You don't meet people by accident ..

Has it happened with you , that meeting someone for the first time, suddenly reminded of someone, you had met 20-25 years back, whom you had met only once or twice, and you realize how fortunate you were to have met them then and how you wish  now that you could meet more people like them when you are much wiser (hopefully ;)) . 

Ponytail Partha , I met him in year 1998 or 1999 at the badminton courts of Chinnaswamy stadium Bangalore on a weekend along with some of my other Wipro badminton enthusiast. Most of us were pretty regular and would ensure that at least 4 of us are there to occupy the court - Vinay Kamath, Deepak Embar, Prabin Deka were the guys who were pretty regular, and I knew them well from office. There were few others not so regular Sanjay, Mahesh but I knew them. Partha, was also in not so regular people and I didn't know him, and he did look like a senior as in experience and age 

Most of us were in our early 20s and in the range of 1- 4 yrs. of work experience, Deepak was the most senior around 4 yrs. of experience who knew people or rather was aware of people in positions in Wipro. So the day Partha came to play, there were not enough guys to play doubles. Partha did warm up sessions with Deepak and even though much senior in age, he had a pretty decent ponytail and made the younger guy sweat! and he had a ponytail too which none of the youngster had! absolutely impressive :) After playing singles he wanted to play doubles, but only 3 guys were there, so he asked me to join him.  I got little conscious (i did play pretty ok, but absolutely no good to play with him) and was not sure, but he asked me to join him.  What a game we played; he was so encouraging and supportive and - talking, shouting and laughing. 

It was after he left the court, I tried to figure out who Partha was, and Deepak filled in the information saying that Partha - 'N S Parthasarthy' was GM in Wipro (he was in Wipro for around 15 years) and had recently (1998/99) left and started a new company along with few other Wipro colleagues Ashok Soota and Subrata Bagchi - 'Mindtree'. I was wowed! That was my first time in life meeting and interacting with a Big Shot so close and personal.  His sportsmanship showed, what a well-grounded and rounded overall person he was, and I have no doubt he still is.

I never tried to keep connect with or follow Partha all these years and was surprised that after all these years, I remembered him, I remembered him when I met another so-called Bigshot recently and had not so great interaction -- that's when I remembered Partha.

I never realized how some people have influenced me in making my opinion about things in general and at times on specific matter and that's when it dawns that "You don't meet people accidently, they are meant to cross our path for a reason "

Mummy, what exactly are zombies ?

Mummy, what exactly are zombies ?

Eh Zombies !! when your teenager child gets curious about Zombies and is wondering about the possibilities of existence of Zombies - I was not sure what should I answer 😕 The fact is i have fairly enjoyed some dark humor Zombie movies (thanks to movies like Train to Busan and The Odd Family - Zombie on sale) and am sure my children were curious about Zombie after watching some animation or movie . 

So the first answer I gave like you have all the superhero characters (Antman, Spiderman, Ironman, Wonder Women etc etc zombie is also a fiction).

But mummy - Zombies are suppose to be dead people right ? - Yea Right Dead people .

So can dead people actually come back to life and start walking ? 

Well there are times you wish you could give a convincing answer. All this conversation was happening in our kitchen and it was fun talk , not serious discussion -- I have realised the best way to bond with your children is through such conversations on random topics 😊 Yea so coming back to Zombies, so I asked my daughter if she remembers "Lazarus" story (yea yea the guy who was raised from dead by Jesus) - Of course I know the story - came the answer - So, I asked - what do you think Lazarus was when he actually got raised from his tomb with all the bandage around him ? "Zombie !!!" there you got the answer 😀 and I tried walking like a zombie . We still smile when ever we hear the reading on Lazarus in church and look at each other and try not to laugh 😉

I am not sure what happened to Lazarus after he was risen from dead , hope his rotten body got healed. wonder if he could get back to his normal life , did people accept him as a normal person or was he a .... ? Any thoughts ?  

Snacks time

In this times of corona when the whole family is at home 24/7 - one constant questions most of the mothers face atleast 4- 10 times a day is - 'Aaj khanne mein kya hai' and 'Mummy snacks mein kya hai ' (what's there for Breakfast/lunch/dinner today or what's there for snacks).

Now that going out in general is so limited and going out with family for dinner is almost ruled out - its a big task to keep the meals interesting everyday, and even more difficult is to manage the snacks part . Cookies, cake, biscuits, chips and most sort after - fried items are the fast moving things at home. 

So after being fed up with buying same things again and again - and also making few quick snacks at home - this week i decided to make Kerala special "banana chips" at home. Though its very simple and easy snack to make , but somehow I feel its too much of hassle making it. So this week saw good 'Nendraka' the plantain used in Kerala for making chips for very reasonable rate in the local market, I just bought it . 

