Light of the Lamp

          Repeating the line from Elton John's 'Candle in the wind'- It seems to me you lived your life like a candle in the wind. Hi friends,                  For more than a month this space has been remaining idle and I keep searching for topics to write. It can be 'writer's block' or simply some other excuse. But now I am back again and not with happiness that I have found something to write, but with a heavy heart. September 19, 2014 will remain a sad day for me and other music lovers due to the sudden and untimely death of U Srinivas who was more recognized as Mandolin Srinivas. If chess is to Vishwanathan Anand, saxophone to Kadri Gopalnath, so was the western instrument Mandolin very unique to U Srinivas. It takes so much courage, commitment and will power to bring in something new and make it widely popular especially in the ocean of Carnatic music. Like guitar and violin (or fiddle), mandolin is a predo...

Hello,                  What is aimlessness? It is when you do not have any specific purpose in your life. Does all of us go through a phase when we feel what the purpose of our life is? I believe everyone of us do have that feeling when we think where our life is heading and how should we take it forward. Some of us will term it as 'midlife crisis'. Save for the poorest strata of the society who struggle to live each day, rest of us do go through this phase. The landmarks-when during our childhood we make lasting friendships during our school days, score high marks in the exams, win prizes in the competitions, get into professional courses, finish our college and land into dream jobs and get the taste of our 1st pay cheque, and ' if lucky', marry a person of our dreams, become a parent, and then see the same cycle repeated with our children. Majority of us do fall into this category, and if not, try extra hard so that we can 'fit in' the s...

In Copenhagen, there's a long-term commitment to creating a well-functioning pedestrian city where all forms of movement - pedestrian, bicycles, cars, public transportation - are accommodated with equal priority. Bjarke Ingels Hello friends,                             Yes, this time I want to write about the travails that a pedestrian faces when he chooses to walk on Indian roads. When is the last time that you walked to a nearby kirana shop and and purchased some miscellaneous items and walked back? Did you walk to school or college which is nearby to your house on a footpath or a pavement? Sounds old fashioned and impossible right? Am I talking about something that is a generation old? Walk and go to a shop or school? Who does that these days? Who goes to that shop walking these days? We go to a supermarket and buy groceries in a bulk or place the orders online to be delivered at our doorstep. Children ...

Hi friends,                  This time I do not have a particular topic in my mind to write. But I still feel like penning a few lines. It is said that writing acts as a catharsis to a troubled and a lonely mind.   My mind is troubled at times for multitude of reasons that may seem trivial to others. I am not a fan of the thing called loneliness, but it has been my 'companion' throughout my life.  I do not want to be a lonely animal but at times, this 'companion' helps me to introspect who I am, what I want to be, whether I would have been a more efficient person if I had not been limited by circumstances around me.  It is not that I grew up in pathetic surroundings struggling to live each day for the want of food or clothes. I have been well off since my childhood thanks to my dad's profession as an engineer. I did my schooling in a prestigious convent and later on in 'All Women's' Colleges.       But did th...

Hi pals,                I promised in my last article 'My inner reflections', that I will be back soon!! And of course, I wanted to be back sooner than now, but  when there are no deadlines set, anybody including myself will take one's own sweet time. I should have written this post  a little bit earlier, but there I go about this now.                                   May was the month of sweeping change in our political arena, the change that everybody was waiting to see and it favored Narendra Modi heavily in the form of anti-incumbency factor. NDA alliance (or BJP??) swept the congress-led UPA so heavily that they could not grab enough seats to form the opposition party. Even Rahul Gandhi won against Smrithi Irani in Amethi constituency by hair's breadth. The swearing-in ceremony was most watched as it was made more special with the attendance of ...

Hello,          We are in the middle of summer season and in lot of places the heat is felt. Even in Bangalore, the summer is getting hotter with each passing year. Talking about summer, this time is always synonymous with vacations, especially from schools before going to the next grade.                                  Alright,  I am not going to write about summer vacations, but about our visit to Mahabalipuram (near Chennai) during last month. We were in Chennai for a wedding recently and it has been my longstanding wish to go to Mahabalipuram. And of course, I did not want to miss that chance. This place is only 45 kms from Besant Nagar (Chennai) and can be easily finished as  a day trip. One thing you have to take into account is the scorching heat of summer. So take enough liquids with you.                   ...

Hello folks,                    16th of April every year makes me a year older, but as they say it is all in your mind how young or old you feel. This time I decided that I would make my day more special by showing off my 'selfie'ing.                                  For some time, I have been clicking on my own and posting the images in Facebook without realizing that I am doing selfies. The word selfie is a recent coinage and we won't find the meaning of it in the standard dictionaries. With the advent of smart phones, anybody finds it convenient to click their own images and instantly post in Social networking sites to envy their friends. The younger generation seems more confident in clicking 'selfies' and instantly posting them. The infamously famous selfie was clicked by Barrak Obama with British Prime Minister David Cameron and Vice Chancellor ...

 Hello everybody,                               With the elections round the corner, everybody's mantra is NaMo, RaGa(Rahul Gandhi) or A K(Arvind Kejriwal), depending on the choice of the alliance. While the voter turnout has remained same in the state of Kerala compared to the previous elections, the same has seen a rise in some states of North India.  Is it because of the entrance of  Aam Aadmi Party which vouches to fight the ever prevalent corruption or is it because of the NOTA (None Of The Above) option in the ballot papers? Though the NDA alliance is more likely to form the Government this time, we all want to know how much Aam Aadmi Party has made impact on the aam aadmi and the other two major parties. The phrase 'aam aadmi' will not be used by Congress and BJP as it has become the name of another party. I should follow lot of campaign meetings at various places and debates between vario...

Hi folks,                    Something is keeping me away from this beloved space. Writer's block? ;) ...About 1&1/2 months back, I posted that nostalgic article on terraces. After that, there is this period of lull for no particular reason. Of course, regular activities or pass times keep happening like browsing, playing games online. The other day, when I was sitting and browsing and relaxing, I heard this sound of  a bucket falling down. I jumped from my seat to go and check what I guessed. Yes, it was a monkey (Jai Anjaneya!!!) searching our trash can to find something to eat. The service area door was open and I immediately locked it. Otherwise, the bananas from our fruit basket would have vanished the next second. Yes, this is a monkey in our own building and not an image borrowed from google!!!                                  M...

Hello,            The word terrace itself makes me nostalgic. Terrace (of a house) has been or still is very important part of my life. The terrace of a house is the topmost open area where one wants to get away from the distractions of the house and enjoy the open air and also a place to introspect or think loudly and quietly. One may go to the terrace to mug up or revise the academic books for the forthcoming exams or whenever one wants to think of his/her lover, or when he/she is unhappy. One goes to the terrace to escape the daily irritations or distractions, but to find himself  'distracted' there also.                                   The earliest memories of terrace I have is one on top of my grandparents' building. During my annual school vacations, we used to go to my grandparents' house in Chennai. It is an old 3-storeyed building, the first of its kind b...

Hi,         Happy New Year, Pongal, and Sankranti  to all of you. By now, I have published more than just a handful of articles describing my travel experiences giving the readers the impression that I travel a lot. We travel to explore new places only once in a while, though my travel wishlist is endless. There were no school or college excursions during my childhood. We have traveled to very few places before my marriage. In my childhood days, we used to go to Chennai during school vacation to stay with my grand parents and other close relatives. I will write on my childhood memories separately. Coming back to the travel topic, I find that when most people are content taking a handful of family photos to publicize in their profile pages, we take photos which will cover lots of details of a location.                                              ...