair to add to the weight and size of things. And thus I grew heavier. Oh and the chunni had to cover a part of my head , so they clipped that to my crown. And so the whole long hair thing was covered behind the chunni. Was there a point then, I thought. Then the whole series of ghagra, jewellery, bindis, safety pins etc followed one after the other and sometimes in parallel. A pull there and a push somewhere continued while I was hoping that I would emerge out of it all as a brave bride. I also had to wear a nose ring hoop with a little chain that was pinned to the side of my hair. The hair-do sort of took care of restricting the up movement, the nose ring would help in restraining the left right movement. That is a shy bride in the making. I had never worn a nose ring before, so it was awkward feeling some kind of metal inside my nostrils. I even wondered for a moment what would happen if I sneezed. Then the "being a brave bride" drive hit me and I was distracted by the photographer.

So, I looked down as I walked down the aisle balancing the weight on my head wondering why women had to work so hard on their wedding day when I lifted my head up to see the groom on stage wearing a turban and a feather standing up, a heavy sherwani, a shawl, a sword and the joothiya (uncomfortable shoes). Oh I forgot to mention it was hot on stage with the fire on and fans turned away. I walked up smiling.

"This is going to be so much fun" were my thoughts as I plunged into the whole marriage experience.

My flight from US to India was pleasant & timely. Phew, finally a change

I am loving these few days here, I cannot fathom how I will go back to the old life. Its the food that makes all the difference. This is how life is to be lived. Sleep & food, lots of it 

I am flying to India next week and am having to do a million things before the trip. Since I will fly to Canada from India I need to pack carefully. Things to take to India and then to Canada and everything else to be packed up and left somewhere. I am having to vacate my apartment which is the biggest pain of all things. I will worry about finding a place to stay when I come back to US in Oct.

For now, the one thing that keeps me excited is the thought of getting good food. I miss home food and Kerala food. Yummm.

Just 1 week

I just learnt about the concept of a wedding registry. I had heard about wish lists and seen lists of gifts that kids wanted for Christmas etc in US. Recently, I heard about a wedding registry where the couple to be married put up a list of presents they want (usually pointing to the model/color/size of products in specific stores). People pick a gift from the list and cross off that item.

Sounds terribly non-Indian, doesn’t it. That is what I thought. Ofcourse from a practical point of view, it is nice that you don’t end up getting 4 copies of Star Trek!

One of those cultural things... First you shake your head then you move along

I thought I had a clear notion of what curry meant before I left India. Now I am not sure. However, I do know that curry wrt thai, malysian, Indonesian & chinese food is different from curry wrt Indian food. I often wondered what curry powder that Indian stores sell is. I thought it was powdered curry leaves, until I picked one packet. The powder was yellowish orange in color and the leaves are green in color. Also the powder didn’t smell anything like curry leaves. It didn’t smell like any masala (spice) I had known. Then I thought curry powder was probably people’s notion of spices that go in an Indian dish [so does that mean dish == curry?]… so would that be like garam masala? Though ofcourse not all Indian dishes have garam masala. It is all very confusing.

While we are at it, I also want to point out that nan, roti, chicken curry & paneer are only a subset of Indian food. Back in India, every state has its own cuisine, dessert etc where some things overlap with some neighboring states and others are completely distinct. Kerala food for example is mainly rice based, a lot of dishes are cooked in coconut oil, curry leaves & coconut are ingredients in most dishes. I am yet to find a restaurant in Seattle area that serves Kerala style food. The closest we get to Kerala food is idlis, dosas & vadas. Which probably is more Tamilian than malayali. (I Think)

The last time I had Kerala food with my non-Indian friends, they were amazed & said they had never seen & eaten any “Indian food” like it. Many of my Indian friends back in Kerala were surprised with they were served “dal-baati-choorma” or even carrot halwa. Not to mention mom’s hurt feelings when one of them asked if the halwa was chutney (chammanthi).

And on that note, I need to get back to cooking my chicken err … curry.

The past few months have added more hindi movies to my experience as compared to the number and variety of hindi films I have seen in the past few years put together. I thought it was a good idea to write the names down, more for my reference given my bad memory with names. [Be it of books, movies or people J] And it might even help somebody with an interest to pick (what I think to be better) hindi movies. And if you are one of those who consider the previous sentence to be paradoxical, then go away. What follows is of no interest to you.