Before the Tea time started frying and after couple of rounds of frying asked Esther (my daughter) to help me with frying. Naturally we both started munching also while frying - me scolding her in between for not doing things properly and she complaining that I don't have patience :) End of the frying we sat down with our tea and chips, and after a while my daughter said - 'Mummy you should make chips for us when you grow old"  

Owners Pride

I decided to quit Social media almost 2 years back
Someone who had got into it relatively late in life and after being very active for 5-6 yr deciding to quit was not something sudden.It was couple of months before the General Election in 2019 that I firmly decided to quit Facebook as in delete my account.I had deactivated my account couple of times for few months and decided that i will delete my account this time.The reason was seeing too much of Polarised opinion of people whom i thought i knew well, was painful and based on the kind of posts/ forwards people put on facebook and whatsapp i decided to unfriend people from my friends list.At any point of time i did not have more that 350 friends in any social media platform. which I feel is very few numbers taking into consideration that i have changed 3 schools and studied in 1 college for 5 yrs , and worked in more than 10 companies, moved around a lot within India and worked for a little while in couple of countries. I thought i knew atleast the basics of people in my friends list pretty well. But I was mistaken......

With information on your fingertips , one seems to know everything about other people and one also seems to know everything about what one believes. And anything one doesn't belive in, does not exist or is wrong. what ever one does is justifiable there is no absolute right or wrong - everything is circumstantial, everything is about - from which point of view you look at it. While growing up we were always reminded that we need to be "simple and humble", I cant say the same now. Today its all about how much you can show off and how much you can talk confidently. If you have it you flaunt it and there is nothing wrong in doing so, its afterall your own thing/money/beauty/skill.And then you have so many platforms to show it to the whole world , whats wrong in doing that ? So true ... but then why is it I still feel that its all wrong ... Is it jealousy, envy ? or is it disgust ? Recent example viral video was that of the Baby Gender announcement Party in Dubai ... Really ?

Learning Deutsch

I always wanted to learn a foreign language – though was not sure which one!
20- 22 yrs back while working in Wipro, it was French that some of my friends/colleagues were learning in Bangalore – That time I was doing my MS and didn’t have the time to pursue French.

Then as time passed, I got a chance to go to the Czech Republic for a few months. There I picked up a few basic phrases in Czech and there I got to meet a colleague in the Prague office who was from Israel and who had a keen interest to teach Hebrew.
David Levy had been working in Prague with LogicaCMG for a couple of years. While having lunch in a Pub with David and talking about our families – I mentioned that I have a daughter - ‘Esther’ and David was so happy to hear that name saying that’s a Jewish name and that he is surprised that Indian people have Jewish names!

That’s when I asked him if he will teach me Hebrew – knowing I will be there only for 1 month or 2. He was more than delighted and started giving me basic lessons in Hebrew. The focus was on the basic alphabets (reading writing) and simple words – and I did enjoy and picked up Hebrew.
After one month I moved from Prague to Brno, and he had given me enough worksheets to practice the basics for 1-2 months. After coming back to Bangalore, I could never take out time to pursue further, also note that in 2005-6 time period online class or material was not too common (especially for Hebrew) eventually I forgot the little Hebrew I had learnt. Thanks to David – till recently I had most of the worksheets he had given me.

As time passed, like people say life happens and we moved to Trivandrum, got busy settling to a new place, Ezekiel happened and learning a new language was not in priority list – Even though I knew Trivandrum has Alliance Francaise for Learning French and one of my colleague who could talk very fluent, Russian cultural center for Learning Russian and Goethe Zentrum for learning Deutsch I wasn’t sure if I could commit seriously on learning a language. And then a couple of years back Esther came home telling that in School they are planning to start German Language classes as Hobby study after school hours, but she never expected that we will ask her to enroll and thus started her learning Deutsch in class 7. Almost 3 yrs later after Esther started learning Deutsch, I decided to learn Deutsch and enrolled for the Level 1 course in Goethe Zentrum.

Class of 25 all fresh graduates (21-22 yr. old) 4 Hrs. of daily class and 5 days a week!!
And I was the only ‘Oldie’ in the class trying to fit in among youngsters J And probably after my 10th I would not have studied as hard as while learning Deutsch, learning a new language this late in life is not an easy task but it’s worth taking the challenge – Have enjoyed the classroom session – the Trainers/Faculty were brilliant all from a diverse background as in professionally (Doctors, IT professional, Teachers, Deutsch Scholars ) are fantastic Deutsch Teachers – very interactive classes, hands-on from day 1 – lots of games to use the language and lots of young friends. Did study till level 2 and decided to take a break starting Level 3, now not sure when I would get back for B1 classes but at least I did learn a basic level of Deutsch /German and I can practice it with my daughter ;) Gokul, Jithu, Anzy  - study partners, and made lots of new acquaintances and for a lifetime ! more about the Deutsch Class adventures in some other post