Milestones

My last post was my 100th published post. I have a few that never made it to the blog land. Anyways, 100 is not a great number, not one I'm too proud of given that I have been doing this for long. But, it's still a milestone, right? And what do we do when we reach a milestone? We celebrate. Or we just mention it in one post and go on about our life.

One milestone that I'm actually celebrating is my recent switch to full manual mode on my DSLR - full as in full, including manual focus. I do not see myself using it very often, especially the manual focus, as I'm too slow with it. I'm just getting used to it but I never will be as fast as the auto focus. or could I? Having said that, it just gives me so many degrees of freedom. I love that!



Till this time, I thought ISO was useless. WHAT??


I had read in so many photography articles that manual mode is so liberating, it gives so much freedom, it gives so much better control, it makes you a better lover and all the time I used to think what a bunch of suckers! Ok maybe, I didn't read the last one. But then, who would do all those adjustments manually when the machine does it for you in one half-press?

I stand corrected. The manual mode does give you freedom - the frustrating movements of the lens when it's not able to focus on something or when it keeps focusing on something other than what you intend are now a thing of the past, the over bright or under-bright pictures are a thing of the past, the unending waits for the shutter to close are a thing of the past, the blur caused by the slow shutter speeds is a thing of the past. What I finally get is a satisfying picture and I can again tweak a setting, if I'm unhappy with the result. (With so many frustrations gone from your life, wouldn't you love better? Maybe I did read the better lover part then. Or maybe I'm saying it now. But it could happen!)




So summing it all up, I am happy.

I'm still taking baby steps with the manual mode. I hope to get better.

And while we are on milestones - It took me many many years but finally I found the guts (or should I say the cheek) to wear bright red nail paint. This makes me happy as well.


The book is the Bhagvad Gita and I have finished it in case you are wondering. Thankyou very much!

And in a few days, I'll cross another really BIG milestone. I'll cross Indian borders to go to Sri Lanka. It's not Europe and it can be mistaken for Chennai but what the hell, it's still 'foreign' land.

Take a step back

Life is what happens to us while we are busy making other plans.

Let me tell you a story.

Today morning was a beautiful morning. Perfect sun, perfect temperature. I left the main door open to enjoy the beautiful sky outside. Just then a wasp, a big bee, 5-6 times the size of a honeybee wandered inside my door. AAAARRRRRRGGGGHHHH!!

I was morbidly afraid of the 'beast'. I knew better than getting into her way and hid in my kitchen while the bee went into my bedroom. Obviously, she was looking for a way out of this prison of a place. I mean, she is a lady of the outdoors, clear skies and pretty flowers. The bedroom curtains were drawn but there is this small ventilator on the top of the windows which is covered with glass. She saw the light there and tried to escape from there.

She tried and tried and kept on trying, somehow thinking that the glass will give way somewhere. I empathized with her but more than that I wanted her to leave, so I opened the curtains so that she would see the light from the window and escape.

But, she didn't. She was right above the window but kept trying to get out of the ventilator. Struggling with the glass pane.And struggling. And struggling. She just could not see the open window.

Do you know where I'm going with this? The bee was so occupied with her struggle to get out of that small ventilator that she could not see that a whole big window is open right next to her. Ever wondered how many times we do that? As I stood there watching her, I thought about that. (And than I ran back to my kitchen)

Wouldn't it be good that ever once in a while we step back and look at the bigger picture? Maybe we are struggling for the wrong things in the wrong place.Who knows, a bigger door has been opened for us. How sad is it to know that when we are engaged in our futile escape from the small ventilator, an entire large window is waiting for us.

The update on the bee is that she was wise enough. She must have seen the window and she did escape after I don't know how long. I didn't dare to stay and look at her struggle lest she gets frustrated and charges at me, maybe transform into a monster, wrap me with her huge wings, take me to her den and slowly torture me to death with her family of poisonous wasps. Weird things happen.

