Perpetually Perplexed

We Indians are family oriented people. At least we used to be. But how do our TVs show families? Do these families really represent us? Let us talk about some of these soaps shown in Start Plus or Zee TV. The Gujarati families in which there will be a very stern mother in law whom everybody respects and fears, the benevolent father in law who does not have much say in anything, lot of sons and daughters in law, the small and big tussles between them. And the best part is the way they adorn themselves with jewels and sarees, in each and every scene. And kannada soaps, I see only one. That is mukta, mukta (the next sequel will be called mukta mukta mukta. When will we be mukta from them?) There are many families here. The middle class family of Nivedita's parents, the almost aristocratic family of Devanad and now the family of Binga. Binga the villian's daughter is in love with the almost saint's son. But does not express it and agrees to marry her father's friend

We are country of 1 billion people. We have tens of thousands of police personnel (my guess). We have a huge military force as well. We call ourselves emerging super power. Yet we are not able to provide protection for one man who wants to visit our country for  a week.

I had earlier posted about how the computer is not listening to me. Well, programs would freeze, web sites won't open, processes won't get killed. I thought I would remove some of the unnecessary programs. Uninstall did not work. I brought another antivirus McCafe this time and tried installing it. That won't get installed. Now is the time to take stern actions, because any ways,this system is all screwed up. There is not much to lose I thought. I started exploring the hard disks and deleting all the files I did not like - either the names or the descriptions or the dates of creation. Not much damage happened. Computer was still working. That gave me courage. I went to registry editor. After saving the current registry setting I tried modifying registry entries. Again, not much problem. But there was no benefit either. I had all the above mentioned problems. I got bolder. I plunged into windows/system32 folder and started removing the dll files. Now the magic began

Religions and religious leaders are very powerful. They are very good in changing the opinion of the people and convincing people. (Look at the way the poor writers were sent packing from JLF. Felt really ashamed of calling myself an Indian) Don't you think they can and should use it to help mankind? One field where they can help is controlling is religious fundamentalism. Like we teach our children that it is wrong to fight with other children. Argue but no hurting each other. Look at another analogy here. We may have lot of differences with our neighbors. We may not like the way they walk, they eat or even they breathe. But what do we do? We laugh at them when we are sure they can not hear us. But when we meet them face to face, we do not show any of these feelings. We bring out our best how are you's and talk about other stuff. We do this because we want to be good neighbors. If we can be good neighbors, we can even be good religious people, isn't it? We don't

The omnipotent - one and only - God , is unable to protect himself? Did he ask his strong supporters to carry out this task for him? To elaborate did he say " See children, I am getting slightly aged. And tired. What with you children bickering all the time and finding some reason or the other to hurt each other. And I will also not be able to feed you for much longer what with you greedily putting some stony thing everywhere. And on top of all this, some of these smart children of mine are making fun of me, my appearance, my books etc.. I can not protect my own reputation and dignity. So please help me and punish these people. "? Did he say this? My dear believers of all religions?

Well, I hadn't laughed like this for a long time. This book "The picnic and such like pandemonium"  is simply hilarious Over zealous mother plans for a cruise on a Greek ship. They are welcomed by purser who is brimming with confidence and strong garlic smell. They go to the bar and Larry asks for largest glass of ouzo. The happy waiter asks if he wants ice. When answered in affirmation he says they do not have ice. When Larry asks water with drink, he brings it. Larry spits it after taking a single gulp. Waiter has added hot water to the drink. He explains as they have only hot water in the bar, he put it in the drink. Larry did not expect it, not even from a Greek. Mother comes to the bar, not in search of ouzo (with hot water ??), but telling that Margo (her daughter ) is stuck in the lavatory.  They all rush there and Leslie brings a steward. Steward manages to open the stuck door and says "Ladies never understand how to close this door" and to demonstr

The picnic and such like pandemonium by Gerald Durrell is an  autobiographical collection of funny stories. Larry does not like London. He is coming there to visit his family after many years. He is scared that he may catch cold as he sees everyone is sneezing around. But his mother being mother arranges a picnic for him with her daughter and son in law taking his rolls. This car has spent more time dismantled than in one piece because the owner is an engineer and engineers like to take everything apart. Along the way Larry keeps grumbling that his son in law is going too fast. Then they sit on the beach and start eating. Mother wants to lean on some rock. But the place is having strong smell of sea weed. But later they realize that the rock they are leaning is not a rock but the carcass of a large horse. And hence the strong odor In the afternoon it starts raining and they walk to the car completely wet. And the roof of the car was not closed, so they have to sit in the water

Is this dahlia flower which blooms in rainy season worth sixty rupees? (Normally the plants I buy will either wither away or just be in skeletal state. The flower which was there when I bought will be the only flower in their life time)

I was watching live program about how the sun light falls on the idol of cave temple, Gavi Gangadhareshwara temple in Bangalore. The temple is a architectural wonder in that way. Only on Sankranti festival, the sun light falls on the idol of the temple.You can get more info here Anyways, the running commentaries can get little bit tedious, more so if the commentator is slightly amateur. I started thinking, the sun does not need architectural, astronimal wonder. He can come anywhere, anyhow. Look at this photo of our sitting room whose windows are not facing east.

