The lesser-known me

25 things few people know about me! Ever since mixedblessings89 tagged me (it’s quite some time now), I was trying hard to figure out what few people know about me. I secretly(?) went and checked some of the blogs that took up this tag. No, I didn’t have the slightest intention to do CtrlC-CtrlV. Anyways, I was still clueless after reading a few posts.

Does that mean I am so transparent? People can see through me? Oops! That could also mean I am hollow. No way! I am full of substance, though few people know that. There it is… The first thing few people know about me.

For the remaining 24, I ‘made up’ this list. :-)

2. I am quite romantic though I don’t look like one.

3. I have three birthdays. No, I was not born thrice. Just that my date of birth in official records is two months earlier than the original one, and I’ve a star birthday.

4. My first poem (in Malayalam) was published in the children’s magazine Lalu Leela some time in 1980s. It was about my cat.

5. I had cats; 16 at one point of time. Reared and buried quite a few of them.

6. My first short story (in Malayalam and last so far) got second prize in a competition held by the local fine arts club and it was later published in the school magazine.

7. I remember most of what I hear except the classroom lectures. So get bored when people tell me the same stuff again and again and sometimes contradict themselves.

8. I intend to write my autobiography.

Enough of gloating.

9. I get angry fast.

10. I can be nasty at times.

11. I don’t bother about what others think.

12. I’m not religious, but I know there’s God.

13. I (we) decided not to have kids even before marriage.

14. I like kids when I'm not responsible for them 24x7.

15. However, I feel responsible for the whole world, but too lazy to save it.

16. I like being alone and I like being with family and friends.

17. I was crazy about Hindi movies in my teens. My favourite hero was Mithunda.

18. For washing cloths, I don’t trust anybody except myself, my mother, sister-in-law, and IFB washing machine.

19. I like only the curd I make or the packaged ones.

20. I don’t like to see oil in my food – I mean in the non-fried ones.

21. I’ve tried many times to become a vegetarian and failed. Then I married a pure vegetarian. That did work partially. I am a vegetarian most of the time.

22. I get put off by insincerity.

23. I like those who act over those who just talk.

24. But I often talk and not act.

25. So I believe, “Everything that irritates us about others can lead us to an understanding of ourselves." - Carl Jung

Now I feel I can write more. Who will have the patience to read it?

Meanwhile, mixedblessings89 gave me the Honest Scrap award.



I honestly made this 25 things up. :-)

Past pleasant; Present perfect; Future ?

I am a true believer of the saying ‘Better late than never.’ That’s why I am doing this tag by The Layman, albeit it’s too late. I have many an excuse for postponing it this long – work, travel, social commitments, lack of interest in blogging, etc – but to be honest, I postponed it because it was not easy. :-)

So here’s my attempt at answering two questions each from my past, present, and future.

Yesterday

My oldest memories

I vividly remember …

• Playing at my mother’s office in the evenings
• Collecting jasmine flowers from an affectionate neighbour’s garden
• Going to nursery school with my neighbour-friend-classmate escorted by an elder neighbour
• The extremely nice nursery teacher taking me to her house during lunch break, and I for some reason, giving her a tough time by crying and demanding to go back. I guess I was sacred by her father who looked tough.

What was I doing 10 years ago?

On Dec 12, 1998? You expect me to remember that?

It’s true that I’ve a good memory, but this is too much ... :-)

Today

My first thought today morning

6 O’ clock. Ding dong (calling bell)

I woke up with a start. Did Unny come so early?

(Background: Unny was to take 7.30 flight from Delhi)

I for a moment thought he wanted to give me surprise and told me a different flight time. Immediately realized he’s not that crazy to take an early morning flight from Delhi (if one’s there), that too in December. It was the newspaperboy who rang the bell. He was too busy to push the papers through the grill, instead dropped it outside and rang the bell to let me know. :-)

If you build a time capsule what would it contain?
Same things that I carry for a trek/travel …

As much as food that it would contain, first-aid kit, survival kit, clothes

Things like maps, guides will be handled by my better-half.

Tomorrow

This year

This year is almost ‘last year’. So let me consider 2009. Hope to do what I postponed in 2008. That means 2008 New Year resolutions still remain strong as resolutions, which can be carried forward.

What do I see myself doing 14 years from now?

2022 – Farming, running a home stay, traveling

Or living in a city and doing the best I could do within the limitations

Whichever it is, I hope I’ll be enjoying life as I do now. :-)

Too lazy to be an addict …

When Dhanya tagged me to do this post on Addictions, I thought it’s too easy. But it’s not! When I started thinking about my addictions, I realized I am too lazy to be an addict. Nevertheless, there are passing crazes. Maybe one can call it short-term addictions (an oxymoron, right?). There are quite a few of them. I keep shifting from one craze to another. The trigger comes out of no where, and it can last for a day or two, or a few weeks. Not more than that.

So this should be good for me. But when I am addicted to something, I postpone many other things – even the routine work. I’ll find a way not to do them. For instance, buying vegetables – a quick look at the stock of pulses, potatoes, and onions, and the problem is solved; vegetables can wait for one more day.