1.  Utsav – An interesting movie with two gorgeous looking women playing the lead, one as the wife & other as ‘the other woman’ as you would say in hindi. It is amusing to see Amjad Khan playing Vatsyayan, the author of Kama sutra peeping around to catch inspiration to sketch & write. Loved two songs Sanj savere & aadhi raat ko in the movie.

2.  Khosla ka ghosla – A satire on the situation with buying property in India today. Anupam Kher plays a middle class man retired from work. The story is his journey accompanied by friends & family in claiming his land as his. Quite funny with a reasonable star cast.  Anupam Kher, Boman Irani, Navin Nischol & Ranvir are quite good in their roles.

3.  Life in a metro – Pretty good movie except for the annoying band that is desperate to show itself throughout the movie. The background score is not bad, but seeing those guys sing on bikes and railway terminals and everywhere else is no fun. Konkana Sen & Irfan Khan are awesome. Shilpa Shetty strangely seemed to act well too. Nafisa Ali & Dharmendra are awfully cute. Kangana Ranaut befits her role quite well, she was a major disappointment in gangster but doesn’t do much talking in this movie. Kay kay is good as usual.

4.  Salaam e Ishq – This film flopped at the box office, but I quite liked it. Its towards the long side but I think it is a reasonably decent movie to watch. Ayesha has potential, Akshay despite his occasional overacting is quite hilarious, Priyanka is quite good – I think I liked her for the first time in this movie where she is actually acting, Govinda is not bad. If I had a choice I would have completely erased John Abraham & Vidya Balan’s story from the movie. Sohail Khan is a born comedian. Hats off to whoever wrote the dialogues between the newly wed couple Sohail & Isha. Anil & Juhi do justice to their roles. The two new women are quite good too. It’s a bollywood masala movie with song sequences & dances.

5.  Traffic signal – This is about life around a Bombay traffic signal and no. of people who make a living out of those red lights that bring business. It is not the usual Madhur Bhandarkar film – at least not as strong as Page 3, Corporate (which I didn’t like) or Chandni Bar, it is more to the lighter side. If a firangi (foreigner) is going to visit India for the first time, I would recommend watching this movie.

6.  Chak de India – This is definitely a director’s movie. After Ab tak chhappan , Shimit Amin’s second movie did not fail my expectations. The annoying thing about Shahrukh Khan is that the stardom he carries obscures everything & eventually gives a superman feel to all his roles. This movie however, did not do that. The movie has 16 women; (all new comers I think) constitute a hockey team. The choice of women renders a realistic view unlike the usual pick of pretty models decked in makeup (even on a field) in a commercial bollywood movie. The language, humour & attitude reflecting the regional behaviorisms are carried out well.

7.  Honeymoon Travels – This was an okay movie. I liked the idea that people are trying different things in Bollywood. The representation of minority in mainstream hindi movies is usually as helpless or as being the laughing stock. To just see them as normal people in this movie was a pleasant change. The cast include Kay kay Menon, Shabana Azmi & Boman Irani. Also worth mentioning is that this is possibly the first Indian movie with a majority of women crew including camera person, director, asst director (3 levels deep) & choreographer.

8.  Partner – I don’t like David Dhawan, I did not like Govinda in the past and I definitely did not like Salman + David Dhawan combo:  Biwi No 1 was a little too much for me to take. However, despite all that watching the trio together (after much resistance on my part) wasn’t bad. In fact it was funny. I have a new found respect for both Govinda & Salman Khan. Both their characters could not have been played better or different by anybody in Bollywood today. Katrina Kaif looks sexy like always in the movie and Lara Dutt pretty. However, any young pretty face in Bollywood could have replaced them and the movie would have been just the same.  Of course there are some classic David Dhawan moments in this movie like a little whiz kid making a rocket that can chase its target through air, water changing course & direction. My favorite part is Salman Khan talking in “Chinese” to the bus driver in Phuket.

9.  Chini kum – Short & funny with a ~60 yr old Amitabh falling in love with 35 yr old Tabu and asking her hand in marriage to ~55 yr old Paresh Rawal (Tabu’s father). Amitabh looks very cute in his pony tail. My favorite character though is the lady who plays Amitabh’s mom. She is brilliant. Not the usual bollywood movie and so no songs & dancing around London’s eye.

