Perpetually Perplexed

Tip : If you have a lot of oil left out from frying (for a party, a puja etc), store it in a pet bottle and use it for lighting diyas in front of God.    In the initial days of my friendship with net, I used to search for kitchen tips and save them in a file !!! No, even then I wasn't a kitchen  person. May be lack of awareness was the reason. I did not know that there are million better ways, to kill time on   use  net.     The second part of the title, is because mom (may be even my spouse) would be outraged. Is it not sacrilageous to use used oil for God!! Won't he(God),  be unhappy with me?     But my opinion is, no he will not be. First of all, he won't be bothered. In fact he will be glad that, atleast I did light some diyas for him. And even if he is worried , I can convince him, that this way he can contribute a little bit to recycling and Green revolution. If still he is not happy, I can tell him, no I was kidding. This is a new blackish, oil with a new technol

     Are we a democracy? Not at all. We are goondacracy.   Look what happened to Yeshawant sonawane in Manmad.     http://www.ndtv.com/article/india/officer-burnt-alive-in-maharashtra-during-raids-81496?asid=ce54304b    If there is one honest officer, who goes after goondas, this is how his end comes. What is government going to do about it? Nothing except for some eyewash. Why do we need a government which can not protect good people, but instead always trying to save its own skin?    Leave government, what are we, citizens going to do about it? Nothing. We have better things to do like  cricket/ daily soaps.     Paritranaya sadhoonam, vinashaya cha dushkratam ..... Where are you, o proector of good people?  27th   When I read the news again, I learnt that Yeshawant had caught hold Popat shinde and so Shinde has 60% burns. Am I not consoled!! And todays babus are on strike protesting against this gruesome murder. One more consolation.    

 Of  late my reading has got restricted to sub-titles of HBO movies and star world serials. Why? aren't they in English, you may wonder. Yes they are in English, but ahmmerikan eenglish, which we puvar Indians can not grasp. So I read the sub-titles.  You may say I will understand their pronounciation once I get used to it,. No, I don't think so     .So reading this book was like rain on a sunny day.      I like to read humour. (so that I can momentarily forget all the woes of my life :-( ) But I do not see many humorous books around. How long can you read Wodehouse. I have been reading them like hundred years. And I read,  re-read, re-re-re-read "Three men in a boat" million times. So most of the times, I console myself with ppj from the net. (Well I did like Saki's books)    So I was so overwhelmed with joy when I found this book Don comillo and the prodigal son . It is hilarious. The story is about a priest and his communist mayor opponent at the time of co

       I really don't think, we citizens of Karnataka have fallen to such low levels. If we are at fault, we may not accept it, we may try to escape from consequences. But we will not cause others to suffer.    This government is doing exactly that. OK, OK, the cm may not be at fault. There are other ways of proving that than calling  a bandh, right? Go prove it legally. Why are you making us suffer?     One more thought. If someone else calls bandh, government is there to protect the citizens. If government calls the bandh, who will protect us?

     Was seeing  Hindi film"Badmash Company". The way hero and his friends want to earn money by hook or by crook, is bad. They want to earn money and they are not bothered about the method, even if they have to cheat someone . Initially they start with cheating the customs and getting Reebok shoes without paying any custom duty for it. Then they move on to actually cheating a person in USA.       Does generation Y think that means are not important at all but only end which counts? They are brought up in materialistic world and they have many needs, quite a lot in fact. And for that they want money and they don't bother even if they have cheat someone. Why do they not have  many ethics? In their chase of success, do they feel it is alright to put another person in lot of trouble?        Once I had read somewhere that children do not listen but they see. Do they see this callousness and greed in us? Are we responsible for their wrong attitude? Did we not bring up our c

 What do we do when we see something beautiful. We rush to our cameras, mobiles so that we can capture it. Can we really capture such things? Can we capture the complete beauty of setting sun which decorates the entire sky with beautiful colors? Can we really capture the innocent smile of  a baby?    OK visual pictures we can to some extent try to put it in our cameras. But what about the happiness we feel when we look at these things? Can we capture that ? Or can we capture the devine fragrance of a jasmine flower? Can we somehow hold that cool breeze which kisses our faces?     We can only experience these gifts God is giving us. May be next time in such occasions instead of running to our cameras, we pause and accept these with grace. Note: What happened, change from Atheist to devout person? God help this confused little lady!

I was watching an English film. The priest says " By the power vested in me by the almighty, I declare you husband and wife." I got this little doubt. When and how does the almighty vest this power upon the priests? Does he take an avataar (Like our Hindu Gods) and give the power to priest to marry the mortals because it is below his (gods) dignity to do such menial task. Or does the priest tell Him " Now you are going to give me various powers like marrying people  etc. (Hey, I don't know anymore!)  etc. If you say aye, keep mum. If nay is your answer, come out from wherever you are hiding and confront me tell me so. And obviously the God does not come, and hence the conclusion !!  Well my intention is not to insult the religious feelings of anybody. In fact hindu marriage rituals are even more weird. But good thing is we don't understand a single word the priest says, as priest tells them in what is supposed to be Sankrit language.

Yesterday was a picnic day. We went to Somanathapura near T.Narasipura. The temple there is good. But what I found blog-worthy was a poster on the back of a van.    ಮಕ್ಕಳಿದ್ದಾರೆ , ಎಚ್ಚರಿಕೆ   ( Be careful, Childern around) Well of course it is a school van ! I do pity the driver.

I have started reading Room of one's own by Virginia Woolf. I remember vaguely we had one of her articles in puc (11th standard). So far its style is fabulous. I haven't seen any feminism it is supposed to represent.     But I do agree with the basic idea. A person who is jailed within the four walls of kitchen can not write anything substantial. (You know I am not talking about myself.) But things have improved a lot for women since she wrote that book. Even in India. If a woman is in a nuclear family, she has entire house to herself, atleast when husband and children are out during daytime. But what does she write about? About how expensive the onions have become? About how lazy the maid servants are? Or about how the children nowadays don't study?    But again here internet comes to her rescue. She can read newspapers of any country. She can read books and write any thing and publish it. Thank you O God for providing us with Internet

   I planted a hibiscus plant in my garden. I chose a wrong timing. The chilly winter. But still the plant survived, looking like a skeleton, with all its leaves bending their heads.  Not a single new leaf.   One fine day I see something. There is bud in the plant. I am unable to beleive my eyes. How can a plant which is really struggling to survive give a bud. Then two days later, there was a flower. The plant even gave a pretty little flower to us even in its weakest time.    Can we ever learn a lesson from the so called in-animate things in life?    I know the title is very lame. Any suggestions ? 16th Sep 2013 Now two and half years later, the plant has grown into almost a tree and there are flowers everyday. Perseverance? 

  In earlier post I mentioned that Mom was our encyclopedia. We did not have the luxury of encyclopedias. Even the text books of school used to come as second hand. I would take books from my cousin (she was one year elder than me so she does not need these books any more) and she has taken these from my elder sister etc, etc. Very rarely we would buy text books. Note books would be bought of course. But the left out pages of previous years note books would be joined together and given to a book binder for making a rough note book.    Even when I came to Engineering in Bangalore, I used to visit the foot paths of Avenue Road in search of used Engineering text books. Try telling these stories to son, he will just shrug his shoulders and say that was my karma.