Bangalore Roller Coaster

Today is one rainy day. It has been raining since morning and I am so glad my daughter doesn't have to go to school today. The traffic is worse than usual which is so very typical of Bangalore. But somehow I have a spring in my step. My maid number one has hurt her foot and won't be coming to work today. Who is going to do the pile of dishes I dumped in the sink when I made Gajar Halwa yesterday ? Ananya's maid has also not turned up. It is raining you see, so she has a ready excuse. But still I have a song on my lips. The chill has set in, and I am wrapped up in my shawl. There has been no sunshine since morning and people all around are cribbing about the clammy weather. But I have a smile on my face. I am taking a 2 week long vacation. I am going home, to be pampered. I am going home to late nights and late mornings. I am going to the north, where the winter chill has every one's teeth chattering and toes frozen. But the warmth in the cockles of my heart has me all c...

Christmas is a big thing in Bangalore and the festivities are much more apparent here than they are in Delhi. Of late, the malls in the metropolitan cities have taken it on themselves to celebrate each festival. As a result, the malls are all decked up for Christmas and the New Year. But those festivities cannot match the joyousness which is palpable in Bangalore. Last weekend, we went to the Forum Mall, and every shop had a Christmas tree, and that attracted Ananya so much so that she couldn't keep her hands off them. Last year, when we were in Dubai, she was very keen on the ornaments, that I had to actually buy a set of hanging bells for her so that she keep off the trees in the shops. Today was also Ananya's last day in school this year. She now has a 2 week break, and will go back to school only in the New Year. They also celebrated Christmas in her school today, but only a few parents were invited. Prior to this, Ananya was down with viral for one whole week, and when she...

Read this insightful article : http://www.naturalhistorymag.com/index_feature.html It covers the gradual demise of a native-Indian language and the efforts which are on to document it before it loses all it's speakers. It is sad to see a language die but dominant languages can do that to the other languages in the region. It reminds me of the reduced usage of Punjabi and how I find more and more people in Punjab preferring to talk in Hindi. The saddest part is when I see Punjabi people (especially who live outside Punjab) speak in Hindi to their kids but talk in Punjabi themselves. Pray why ? The children will learn Hindi/English when they interact with other kids and in the community, but they will not pick up their mother tongue elsewhere. I wish my daughter learns Punjabi, though I am not able to give her the environment to do so as I am married into a Hindi-speaking family. She is very good with Hindi and her vocabulary in English is also picking up since we moved to Bangalore....

Went for the Cadence year end party and after a number of years, burnt the danced floor all night . Initially when we were in Noida, we used to have a lot of parties and at good places, like the Hyatt or the Taj or better still one of the huge farmhouses, but not anymore. Noida now operates on a much lower budget, with very few low key, low involvement in house parties. Moreover, with the office expanding so much, the small dance floor is always crowded and we have tried dancing on the fringes of the same, but always ended up being pushed out by the younger , bachelor and more enthusiastic and energetic crowd. Earlier Diwali party used to be a party to be awaited, like an extended family get together, where everyone knew everyone.. but now we have to seek out the familiar faces and we used to feel lost in the crowd. I remember one Diwali party, held at a farmhouse on the outskirts of Delhi, where I was the first person to enter the dance-floor and the last one to leave it. In fact, me ...

Post Diwali, things have been very hectic for me.. and no time to write anything let alone do much around in Bangalore. My fulltime help left for his annual 1 month long leave.. only this time it is going to be 1.25 month long as he has to travel further and it takes him almost 2 days to reach his hometown from Bangalore. The chill has also set in and my daily routine is so hectic that I do not even have the time to breathe. A typical working day looks like this. I snooze the alarm at 5:30 am and try to get some more sleep till it rings again. At the second ring, I drag myself out of bed watching with envy as my husband and daughter sleep on. I am in the kitchen by 5:50 and start preparing lunch and breakfast. By 6:30 I wake up my husband and daughter and ask them to start getting ready. Getting Ananya ready by 8:00 am is a challenge in itself as she wants to rest for five minutes after everything. So it is ... brush her teeth, rest for five minutes. Have a bath.. rest for five min...