10.Yun Hota Tho Kya hota – This is Naseerudin Shah’s first direction and he says the reason he made this movie is because he wanted to be able to tell the cast “Action” and “cut”. Oh well. The movie was an okay movie. It started out as a light & occasionally funny movie with a couple of separate stories and ended on a much more serious note.

11. Iqbal – I had liked Nagesh Kukunoor’s Deewarein and so I picked his next movie Iqbal. The cast is brilliant – the lead played by Shreyas Talpade, his little sister, his mother & father, his coaches Naseeruddin Shah & Girish Karnad are all great in their roles. Definitely a good movie.

12. Junoon – Roshan has a blog entry dedicated to this.

Some good but disturbing movies I watched include Maya, 15 Park Avenue (too much of a drag towards the end), Salaam Bombay, Khamosh pani aka silent waters , Water & Earth.

Wishlist includes Dor, Hey Baby (Akshay Kumar’s full monty – can’t miss it), Laaga Chunari Mein Daag among others.

Update (Sep 9): I saw Hey baby and it is bad. Hopefully that will save some prospective viewers.

I am reading some books by Kushwant Singh and came across a sher that I found very funny. The situation is that when Kushwant Singh visited his birth place Lahore he met the minister on a formal dinner and “offered him an appropriate sher (verse) for his next confrontation with orthodoxy”:

Mulla, gar asar hai dua mein

To masjid hila ke dikha!

Gar naheen to do ghoont pee

Aur masjid ko hilta dekh.

There is an english translation that I didn’t find so funny but will quote here

Mulla, if your prayer has power

Let me see you shake the mosque!

If not, take a couple of pegs of liquor

And see how the mosque shakes on its own

He then goes on to talk about the difference between Indian & Pakistani college girls saying that in India one looked at a group of girls and tried to see if there were pretty faces whereas in Pakistan it was the other way round, one tried to see if there was anybody not pretty.

While my vacation in Cochin has got prolonged I am making sure I read, eat & sleep as much as I can. In short, I am having a good time.

I got back from chennai yesterday after a great time & some adventure with shopping in the busy streets of T-nagar.

Going from Cochin, Chennai was a pleasant change. The roads are much wider and traffic controlled. Also there are some signs of night life, like the number of autos and people after 9.00 pm. Shopping was great fun, loads of variety, choices, big crowds and unbelievable amount of bargaining. Oh how I easily fit into my old shoes and enjoyed bargaining! Its quite a skill and my sisters think I am good.

I did not like Chennai because of my not-so-good ~2 months experience with the place after my undergraduation, as is indicated my my previous post. I think its a little unfair, it was the first time away from home and having to do things I had never done before all on my own with limited resources was a little overwhelming. But, now I like chennai enough to say that I would consider it over Bangalore to stay in if I were to choose between the two. The weather & water is a problem, some stretches of drives bear such fragrance that one would feel completely knocked out but the congestion in Bangalore is a bigger problem IMO.

Now I am very happy to be back home, Harry Potter & the deathly hallows is on my table and I have decided to read it slowly (i.e. as slowly as possible). It is sad that there will not be any more waiting for future Harry Potters :-(

I grew up in Kerala but never went to a local toddy bar, never had sea food in a restaurant and never had any ayurveda treatments done. Once I stepped out of Kerala, the curiosity arose and I wanted to try everything Kerala is known for. I had never tasted toddy and more importantly never seen a kallu shaap ... it was this unspoken men-only place I occasionally saw in malayalam movie clips. During my last trip to India, I asked some friends for good seafood restaurants. The recommended upscale places turned out to cater too much to non-keralites especially to the foreigners. And so the taste was far removed from authentic Kerala style seafood. The other strong recommendation was toddy bars which came with a warning "ofcourse you can't go"
 
My brother in law discovered this place called mulla (jasmine) panthal (roof) in cochin, which apparently has a website & even an orkut community dedicated to it. Before going we called up and were briefed about the place by a friendly manager who said it was fine for "families" (meaning women folk) to visit and they were given separate rooms but that it essentially was a bar. And so my sister, brother in law and I set off for lunch at this place. It was a much longer drive than we expected and stopped at several places to ask for directions and everybody just pointed ahead asking us to drive ahead further. Reminded me of the "abhi dilli (delhi) door hai" episode. Finally far from the main roads, in an alley lay our destination. Yeah it was a Harold & Kumar's white castle moment.
 