Letting go of hurt

There is this blog that I read regularly. The girl is awesome. She has three adopted kids, lives on a farm (till recently) and loves corn fields and lonely trees in the middle of farms.





I read this on her blog.

Years and years (and years) ago now, kids were mean to me…and I allowed it
to shape every little thing about myself.
I’ll show them, I seem to say…as if
they’re still paying attention. As if they’re still sitting beside me in the
sixth grade.How horrible to find out everyone else has moved on.
...
Crying out for justice in a world that isn’t listening while at the same
time, turning a blind eye to the world that’s right in front of me seems a bit
counterproductive, no?"

Go read the entire post.





I could not NOT share. I have been there done that - carried hurts with me as if doing so was serving a purpose or my cursing the other person would hurt them back. I have become a little wiser to realize that everytime we recall a hurt, we are hurting ourselves again while the other person, for all we know, maybe partying in Spain. Just saying!

Green thumb baby!!

I grew this and ate this.



I am quite a farmer that way! I love gardening and that's what I do on lazy saturdays and sundays. Here in bangalore, it's not really work to grow anything. And I mean ANYTHING. The weather is great, the soil is perfect, the sun's perfect and the plants are really really cheap. I used to have plants in mumbai as well but I shelled out a lot more and worked a lot harder to maintain them. So, here it's all easy peasy lemon squeazy for me :)


This is not a tomato plant. Am just saying, just in case!

But I'd never grown vegetables before. This was my first attempt. I think I did pretty well. Organic pesticide free tomatoes. I also grew chillies or atleast I thought I was growing chillies till the plant flowered and I realized that that was also a tomato plant! What? I've done some mix-up definitely but I'm not complaining. I have lot of baby tomatoes waiting to turn big and red :)

Papa the great

He was here.



Gotta love those genes. I have so many of those. I realized as I grew up. And the older I get the more the realization that I am turning out to be like him.

A funny story. My grandmother that is my dad's mom was the daughter of the most feared man in all nearby villages. When she got married and was being brought to her husband's home in a 'palaki', some dacoits stopped her and her escorts. They threatened her to hand over her jewellery and money to them or they will kill her and stuff. Well, she being her father's daughter told them in no uncertain terms that she was the daughter of 'Yaadu' (short for Yaadram) and 'Bhakhtu' (short for Bakhtavari..God I love that name) and asked them to back off. The dacoits apologised and requested that she not mention this incident to her parents. True story.



Those genes came to my dad. How do I know? My dadi used to think that she was the prettiest woman in the village. Like she would make fun of other women who were not as good looking and call them names. She used to call my mom a hanger to hang clothes on and she used to call my mami, a broken cycle and so on. Wow. Some lady. That trait is there as it is in my dad. He is super proud of his looks. And he has a phd in giving names to people.

And talking of genes passing down generations, I may, just may, have those genes too. Some of them atleast. I'm not a name giver. Really. Promise.

Though I have a lot of the others. I, like my dad, would not like something but not say anything but keep getting irritated, then snap at the smallest totally unrelated thing. I, like my dad, will not ask you specifically to get me my medicines but totally expect you to do it and feel bad if you don't. I, like my dad, will sleep at night through most of the catastrophes of life (except a few, one or two maybe..the ones where we have to do something about the catastrophes). I, like my dad, am mostly unattached. I, like my dad, have very very rough palms. Like really rough. Sandpaper quality. Boys around me have softer hands and let me know that all the time. But what the hell! I, like my dad, am hardworking and hardwork shows on our palms. (Yes, that's how I defend rough palms.)

I could go on and on. The good thing is that I realize that I have some of his traits. Some traits that will not do me very good, like the non-expressive bit and I make very conscious efforts to change that. Atleast it's not like my sandpaper handshake that I can't do anything about!

