Saturday, February 28, 2009

An Idli brain: Part 1

It was in Kodaikanal that I first thought of making an Orkut community dedicated to Idlis. Perhaps it was the air of Nilgiris which brought out the romantic in me and I decided to give my love for Idlis a name which world could reckon with. I love food and for me the greatest creation of God is the tomato but I am not weird like Gopi who wants to have, er, sex with a watermelon!

As the air of Kodaikanal got replaced by air of Hyderabad, the romance fizzled out and the community was never created, but the love persisted.

In my North Indian life in 90s, any South Indian food was a 'special'. My uncle who was an Airforce Officer (no, he wasn't a pilot!) was posted in Secunderabad and during their stay here, my aunty learnt to prepare most of the common stuff like Idli, Dosa, Wada, Sambhar and Rasam (Note my respect for food, all items start with a capital!).
So when they visited us in Allahabad, at times there was a complete "South Indian lunch" comprising Idlis and Plain and Masala Dosas. (After coming here I found that South Indians eat things other than Idli/Dosa and nobody eats Idlis in lunch!)
I hated Sambhar which my sister (who lived with my uncle) adored. So plain dal was prepared for me which I suspected was Sambhar without vegetables!

Dosas found special liking even while eating out. Once when Ma was not there and we were not in mood of cooking, Pa and I had a dosa in a Civil Lines.

But as I have now started caring about health (means eating different kind of junk!) Dosas were replaced by Idlis on my plate. I don't actually remember when I had a dosa last, whereas Idlis are my normal weekday breakfast. And with thick peanut chutney which makes the soft, warm and fluffy idli melt in mouth... ahh bliss!

(Next:Idli accessories)

Monday, February 23, 2009

Oscar for petty mindedness: M Karunanidhi

"Six crore Tamils are rejoicing over the pinnacle of achievement of this worthy son of Chennai। I join 100 crore Indians in showering flowers of appreciation with pure minds on this scion from a minority community," Karunanidhi said in a statement said." (courtesy IBNLive.com)

In a single statement Karunanidhi dragged Rahman down to a 'Tamil' and a person from 'Minority Community'! Some people will never ever be able to rise above their petty minds.

Tuesday, February 10, 2009

Crap comes to mind quickly!

Thanks to OpenLDAP service of my Hyperion installation which chose this day to get corrupted again, I got time to write something! Waise come to think of it, what would happen if software, I mean the code started thinking. A few days ago I had visions of code coming out of system and floating around.

Imagine a System.out.println lurking below the drawer, an InputStream flowing across the gallery, a horrible looking javascript on the desk. Imagine all that terabyte of code just rushing out of the computers and all the storage devices and flowing out in the open!
How would that look...

Heck. There were so many things on my mind to write about, but all I wrote is this crap!

Sunday, February 01, 2009

A cheapskate called T-Series.

I was admiring the innovative cover of the 'Delhi 6' CD. A shiny mirror like surface which 'reflects' the theme of the movie 'A Journey Within'. Very cool, I said.

And then I opened it. No lyrics? Not possible. Open all the folds properly. No more folds? How can this be possible?

If you thought this was ridiculous, read further.

Now that we have settled this issue of missing lyrics, read further. When I ripped the CD of Slumdog Millionaire, the following appeared in my music library. Apart from wrong information about one of the tracks (See track# 9 in below image. It mentions 'Aaj Ki Raat' from 'Don' and also lists the singers of that song!) , the information about other tracks appears in an order, which is completely different from what is listed on the cover. So though the listed track is 'Ringa Ringa', the associated information mentions 'O... Saya' and so on.


This for a Golden Globe winner and Oscar nominated album.

Shame on India's supposedly largest music company!