The usher helped us park the car and showed us the way in. We were seated in a room and briefed about how their toddy was made. We were then served with an earthen pot full of toddy (2 litres as we discovered later) and glasses. Toddy smells repulsive and tastes even worse, to the untrained palate such as mine. Once we settled in we ordered a whole range of dishes including karimeen (pearl spot) fry, prawns, kappa (tapioca), kokku (crane or stork from description) & duck (my first time). The food was delicious, a banquet I must say. Tears flowed profusely, sweat trickeled down our bodies but there was no stopping us from munching the super spicy prawns. Once I was done with food, I was curious to see what the rest of the bar looked like. So I asked the man in the group to accompany me, my sister was too stuffed to walk. The place looked busy & big. I suspect not all local bars are this big or spacious. The food was inexpenisve compared to any other place I have been to but some local folks say that for a kallu shaap its expensive. I am positive I will go back there atleast once more during this trip.
 
That is one more thing knocked off the to-do-before-I-die list.

My plan to visit Rajasthan had to be called off due to flooding in Gujarat & Rajasthan. Trains are being delayed & re-routed, so my folks thought it best to travel at a later date. Unfortunately that means for me, the trip wont happen this year for sure. And who knows when, if at all. I was looking forward to a scenic train trip via konkan and meeting up with people in Rajasthan. Too bad :(
 
This also means that I need to think up of some alternate journey so I make good use of my short time during this trip in India. Then again, with rains pouring as hard as they are, there are hardly any choices. I am definitely upset about this trip getting cancelled as there were so many things I had planned on doing - seeing camels, desert, peacocks, mehandi, clothes, doing shopping, trying rajasthani food, meeting lots and lots of people (family largely), taking pictures & just the different air & sand that is so unique to the state. And to think that a few weeks ago I was dreading the heat ... oh well!

Two weeks ago when I came to Cochin, I was pleasantly surprised to see that folks at home separated out plastic & trash as plastic was picked only once a week and trash on a daily basis. Last week, it was announced that plastic, metal, glass, egg shells (why?), paper & coconut fibre would be collected only on Tuesdays & remaining trash everyday. While folks are initially finding it difficult to make it a habit to separate out trash and there is ambiguity as to certain wrappers being plastic or not, I am happy about this big change. Hopefully it is a step towards a better Cochin.

Last week I travelled a bit & found Calicut railway station cleaner than any railway stations I have been to in the past [which is not a small number ] . Apparently there was a 2 week cleanliness drive with banners all over the station requesting passengers to use dust bins, not to spit tobacco etc. And for once it looked like it was working. I am not sure if in the recent years there has been this kind of drive in other parts of the country. Cochin & Shornur railway stations looked the same as they always have except for some computer kiosks installed for railway information access.

Next month I am travelling to Jaipur & I hope the railway stations on the way are cleaner than they have been years ago. My memories of travel in north India date back to at least 5 years ago & are full of extremely unclean areas in and around railway stations, for that matter most public transport locations. I also realize why as a kid I never liked travelling in India. Lack of clean toilets. Now it seems like the pay & use toilets in ladies waiting rooms in stations are kept clean. Phew. Travel aches. Disgusting topic. So moving on, I have a nice, adventurous journey planned out for july that takes me through Jaipur, Jaisalmer, Udaipur and our family place. Nice because some of these places are beautiful & I saw a few as a teenager. I am sure I will see them different now & I have a digital camera now. Yay! Adventurous because it is going to be in the scorching heat around a desert.

No, the k-series haven’t stopped. And the 3-times-repeat-scene-for-emphasis has increased (yeah, as if there was scope. Nahi nahi nahi, Kya kya kya, Maa maa maa). And the bollywood song sequences which fill a good 1/3^rd of the serial time has also increased. One of the popular k-series started in my 2nd year of engineering, I remember kyunki saas bhi kabhi bahu thi in ~2000, guess what - it’s still running. Yeah! And the hero & heroine at different points refused to continue. As if that would hinder the continuance, the hero got replaced by some random man & the heroine ... well since she was a little more important in the show, she had to either run into an accident, get a plastic surgery to look like a totally new person or die & come back. How smart & original. All the tv serials seem to be doing exactly this. That way characters are dispensable. And story *dynamic*.