I am totally besotted by this song. I have heard it .. 57 times since this afternoon (from the Itunes play count) and I find it very melodious and soft. The music makes you want to sway along with it.. not a full fledged dance.. but the beat is very catchy. Shaan has sung it with so much emotion, that I can almost picture the sentiments around it ( and I am not talking about the promos). The other song that I am totally hooked onto is 'Mauja Mauja', from Jab We Met. I totally love it. It is so energetic, makes me want to get up and throw up my arms up in the air and dance to it. Maybe it is my Punjabi blood, which totally responds to the Punjabi song, the lyrics are very good too and Mika has done full justice to it. So these are the current favourites on my Itunes list. If you would like to download the mp3 for the same, you can get it from : http://www.bollyfm.net

Every festival in Bangalore has different flavour. In Noida, Karva Chauth would have some very obvious signs. Suddenly all the roadside sellers would start to sell 'Karvas' the Karva Chauth Calender and a few days before the D-Day, the Mehndi walas would throng the streets. And God forbid, if you wanted to get the Mehndi applied on the Karva Chauth eve, you would have to pay 5-10 times the rate for very poor quality Mehndi. Anyone and everyone who could hold a cone, would come down to the streets to apply Mehndi. In Bangalore, it was all subdued. One of the ladies in our complex had the foresight to call a team of Mehndi ladies and she asked for all interested ladies. I think more than 30 ladies signed up instantaneously and she was to come on Sunday evening, on the eve of Karva Chauth. She said she'll be there at 5:00pm. The lady in charge, keeping in mind the true meaning of these words called everyone at 6:00pm. She told me she would give me a call when the mehndi lady a...

Went to catch the new movie 'Bhool Bhulaiya' and since the new Fun Cinema multiplex had opened in the 'Grand Sigma Mall' with an introductory offer of Rs 120 for Gold Class and Rs 100 for the Silver Class, we thought why not? Any sane person might have found many reasons for not going to this new place. For one, we had no idea where Cunningham road is, and we had never seen this mall. Secondly, we are new to Bangalore (2 months old), but that didn't daunt us. So after a quick look at Google maps and getting our bearings, we started out to wards MG Road. From there we had a vague idea of the direction to take. As with most of Indian cities, one can easily ask your way around and get the directions to most places. We managed to reach Cunningham road in about 40 minutes, found the mall in another 5 minuts and then proceeded to park in the basement parking. God was that a pain. There was a long line of cars waiting to find parking space and there was just enough space t...

Navratra's are here and suddenly, life isn't as simple as it used to be in Noida. It was easy to get an earthen pot and 'jaun' or wheat grains for the Khetri to be sown on the first Navratra. But here in Bangalore, I am going bonkers searching for the same. Yes, yes.. I know for the old timers, this must be easy, but I haven't got all this stuff figured out just yet. So I called up all friends whom I thought would be doing something similar, to find out where I could get these raw wheat grains for. I have got some pointers.. and I am going to explore the same. If I get them, I'll write in here to let anyone, who is also on such a wild-goose-chase, know. Diwali is round the corner.. yeah yeah :)

When we were planning to move to Bangalore, friends had praised the temperament of the people of Bangalore. "They are not as aggressive as North Indians" was a popular refrain. The people of North India, especially Delhi, are supposed to very uncouth and rude and worse of all aggressive. We have seen instances of such behaviour on the streets, in the shops, but generalization is not a good idea ever. This was amply displayed by this incidence. But, yesterday we got our first taste of aggression on the streets of Bangalore. We decided to go for the movie 'Chak De' at the nearest Innovative Multiplex. As was expected, it took us a good 15 minutes to just get parking and walk back to the Multiplex. After the movie as we headed back, the clouds burst open and it started to pour. To prevent everyone from getting drenched, my Brother-In-Law(BIL) asked us to wait near the hall as he got the car out of parking. Again it took him a mighty 30 minutes to get it out and bring it ...

