And the Oscar goes to...

A R Rahman !!!...and not one, but two...Totally thrilled..Really made my day....

Good things in strange packages

I watched this movie ‘Luck By Chance’ over the weekend…About a bunch of new actors waiting for their big break trying to spin the wheels of fate to their favor. The protagonist of the movie says - Success and failure are what you decide for urself. Its a matter of perception.
The way we play the cards that are dealt lets us see the situation in a different light…
I have been having a tough couple of weeks, mostly due to work. I have been looking for some changes for quite some time now and i just dont seem to be catchin up with lady luck. I have been feeling so stressed that i am not where i want to be.

Then my friend reminded me - Good things can come in strange packages. Just because it doesnt look right, doesnt mean its wrong.

I like to complain once in awhile. But at the end of it i think I am an incredibly lucky person. Blessed with friends who last a lifetime. Had my share of rough rides and tears through it, but have had some pleasant surprises around the corner. And things have come in for me when i least expect them and sometimes in the form i least expect them to take.
And now everytime i hold the oars and try to battle the tide, I should tell myself to let go. For the tide will turn around and float that strange little package towards me with something i love.

Each day comes bearing its own gifts. Untie the ribbons. ~Ruth Ann Schabacker

Slippery Slopes

When something can go wrong, it will....
B is super thorough and so he does the planning, and I am super impulsive - and i work on execution, hence we find the magical 'im'balance..We didnt need Murphy to make this worse....We went skiing this weekend and B spent almost an hour telling me and his kid sis H the nuances of skiing, the do's and more importantly the don’ts..Not to mention that he had ensured that we arm ourselves with every thing that the ski section had..I had the music and snack packs for the long drive...These days grocery bags come with nice padding - I say to myself...We load a household of stuff for our one day road-trip ...We are light packers - Thank you, but with us, you wont miss a thing ;) !!...
And then Murphy joined us .... We realized at an unholy hour of the morning that we did not buy the snow chains !!! Snow chains weren't really needed we learnt, but the highway trooper would send you back if u dint have it...
How many stores that open early on a Sunday in Southern California carry snow chains...Very few - we realized...Several GPS searches and stores later, we found a lone package waiting for us.
On reaching the ski resort, we saw that we had missed B's gloves. Damnn !!...He was full of remorse and guilt cursing himself as he parted with $40 for a new pair while his old ones were hiding in the in the food bag (remember the nice padding in the grocery bag) in the car. Next was our discovery that both Cingular and Verizon have poor signal strengths in that area. After a couple of hide and seeks, we were all set for skiing. B went his way to his slopes. He would take the advanced slopes, so we petty beginners would not have his company to guide us through our mis-steps !!. J We got to the beginner slopes just to find that H and B's ski's got exchanged and while B was trying to squeeze his big boot into his ...H was wondering if a latch broke off on her's ...While it was taking an hour for them to sort that out and get back on the slopes, I was now an expert at ..... falling !!! Just when I thought I got the hang of it and did a small cruise around in all my pride and style and was waiting for the thunderous applause in my head....BANG !!!!...a fellow desi boy rams me down, and we roll down the slopes all the way to the side fence in total bollywoodish style...except that this was hardly romantic...I had discovered a couple of extra muscles I had never known existed. Now the challenge of walking up the slope..It felt more like walking on a treadmill, it was sucking energy, but I wasn’t moving an inch. Worse still, fellow desi boy was holding me as his anchor.
A couple more hours, and we were exhausted as they closed off the slopes and B joins us after his complaints on how these silly beginners were hardly moving on his slopes. Cramps his style .. J. ...We moonwalk towards the equipment returns and am I glad to wear my sneakers back, felt like walking in the heavens. I never appreciated them so much.
B wants to know if I will do this again...I smile back, yes I will. In spite of all the aches and the confusions, I loved it

Its a love affair..

If Target looks red on a regular day with red and white color co-ordination on absolutely everything...how does it look right before Valentine's Day ....REDDEST !!
The store is stocked to the roof with roses, heart studded balloons, cute to cranky stuffed teddies all professing their love in cheesy to comic lines and enough chocolates to keep the dentists busy for the rest of the year.
The entire marketing and advertising community is in love !!...... No, its not just candies, roses and diamonds to send girls buckling on their knees.....Even the Food and Oil industry is in love.....How else do u celebrate this Valentines day with a 'healthy heart' :) ....And if you want to save a file today, you can buy one of those heart shaped flash drives with gem stones (?!?) stuck on them (OMG !!!)
If you are planning to stay at home to escape it all, beware, the hearts are barraging through the air waves and into ur TV sets creating the urgency for you to go out and prove to ur girl how much she means to you...all in the the hope that the frantic and extravagant spending would provide the much needed stimulus to 'jumpstart the economy'. Amidst this whole chaos, St Valentine seems to be missing the mention
Happy Valentines Day Everybody !!... :)
I don't understand why Cupid was chosen to represent Valentine's Day. When I think about romance, the last thing on my mind is a short, chubby toddler coming at me with a weapon - Anonymous :D

Remember When

January means overhauling and cleaning for me...I like to make a fresh start every new year...I always did it, as a kid, in undergrad and grad school days and now....It also means digging into some nostalgia ..looking into a box of keepsakes stowed away in the closet

Isn't it amazing the amount of value sentiment adds to something. I was looking at the cassette a dear friend gifted me for my birthday in my undergrad. It doesn't play now, I have pbly played it a zillion times to wear it out. I glanced at it while i recounted each memory that went with it. I dusted it and put it back where it was - in my treasure trove where I also found my first perfume bottle which Appa had got for me . Its an old small empty perfume bottle - one of those tiny hankie perfume sets. Different smells bring back memories of different periods and its uncanny that the brain has the capacity to relate to these and open up the floodgates of memories - a canvass of colors.

A cassette - Sixty Rupees

A perfume bottle - Thirty Rupees

The memories they bring - Priceless..

There are some things money cant buy...

Memory is a child walking along a seashore. You never can tell what small pebble it will pick up and store away among its treasured things. ~Pierce Harris, Atlanta Journal