If you have some persistent problem in the kitchen, what should you do? A problem such as curd not getting set or pulses or dal not getting cooked soft etc. Call aayi - "aaaaayi, see my dal is not getting cooked everyday. And these people blame me. sob, sob, sob. ". See you call your 24X7 helpline which is called aayi, amma, mom, ma, etc (not maaji - keep that in mind.). You will get immediate solution preceded by genuine how are you. You may have to put up with little bit of (?) patronizing, some amount of nagging etc.  If your aayi  is not within phone shot (like ear shot) viz she is in a place where there is no network connection (god bless her soul) then you have to follow the following steps   Blame spouse - for he bought inferior quality tur dal   Blame spouse - he is the one who is not repairing the water filter, which is not able to convert hard water to soft water   Blame spouse - because he fought with you so much in the morning that you were busy th

When I pester my husband to buy me something very expensive he retorts " You have your savings, why don't you buy with your own money"? Yes, why can't our sarakara tell the same thing to legislators. If they want ipad. ipad, iphone or mac or even a super computer, why don't they buy these things with their own money? Why should tax payers' money go for their gadgets? News : Karnataka MLAs asking for ipad3(??) 

First things which comes to my mind is the program ui component label which is displayed in a page. Easy to use but can not not type in it. Second type of label is what you stuck to what looked like thousands of books of your kids and wrote their names on it. But you did not mind it so much when compared to putting cover to the said books before. But the third label is really interesting. It is user (abuser) friendly unlike the previous two. Used mostly by politicians of all hues to describe other politicians and political parties and even non-politicians. Mayawati uses the label Anti dalit to describe Election commission. BJP labels congress dynastic, corrupt   and so many other things. Congress labels BJP communal. They both call Anna team non-parlimentary ( but is that a gaali label?) Next to politicians, women are users of labels. They label their spouses uncaring, unloving, selfish and I am naming only nameable ones. Then they label in laws (I forgot. you ladies fill in t

This book by Kiran Desai has started very very interestingly though not very simple. Kiran Desai is the daughter of author Anita Desai. This book is her first book. The book is about a young man Sampath whose mother was perpetually hungry when she was pregnant and it was the worst and driest summer. And his birth coincides with the first rain and also arrival of drought relief in their town Shakot by Sweden red cross. Now he is a young man working in post office, ill treated by all, without much ambition and without any aim in life.But he  becomes the center of attraction for the entire town when he sits on a guava tree and declines to come down. But as my reading is progressing, I can only rate it as 3.5 stars.

The generation y is goal oriented, disciplined, self motivated. But is it really empathetic? Have you ever tried explaining your problems to your kids or tried telling them what they are asking is not possible because such and such difficulty is there? The standard response is "Do I care?". You feel hurt. You feel your kids are so much selfish. And you feel helpless in front of it. Is this selfishness and self centeredness, the magnification of our selfishness? Did our kids learn from watching us? May be. We have seen our parents and grand parents caring for the entire extended family. But for us, definition of family has shrunken to include only us, our spouses and our kids. We never bothered much about our uncle or our mother's third cousin. Is it one of the reasons for extreme self centeredness in our children? Or the way we provide them with easy life without any responsibilities is making them unsympathetic towards others?  Sometimes we might have even enco

For once I want to share my woes with you (one of infinite). My computer keeps rebooting, my programs just get stuck and some of the programs do not open. I have installed Norton antivirus. Best part is when I observe in process explorer, I am seeing 2 processes of Norton antivirus. I start working on eclipse for my android code and lo I am stuck. Then I spend hours together finding out the error. And that is the end of my android code for the day. And the next day, the story repeats. I thought I will leave android and start using Qt for c++ application. But now the moment I start qt creator, my computer reboots. So what do I do? I blog. I delicious (is that not a verb?). Then I run back to watching scrubs, parenthood and **&*& my father says(or something like that) on zee cafe.

You are hearing lot of furore regarding Made snana where the devotees roll over the eaten food of Brahmins, believing that this will  cure their skin diseases. I believe that the practice is heinous and should be banned. But in our community of havyaka brahmins there was another practice. A woman should eat only after her husband has eaten the food. That is okay. But the next part is, she should eat in the same plate or plantain leaf  of her spouse - to put it in kannada "enjalu bale". Why? I tried questioning people. I did not get proper answer. I agree that a woman must respect her husband (and it is better if the respect is mutual). But that does not mean she should demean herself to such an extent. Demeaning reminds of another practice. During the marriage ritual, the bride is supposed to wash the feet of groom and drink that water. I can see my mother in law rolling her eyes, from sky. And I may offend many other people who believe in rituals and believe in not qu

This diya made from orange rind looks good and easy even for beginers. Cut the orange into half and remove the fruit and add some oil and cotton wick. Your light is ready. The instructable article told that you can light the center of the fruit, but anyway you can make small wick from cotton. You can even place the other half of the fruit by cutting a large hole in the center on the top as shown below

ನಿನಗದೇ ಲಭ್ಯ ಯಾರಿಗೂ ಬೇಡದ ಹಳೆಯ ಹರಕಲು ಅರ್ಧ ಅಂಗಿ ತೇಪೆ ಹಾಕಿದಂತೆಲ್ಲ ಹರಿಯುವ ಅರ್ಧ ಅಂಗಿ

Note to self : Only way to be happy is doing something creative. But many days it will not be possible. Or,   many days our wont power wins rather than will power? Indian woman : What Indian man expects She should be good looking. But she should not be too proud. She should be smart enough to manage the house and the family, but not argue with in laws. She should be efficient in house hold chores. She should work in an office and bring a big fat salary and give it to in laws. But that should not be her excuse for not cooking and cleaning as soon as she enters the house in the evening. She should treat her in laws and the entire extended family of her husband as her own family, but not entertain her family much. She should sing beautifully, but never outside the house. She should think that her major and only work is cooking and cleaning.

The keyboard I had uploaded  earlier may have given an error saying that qtcore4.dll was not found. Now I built Qt all over again with static option and now the app will run without any other dll files. So feel free to download and use it  Link  kannada keyboard