What's with married life and arguments ? In hindsight some of the arguments may appear very trivial, about subjects you couldn't care less about, but at the time of the argument, they appeared earth-shattering. Well, I am not going to write about my personal arguments and who got the last word here. But I would like to mention one of the best written articles on the web about 'things' a couple has argued about. It is aptly called, 'Things My Girlfriend and I Have Argued About'. It makes very addictive reading, so don't tell me I didn't warn you. The books too are must reads. I haven't found a copy, but if I did, I will definitely buy them. If someone knows where I can find one in India, or order one online, do let me know.

We have been looking for a children's bed for quite sometime. When we were in Noida, we had seen a very nice bed at Lifestyle's 'Home Center'. It was the perfect colour and the right price, but as luck would have it, they only had the last floor piece and refused to give it to us. They told us Lifestyle, Bangalore, carried the same bed, and we could buy it here. So we went to Lifestyle, Bangalore, and the last piece was on display on the floor, and it was slightly damaged. We were really upset, but decided to continue looking. Since we are not familiar with Bangalore, we asked around and looked at @Home, HomeStop, and even the newly opened Home Town, on ORR, but nothing clicked. One day my husband passed by a shop and vaguely noticed that they had kids furniture. But the only name that he could recollect was 'Spaces'. I searched on the web, but found no store of that description. Finally last Sunday, we went for lunch at a friend's place and saw the delivery...

Last night we planned to catch the movie, 'Bourne Ulitmatum'. Since it was a weekday and we wanted it to be a quick watch without having to spend more time in Bangalore's traffice than in the movie, we decided to give PVR a skip and go to the Innovative Multiplex. This was my first time there, but I had been sufficiently warned about the quality of the theatre viz-a-viz the ticket charges. It was rip-off for the money that we paid. The best part, was that it has a stall and balconey seating but my husband was unaware of the same and he just asked for 2 tickets and got stall tickets. The seats had cushions on them as an after thought, and the acoustics were a little questionable. While we were watching an edge-of-seat scene in our movie, we could hear the 'Chak De' song play in the next audi !! All in all, it was an okay sort of theatre, and should have been priced accordingly. But given the demand and supply equations in Bangalore, everything works.

I have a lot of photographs online, some of them have been scanned from the time when digital cameras weren't everywhere and I like to look at them at times. It brings back old memories. And then, Yahoo decided to shut shop and move everyone to Flickr. I had always seen Flickr as a professional photographer's companion. My cousin has a lot of world class pictures there and she gets great comments from the whole community. When I was given the option to move to Flickr, I thought why not ? But of course, I didn't read the fine print and missed out on the fact that at the end of three months, I would either have to buy the pro membership, or all but the latest 200 of my pictures would be visible. The others would be hidden, for all practical purposes lost. I didn't want to invest $25 per year for hosting and sharing my pictures online. So I looked around the web. Besides a lot of disgruntled bloggers/yahoo users, I also found this really cool tool , Migratr , which allows ...

Watched the program on National Geographic about the IC 814 hijacking. It was a little too dramatacized and the passenger's angle was totally missing. But for 2-3 passengers, they totally reported the whole episode from the Captain Devi Sharan's point of view. Nothing wrong with that, but only that it was just a very small view of the whole episode. I am sure they must have a lot of footage of the time when the plane was in Kandhahar, Afghanistan, but they didn't show much of that. It also reminded me of my own article, which I had written when I had just come back from the ill-fated trip. The whole office was abuzz with the news that a colleague had been on board the plane and the first day I came back to work I was bombarded with questions and more questions. It was so bad that I had lost my voice by the end of the day. So I decided to write the whole thing down and send it to my friends in office. That article got forwarded around quite a bit, and finally found a place ...

Just to inaugrate my blog. We have just moved to Bangalore from Noida, and the roller-coaster ride called 'Bangalore' has just started. To start with the good things, the weather is excellent, my daughter has settled in school and has just started her school bus from today. I am proud of her and they way she has adjusted. And that brings us to the woes.. the traffic. It is horrible, and I don't even want to start on this one. The cost of living is much higher. In the same salary that we had in Noida, we are now poorer after just paying the monthly rent, the driver, the maid and doing our groceries. But that is the price you pay to stay in the most happening city in India. More later..