I haven’t watched a whole single episode of any serial yet, but I have watched enough clips to boldly claim a few things. The serials have several generations, earlier the only way you could tell the mother from the daughter was this streak of white hair somewhere in the mass of just-groomed hair. Now, the white hair has left the scene, so when I guess the daughter & mother & check with my mom if its correct – I am wrong. Yes. For the clothes, these are women at home – always dressed like it’s a festival or party, decked with jewellery & bright colors & layers of make-up. Yeah, most of them look good alright, but far removed from the character they play (Then, again are they?). It’s very easy to spot the bad from the good, they tend to indulge in long soliloquies making weird faces at the camera which is the director’s ingenious way of showing evil intentions. In Malayalam serials, it is even simpler to make out bad girls from good, bad ones wear jeans. Ahem. No comments on that.

The scary part is not any of this, it is the fact that many many housewives (& possibly others) watch this stuff, enjoy this stuff. Creeepy! Women I spoke to, including my mother, refused to enjoy watching it & say they watch it to kill time. Right, prefer this to anything else … is exactly my point.

As to why I am watching this stuff, I enjoy mom’s food too much and spend considerable time in front of the tv in the evenings & don’t have much jurisdiction over what plays. Moreover, its fun to see folks watch & react. Even crib & continue watching. I did that some time back but strongly believe the serials were actually well thought out & good – still remember some names buniyaad, chutki, byomkesh bakshi, malgudi days, farmaan, honi unhoni …

I am back in Cochin after 1.5 years. I left Cochin in 2002 to work but would end up visiting cochin for some major holidays atleast twice a year. Even then I’d notice changes, but now after 1.5 years it interesting to see how things are changing. More places to eat, not sure more is right, I do not see some of the old places I’d go to. Now you’ll see signs of the popular brands like café coffee day, barista, nilgiris etc. Bigger malls and a better selection of clothes, but the same old stares by men & women. Yeah! For those of you from Kerala, you know exactly what I mean. Others, well, forget subtlety & glancing, this is a straight outright stare. And you look back and it has no effect on them. It’s annoying sometimes & sometimes funny.

The traffic is just amazing. The whole scenario seems so chaotic with a 2 laner being used as a 1-5 laner and I’d feel really scared in a car when a bus was next to us ignoring the squeamish little car and headed straight on its way as though we ceased to exist. And I’d be terrified when we were sandwiched between two buses. But then once I saw a guy on a bicycle in the middle of the heavy traffic riding happily and the whole traffic appeared to adjust to his meandering around. It was just great! And then I noticed this amazing pattern in what had seemed like chaotic traffic. People didn’t really yield, they raced but just when they needed to they’d move away and get through or brake just in time to avoid  a clash. You have to be really skilled to maneuver you way through, and probably ie what the biker was up to. It’s what I call aggressive (yet safe) driving & survival of the fittest. Imagine buses, auto rickshaws, cars, motor cycle, scooters, bicycles & pedestrians – all with their urgenicies, communicating with each other using the horns in different frequencies & pitches. It’s like the whole traffic is dynamically adjusting to you and you to them. My sister isn’t aggressive enough as a driver and so gets easily left behind until somebody notices that it’s a lady driving and shows his chivalry by staying behind and honking continuously so she takes off. It works. With my dad, drives are fun. Not for him perhaps, but I am not talking about the driver’s sentiments. I wouldn’t know.

So the latest addition to my Things-to-do list is drive in cochin without fear. Some day I will.

Another thing I realized is how advantageous it is sometimes to be a woman. The lines are so much smaller when buying movie tickets for example. It’s almost unfair to the guys. But I ain’t complaining. I had forgotten how it used to be, until the help I got with my luggage on the flight to Cochin. Aw, I didn’t have to ask for help, men just helped out. My backpack was so heavy I could never lift it up by myself and would usually end up asking the gentleman/lady in the vicinity to lend a hand. And I got help. But here help came before I asked. Same at the airport. Same with my mother when she’s bought groceries at the supermarket. Same with my sisters when they are driving or parking. Oh, in the last case it’s probably more like “oh it’s a lady driving, no wonder” attitude. That’s there in US as well. So it must be one of those gender things I don’t understand.

