Now, this is PROGRESS!

Circa 2007


Circa 2008


Circa 2009


Obstacles..


The last laugh!

Monday Blues...

..what are those? This is the advantage of working over the entire weekend. Monday becomes just another day, and I don't feel bad about it at all. I remember the weekends that started friday afternoon and were so much fun, they made the following Monday appear an impending calamity with an effect similar to PMS on me. Not anymore, I have successfully conquered 'the Monday Blues'. Attaining Nirvana suddenly looks so much more feasible, hmm... next on the list.

Isn't it remarkable..

..how some things remind us of so many other completely unrelated things, places, people and times.. Ever tried tracing back to find why, how? I do it a lot, and the association brings back so much more in terms of memories.. like this song. I heard it today after a really long time, and in one shot it reminded me of a mostly out-of-touch friend, my ex-roommate, my M-I-L n bro', my previous work place, the first day of our Malaysia trip and an ipod that I did not even remember possessing. Its rather interesting to relate them all to this vintage, classic gem of a song. To begin with, my friend S, who was just a colleague then, caught me humming it over a coffee break, and corrected me with the tune. He left me stunned, to say the least! Firstly, he is a South Indian, born and brought up in Bangalore, always talks in Kannada/English and I did not expect him to know a rarely heard, Hindi devotional song back from the 50's. And then, what surprised me even more was his rendition of it. I had no idea that he could sing so well, that he has such a beautiful voice and a keen sense of music to top it. For the uninitiated, it is not an easy song, mostly in the lower octave, and climbs only in the second stanza. Needless to say, I was completely bowled over. We soon became friends, courtesy an exceptionally common interest in Hindi film music. Even now, whenever we meet, which is only about once an year, I don't let him off without singing this one for me. Ok.. I got carried away a bit.. With the other people it is rather simple. I sang this song on the first day after my wedding, and my M-I-L liked it lots. She still asks me to sing it at times. And my roomie made fun of me for singing such an outdated song, that too one that is devotional. Brother actually went to the extent of saying that I did not deserve the Ipod if this is what I put in it. I downloaded this song from the internet after a vigorous search the day I joined my previous organization, since I hardly had anything else to do. Therefore it also reminds me of my first day there. And finally, the Malaysia trip.. the husband caught me unaware, absent-mindedly humming this and recorded it on the handycam. So our VCD for the trip opens with 'Darshan do' in yours truly's voice :)

p.s. I have been trying to upload the song to esnips since last week.. never occured to me that I could find it on YouTube. And surprise surprise.. the comments there tell me that Slumdog Millionaire has an adaptation of it!

Getting crafty..

It is our wedding anniversary tomorrow.. and as always, I have been racking my brains for the past 10 days, for what might be the ideal present. I like to work towards a present, and do not go for off-the-shelf stuff unless unavoidable. Now, this makes the otherwise simple job really complicated, especially since I run low on imagination and creativity. For the record, this will be our 3rd anniversary, and we could not celebrate the first 2. So just to make up for the lost occasions, I wanted to buy the spouse a platinum ring engraved with our names, with a solitaire if the budget allowed. Such was the plan till last week, before my organization axed some 10% of the total work-force. What followed were extremely low spirits and a drastic drop in my budget, from INR 25,000 to a meagre 500 rupees. I was more than willing to slash it further, but for anything less than that, the present would have reduced to a flower plucked from the neighbour's bush.. and they don't even plant roses! To cut a long story short, I decided to get crafty, pun intended :) I had wanted to do some glass painting since when I forget, and used this opportunity to fulfill that longing. After much deliberation, I decided upon a personalized calender with 'glass paintings' on transparent plastic sheets. Its come out looking rather childish, especially because I have done the calendar part manually. It would have looked far better with a printed calendar, there are plenty of cool options available on the internet for that but I just wanted to give it a more personal touch. Come to think of it, I could have got this whole personalized calendar thing made up with no effort, very little time, and markedly cheaper by placing an order on any of those websites and uploading a few family pics but I prefer it this way. No more rambling, here's presenting some pics. I know they are not impressive, but just want to share :)