My Life, A Cocktail

I am not the gadget types. Being in San Francisco, I am still surviving with a non-smartphone. I believe that’s proof enough. The ebook readers (nook and kindle) though have me impressed quite a bit. To have a book available at the click of a button, to be able to choose which book you would like to read at any given time and to turn pages electronically with a touch seems pretty cool to me. With the holiday sales on, even the prices are no excuse. On the other hand, there is indescribable joy in passing through the aisles of Barnes and Noble, eyeing each book closely and picking out the ones to read first chapters of. The sifting of the picked books into categories: Not my kind, buying now and buying later. The dating of books with a signature to open years later and marvel at. The folding of page ends and the stacking away on reading as an accomplishment. Do authors get royalty for ebook downloads? I think I am just going to stick to my real books. Wat say?

Its a beautiful rainy morning in San Francisco. The kind that leaves tiny glistening drops on your hair. The kind that has high rises disappear midway. The kind when all you want to do is sit across the window of a moving train, sip milk tea and watch the raindrops slash across the glass and drop off, like transparent fireworks.

Lag ja gale… Ki phir ye haseen raat ho na ho Shayad phir is janam main mulaqat ho na ho Hum ko mili hai aaj yeh ghadiyaan naseeb se Jee bharke dekh leejiye humko kareeb se Phir aapke naseeb main yeh raat ho na ho… Now and then, you are forced to leave people behind. Circumstance is to blame each time. And every now and then, when I listen to this song, it reminds me of all those people and the last few moments I spent with them. Each time a pang of mixed feelings go through me. That’s the reason I remember to hug people when I leave them. Some that I absolutely can’t live without, I hug twice :-) Beautiful song…

You probably have heard me say this more than once, “Silicon valley is THE place to be”. And of course, I am talking about IT. It’s amazing how much happening this place actually is. I know most people outside the city mostly like to deny it. But really, you have to be here to know it! Some west coast analogies: Like Vegas is to Sin Like Disney is to Magic Like LA is to Showbiz Silicon Valley is to IT You can pretty much get drunk on IT out here. Absolutely overwhelming. It’s no wonder I do a two hour commute one way every day to get here.

It’s amazing how much owning a property means to any average Indian. Whether it’s for growing old in, or raising a family, or purely for investment sake, it's considered an achievement. So here we are too. Our first home in the State of California. The process has been long, but fortunately we had good people around who knew exactly what they were doing. We had been looking at a lot of open houses and were on the verge of discouragement, when we found this house. It was perfect. The only house that actually met each and every single criterion we had in mind. The initial part of putting the offer and waiting for a response is nerve-racking. We had set our minds to this house, and so we ended up going back and forth with the sellers and finally settling down on a “Na tera Na mera” price. After that, it was mostly reading and signing documents, and then more reading and signing. After a while, the reading stopped, while the signing continued. Last week, we got the keys. It feels excit...

Gandhiji says in his autobiography, that he regards bad handwriting as a mark of imperfect education. Most of us have our stories of how our handwritings came to be. Painful accounts of unrelenting teachers looking down at our notebooks as we filled cursive writing books with what looked like flies squashed in flight. Mine is similar too. I had the worst handwriting in the family. And then, one fine day, my mom did the unthinkable, she compared my handwriting to a friend’s and stated aloud how good hers was. That was the last straw. Luckily for me I had realized, good handwriting comes from good observation. I would stare at other classmates’ notebooks to see how they dotted their i’s and curved their g’s. And sure enough, I had started writing beautifully. A lot of you whose moms didn’t do the unthinkable, perhaps never got a similar chance. Probably you think handwriting doesn’t even matter. In this age of emails, messengers and computer fonts, who writes with pen and paper anyways. ...

You would have read countless articles on Vegetarianism and its endorsements. Being a vegetarian myself, writing about non-vegetarianism might seem quite lame. Unfortunately, that does not stop me from writing this. I grew up in a vegetarian Brahmin Iyer (and all the caste goodness that comes with it) family. Not one of my ancestors probably for generations, had eaten meat. Enter boyfriend(was)/hubby(now). A pure non-vegetarian. Not just any ordinary non-vegetarian, but a non-vegetarian that enjoys every bite of meat. Oh, the joy of watching him eat! It seems strange to most people when I tell them my kids will grow up as non-vegetarians. Yes, they will. I probably would not be able to cook it for them (although, I am determined to try my best on that front), but hubby's cooking skills and restaurants I hope will bridge that gap. I want my kids to explore the world they are in, as much as possible. And food is one of the most enjoyable ways to do just that.