Well, daddy dearest left yesterday (to go back home in mumbai) and that meant a trip to my favoritest place here. Now, I'm off to watch some star world and zee cafe which I had to give up for Barkha Dutt and Arnab Goswami.

I. love. the. airport.

My favorite place in Bangalore undoubtedly and without competition is the airport. It's unbelievable how much I love the place. I have an almost sentimental attachment with the place. I have hugged, cried, held friends, smiled, laughed, felt ecstatic, waited anxiously and watched with a sad heart as friends and loved ones left. It's as if buckets of all emotions were emptied in one place - their contents thrown out on the canvas of the arrival and departure gates. The place is magic.



The coffee at the airport? It's just normal cafe coffee day coffee but do i love it. Again because it's coffee loaded with all the goodness of all the emotions of picking up friends and seeing them after weeks or maybe months and just taking every bit of goodness in over a cup of coffee. The coffee allows the happiness to sink in and the feelings to settle. You know, get over the ecstasy of seeing people you love after a long time and get your adrenaline back to normal levels. You know the feeling, right? The coffee allows me to drink in the love, the warmth, the moment. Trust me, at any other given moment, I do not like CCD coffee. I'm a south indian that way. Filter coffee for me is what it is.



Do I sound weird? Maybe. But then I'm alone in this city and all my family and friends (barring a couple), basically people that I love are far away. So, they have to come through this airport. Again if I've to go see them, I've to go through the airport. The airport is my gateway to my loved ones. Does it make sense now? In any interaction with anyone that I love, the airport is instrumental. Hence, the almost mad love for the place.



But it would be unfair to say that that is the only reason for the love. The place is really awesome on its own. The lawns, the gardens, the benches, the coffee shops, the eateries, the people, the sheer energy and emotions. It's fun to watch all the people there and guess their stories. You know, like lovers seeing each other off who just can't let each other go, or spouses picking up their better halves -some only for formality, others genuinely happy, parents waving final good-byes to a child who mostly is going abroad to study, families giving assurances to a jittery young lady who is presumably flying abroad for the first time to be with her husband, uncles who cannot stop giving final instructions to their families, so on and so forth. It's full on entertainment - the breadth and depth of these emotions. At which other place do you see such uninhibited display of so many emotions.



Just like at the library, I can spend hours at this airport and stay entertained. But unlike the library, I go here way too many times. Not that I'm complaining. I can go more often and I would go more often if I had my way. Also, unlike the library, they have coffee. :)

To the library

Like I said in my last post, my saturday was spent here:



Well, this is the state central library! And I. loved. it. Yeah I'm a nerd that way.



Now, I drove a friend for some work near Vidhana Soudha. The parking happened to be near the library. The library is a beautiful red building which I had seen a couple of times earlier but the thought of getting in never crossed my mind. Now since I had time to kill, I thought why not?



I was a little hesitant to go in at first. I thought I would need a membership or something. So I walked in just to inquire. The guy saw me walking in and said "Madam, please leave your bag here". Yayy just like that I was in! Yeah after that he made some small talk about which part of delhi I'm from (It was probably broadcast earlier that I was from delhi) and what I think about Anna's andolan. After that, I was in.



The library inside, is really something to experience. Well also because it's been such a long time since I went to a library. And also that I generally love libraries. I can just sit in a library and kill hours. You have to experience the library to know really what it is.




The boring one!

I searched and searched and after a very boring book finally found a really interesting one on Indira Gandhi by Dom Moraes. So engrossing was the book that I kept on turning pages after pages and just like that 3 hours were over. And I learnt new things like Nehrus' actual family name was Kaul. Really nice read. I would love to read the rest of it soon.



Correction: I would love to go back to the library and read the rest of it.



The only thing missing was tea. If they had tea, I might have never left. ALso, I was very hungry. But mostly tea. I could have foregone lunch if I could get a big cup of tea. That's how much I love tea and books, especially if they are in a quiet, Victorian, sprawling with books library.