People are very friendly & generally helpful, again something I had forgotten I guess. I’d not be worried about my car getting stuck here while driving, in US on the other hand it’s a major fear. No wonder things like AAA are such a hit there and so unpopular here. I am also amused by the curiosity of people here, I absolutely love it.

The best feature though is not any of this. It’s how practical it is here to eat great food outside. You don’t have to be a vulgarly rich person to eat every meal outside (Unless you are in Bangalore downtown, which is like mini-US anyways). And not a taco-bell, burger-king, mc-donalds, pizza, burger kinda food. I just feel better having said that.

Not sure if it is lack of sleep, too much data and a small buffer, ageing, retardation, maturity or something else… But there are enough mishaps to constitue a (blog) enumeration. So here it goes

• I realized that I never gained 15 kgs. It was a wrong pound-kilogram conversion. (Somebody calculated 100 lbs as 55 kgs & I believed it, grrr)
• Today I put clothes for laundry & the detergent in the laundry basket and the laundry card over the clothes. I went to the laundry room opposite to my apartment and started loading the clothes after pouring some detergent. At the end I had to swipe my card to start the cycle and realized I hadn’t taken the card out of the basket. I didn’t see it in the basket and took the clothes out thinking it probably fell in the washer with the clothes. But no, it wasn’t in.  I looked around thinking if it had fallen out somewhere & traced my way back carefully till my door but no luck. Now the card was missing, I had loaded two washers, clothes were in detergent, so there was no *no washing* – I had no time to waste and I was frustrated. The leasing office was open, I could take a walk and perhaps explain the story and get a new card. Sigh, anything that involves me talking to the *polite* staff in my leasing office sends this electrifying sensation in my veins. You have to be in a certain mode with all the shield of thick skin you can muster to talk to the women there. I carried the basket back to my house and was trying to get into a different mode. When I put the basket down I noticed the laundry card sticking to the vertical side! Blue card against blue basket standing up…and I had missed seeing it. Uggh. Hurray, no visit to the dreaded place.
• Few weeks back, I was cycling back home in the night. I had just begun to pedal and thought something was wrong with my back tyre. I turned behind, all looked good and I turned back to see that I was headed straight for a post. Next, I was on the grass next to the post and all I felt was embarrassment. There were probably some house parties going on in the neighbourhood, I could hear some girls in the distance discuss “Oh my God Oh my God…Look…..Oh she is moving…oh she is getting up….”, I got up and lifted my bike and pedaled away telling myself that I was wearing a helmet & a light jacket and it will all be forgotten tomorrow when the world sobered up.
• Now, I do not recall this, my sister cited the whole story to me. Apparently she called me, I took the phone and she asked if I recognized the voice. I said “no”, she then said she was Neha. There were some question answer series and my sister got upset and hung up. Apparently she waited for me to call her back and apologize. My second sister cited the story to me (& the phone records validate the story :-( )and I had to call up Neha and justify.
• In the beginning of the semester, I mailed by broadband cheque with the to and from addresses interchanged. And when I found it in my mailbox after a week+, I told myself I am not desperate to mail cheques to myself. This resulted in my broadband connection getting disconnected for 2 weeks. Life was bad then.
• I finally got an old car last weekend. I am yet to affix the license plates but I have been driving a bit. All the 3 people who have sat next to me while I was driving have been slightly uncomfortable. I know that I need to brake when they stretch out their legs involuntarily. I am having a lot of fun driving though.
• I showed some pictures of my car to my brother and he very politely said (in hindi) "Car thodi khataara nahi hai"!(I am not sure how to translate that). I laughed and replied "Thodi nahi, kaafi khataara hai".  
• I can’t help smiling when I see a stop sign, especially a 2-way, 3-way or 4-way stop sign. For those of you who don’t know, if there is a 4 way stop sign at an intersection where 4 roads meet then all vehicles stop completely at the stop sign and proceed in the order they arrived. Now, I smile when I see this because I think how this would be if it were in India. The day we follow this rule in India, lot of things would have changed. It would be very very interesting.

