Light of the Lamp

Hi,         In my earlier post    ' Lamp Lamp, burning bright-Happy 3rd Birthday ' , I put in the P.S (postscript) that I'll post a birthday gift to celebrate the 3 years of blogging. :) I delayed a little bit, but it is always said that 'better late than never'. Well, here is the gift.                   It is done with watercolor pencils. The image is a bit dull, and I'll post a brighter one soon!!!               HAPPY BIRTHDAY once again. Lots of  love, Deepa.

Hello,             Happy holidays to all of you.  Finally, the wait is over and most of us take time off to spend vacation with family and friends. When many parts  of our planet will be freezing with cold weather, places in South India generally has tolerable weather and folks enjoy the moderate winter before bracing up for the harsh summer days. I look forward for the winter days when there is festive mood in the air with the colours of Christmas. I listen to a lot of Christmas songs that is played in an online radio station.                                                 This day of the month marks 3 years of completion of my blog writing. I started to write in December 2010 by inaugurating with a simple post "Quote for thought" which contains        “Instead of thinking about what you're missing...

Hello,                 I vaguely remember having read somewhere that when a 100-year old woman was interviewed, what is one thing she had to say. She laughed and said, "at 100, I do not face any peer pressure."                           The moment a child is out of the womb, the one thing that constantly follows him/her is peer pressure. My baby's weight is only 2.5 kg, while her baby's weight is 3 kg. We will not say that it is peer pressure, but comparison. If a baby's weight falls within normal, there is no need to worry that it is underweight and weak. But when relatives or friends start telling about the weight to the new parents, it will set them thinking.                                 As per Wikipedia, peer pressure usually sets in during adolescent stage, when students feel pressure to p...

Dear friends,                          Hope all of you had fun during Diwali bursting lots of crackers and distributing sweets among your friends and relatives. Last year, during the time of Diwali, I posted an article titled 'Lighting the Lamp'(Go to the link  http://deepanagaraj.blogspot.in/2012/11/lighting-lamp.html )  which highlighted the tragedy at Sivakasi factory which involved more of onlookers than the workers in the factory. This year, there was a different kind of tragedy. Just three days before Diwali, a bus traveling from Bangalore to Hyderabad hit a divider at Mehaboob Nagar in the wee hours of morning killing about 45 passengers. Most of them were traveling to the hometown to celebrate Diwali with their families. According to the follow up investigation, reckless driving, faulty road and poor safety measures were responsible for the accident. The bus was also carrying passengers above the normal...

Hello readers,                         The other day, I was having breakfast of dosas with my parents. I love dosas. If  I go to a restaurant, especially the South Indian ones, the first thing that is tempting for me to order is always dosa. Masala dosa, plain dosa, ghee roast, paper roast, butter dosa, rava dosa, rava-masala dosa....the list is endless. Slurp.  But, one variety of dosa which is not in my favourites' list is wheat dosa. As a child I shied away from it as much as possible and these days I am trying to like it. :) My father usually makes batter for wheat dosa. He is very good at making dosas. As we were eating the wheat dosas, we were discussing that wheat dosas are something which people loved to detest. Even  Bhanumathi did not like wheat dosa.                                      Who is this Bhanuma...

Hi dear friends,                           It is that time of the year when the festival of nine days (Navarathri or Dasara) is celebrated in full swing. In southern India, ladies invite each other to view the sequential doll arrangements and gifts are exchanged along with snacks. Ladies and children are encouraged to sing the deity songs. In north, Dasara is celebrated with Dandiya  and Gaarba dances. Ravana effigies are burnt to celebrate the good over evil.                           Instead of writing about Navarathri festival and the traditions that are followed during this time, why have I chosen to write about a stinking topic? Let any number of festivals come and go, we cannot deny that our country has a dubious statistics of more than half of the population not having access to toilets and sanitation. It is a shameful joke that more Indians ha...

Hello friends,                          When this blog was started, I was not sure which path it will take. In the first few months, I touched on lots of social issues such as fight against corruption, Sabarimala Temple articles, Arab Spring, safety of women to name a few. I put few letters which were published in 'The Hindu'. Then there were few articles on my artworks like 'The humble obstructive tamarind seed', 'A rocky storky experience', 'Nature's Work of art-Coppersmith Barbet birds'. Some articles like Atheists or escapists, Two songs in Kalyani raga, Review of 2 old books, Why this Kolaveri, For a change....., do not come under any category. With the article 'Glimpses from my hometown visit', I started to write topics on travel off and on. I am sure I'll keep writing more travel articles if I visit places. What has been observed by me is that I have written about 30 posts in the last 2 years, but only 6 posts th...

Hello,               This article is for a change. Yes, a change from the travel articles, social issues, poems, book reviews, art & craft, et al. Phew, what a change!!! What is that change?? Is this about something totally out of our universe? No prizes for guessing. It is something about us only. Our change-expecting habit. Habits do become second nature when they are with us for long.                                                                                                        I do not know about people in other countries, but we Indians have this 'incorrigible' habit. Forget about shopping with credit or debit cards. There are many shops and establishments in our country th...

Friends,                 I hope you are all enjoying this cloudy, gloomy weather with rains in between and lots of steaming cups of tea, when time permits. As the continuation of the last travelogue article, this one mainly focuses on Munnar trip. I wanted to encompass all the details of our vacation trip in one, but found that it was becoming too lengthy. So, this one stands out from the rest :).                                   After having the complimentary breakfast at our hotel in Thekkady, we started with renewed vigor to explore Munnar. It is about 110 kms from Thekkady and we took NH 49. As we progressed, the road became narrow and winding, forcing us to go slow with caution. Munnar's altitude varies from 4,760 ft to 8,842 ft above sea level (the upper limit is close to the altitude of Mt. Everest). So, it was understandable that we got to see ...