Aug 2005 – Sept 2006

The most

1. I saw the most no of english & foreign movies [french, spanish, italian, israeli] in the last one year compared to the movies seen in the rest of my life put together. Same goes for television series
2. I thought and thought. I probably did the most amount of constructive thinking and retrospection in the last 1 yr
3. I spent the maximum amount of money out of my pocket in the last one year – tickets to US in aug 2005, laptop in sept 2005, travel to Europe & back in aug 2006, round trip tickets to India and back
4. I gained 15 kgs (~33 pounds) of weight.
5. I missed Indian food the most in the last one yr. Also home & Diwali.
6. I cooked more than ever
7. I ate the most amount of junk food, skipping breakfast
8. Some would probably say I am very independent now, I paid an electricity bill for the first time myself last year. By mailing a check :P

The least

1. Watched the least no. of hindi movies compared to the no. every other year
2. Least amount of physical labour. No laundry, no sweeping, mopping. That explains point 4 above. way too sedentary

Achievements

1. I quit Microsoft and rejoined Microsoft as an intern last summer
2. I joined IU
3. I got a drivers license last summer
4. I cook non-veg. Chicken & pork. Tried fish & prawns once and may be the last time for a while.
5. I ate seafood. Shrimps, mussels, clams & crabs cooked in sauce. An year ago, if somebody told my future as me wearing an apron to eat steamed seafood in its shell using tools, I would have never believed it.

Realizations

1. I should have learnt Haskell or scheme as my first programming language
2. I work great as long as I stay excited. The excitement rarely lingers
3. I have a long initial warm up time. It took me 2.5 semesters in undergrad and 1^st semester in grad school.
4. I never wanted a million dollars before. In other words, I started wanting to be a millionaire starting last year.
5. I had the best summer. Seattle was great, made some new friends, kept all the old ones.
6. I feel more mature & cynical. I also get occasional pangs of “what is left in life to do”, I called it enlightenment once but Anil pointed that then in the same breath I wouldn’t crib about how life in most parts of US is built around the assumption that you have a car. Oh well, I am growing old.
7. Life in Bloomington is a lot fun-ner with a vehicle. Bike can get me to places foot won’t, but cannot get me to several places. I need a car.
8. I need to see a lot of the US – Manhattan, other parts of NY, museums of DC, the Niagra  falls(sounds so absolutely desi, J), at least I have photos at universal studios & Disney world to add to my desi profile ;)
9. I know more about the world, I understand that I don’t understand American politics very well yet. I don’t particularly want to either.
10. I always believed in multiverse, now I hope that I would either be able to go into outer space or have an alien encounter in this lifetime. No, I don’t want to do anything in this direction to make it happen. Its one of those things you just want to happen somehow. Wishful thinking huh.

Things I hope to say next year

1. I go to the gym
2. I am back into sports – play something regularly – Frisbee, squash, badminton – something
3. I am eating healthier food
4. I am thinking about getting married
5. I blog
6. Travel in India (I want to go back and see Rajasthan)
7. I have the digital photo frame among other gadgets
8. I am enjoying work
9. I have a car
10. I tried sushi [read as sashimi]

[Update: Added links to seafood]

Talking to Roshan some weeks back got us started talking about DD programs and then about some of those national intergrity songs/promos that they often played on television. Most people around my age who grew up in India will be able to relate to this. Since we couldn't switch channels then, there is no way you could watch TV and not see these. Starting from the vande mataram song in the morning to the weekly chitrahaars and 9.00 o' clock serials.

I felt very good discovering & watching mile sur mera tumhara and ek chidiya. I also stumbled upon an MIT version of mile sur mera tumhara. My favorite bit is the firang on the bike singing the part that a keralite sings on an elephant in the original song. I cannot find a video of "sun sun sun mere munne sun.." on the internet but do recall chiranjeevi, mammooty, and some bollywood folk singing supposedly to kids.

In a conversation, in order to illustrate the difference between urdu and hindi I brought up the analogy of UK English and US English. Not sure how many would agree, I think Urdu is to Hindi as UK English is to US English.