When I am crazy about blogging, there’ll be regular posts on my blogs. I’ll be gleefully checking various aggregators and bookmarked blogs, dropping my precious (?) comments all over. But all these seem so unappealing sometimes. And some blogger friends have to tag me to keep my blog alive!

If I get bitten by bookworm, I devour all unread books that had got piled up (when I was drowned in other crazes). Then it's time for more book shopping. And there are days when even the newspaper remains unopened (if Unny’s not at home)

When cooking catches my fancy, out come the old recipe books. A cookery show on TV could trigger this. It’s fun to shop for new ingredients, try out new recipes, re-work recipes to suit my taste, and such. My latest contribution to cookery world is an energy bar made of oats, jaggery, dates, raisins, cashew nuts, and almonds. I'll be taking it for the next trek.

Another TV show or getting a fancy box/paper/bottle could lead to a bout of craft-making, especially from waste. I’ll be at my creative best then!

Talking about TV, while on most days it remains switched off or only tuned to news channels, on some days I lap up any remotely interesting program on those ‘n’ number of channels. Braving the long ad breaks, I’ve watched many a Hindi/English movie during these crazy phases.

All these crazes had taken leave of absence while I was working full-time. But not reading! I used to carry books to read during lunch breaks in office! Now that I am at home full-time, they have slowly started raising their heads.

The latest one is sewing - from which I took a break (with a lot of effort) and writing this post. It’s time to brush up my sewing skills and create great outfits. The old notebook and patterns were hunted out; sewing machine got a thorough overhaul. The patterns were those of the 1990s. Reverse engineering helped – unstitch old clothes, take measurements, cut out new patterns. Old bed sheets got furiously converted into tops, salwar-kameezes, and capris. Learning from mistakes, I perfected the patterns, and tried my skills on a new cloth. And wore the result recently for a wedding reception. Alas! Friends were impressed.

Excited and inspired, I will be sewing new outfits for ‘God knows how long’! :-)

Tagged along …

I think I should dedicate this blog to tags; this is my third consecutive post on tags!


This time it’s Arun. He has asked to jot down three (just three!) of my favourite books. Tough, I would say.

Ok, here it goes, with due apologies to my all other favourite books …

1. The Pillars of the Earth, Ken Follet

2. Water for Elephants, Sara Gruen
3. The Hungry Tide, Amitav Ghosh Should I pass on this difficult tag? Nah! Arun, sorry for that. :-)

Photos courtesy: Wikipedia

Quote it!

It looks like only tags make me blog. This time I was tagged by The Layman.

The quote tag demands to list out five of your favourite quotes from the books you’ve read. Here’s my list …

1. Life is difficult.
- The Road Less Traveled; M Scott Peck

2. If God does not exist, then how do you explain all the suffering of the poor?
- Snow; Orhan Pamuk

3. If love is not allowed to flow, it becomes fear. If love is allowed to flow, fear disappears.
- Courage: The Joy of Living Dangerously; Osho

4. Shopping is female. When men shop, they are engaging in what is inherently a female activity.
- Why We Buy; Paco Underhill

5. What is past, is past for me

What is gone, is gone for me

Be with the rising sun

Be with the rising moon

Not with the setting ones.
- From a poem in a college magazine I read years back

And I tag …

Sapna

Rose

Arun

Mirage

Multi Menon

My Bucket List

This is the first time someone has tagged me, and thank you Dhanya for doing that.

It’s more than a week since she tagged me to do ‘The Bucket List’, and my lazy self kept it aside. Inspired by the movie ‘The Bucket List,’ this tag is to list out things one want to do before one ‘kicks the bucket’. Well, I don’t want to kick the bucket, maybe in the next 200 years. So I should’ve a long list. But then, some of the most interesting things are never planned. Anyways, here comes my list …

1. I want to travel across the world. It may look like a copy-paste from Dhanya’s list, but isn't everybody getting bitten by the ubiquitous travel bug. And my must-go places include all over India and, for some strange reason, Egypt.

2. Build a low-cost house in Kerala, which should have a garden with all neglected/almost-extinct plants and an orchard as well.

3. Grow my own food, at least vegetables (of course, organic only).

4. Start a bookshop or at least a library.

5. Learn swimming. I get swimming lessons from Unny whenever we get a chance to jump into a waterbody. But I guess I need to go to a real swimming pool and get help from an instructor.

6. Drive in Mumbai city during rush hour. Every time I see the way vehicles are maneuvered during peak hours, my heart skips a beat.

7. Learn Marathi and at least one foreign language. I’ve started watching Marathi channels, but the programmes can’t sustain my interest. Not my fault. :-)

All these came at my finger tips without thinking. And I feel sleepy and I can’t think now. So that’s it.

The last three things in the list are there because I am too lazy to make an effort. You might be thinking, how this lazy bum is going to do the other things in the list. Even I don’t know. :-)

I know very few people in the English blog world and almost all of them are already tagged for this. So I leave it open to whoever reads this post and is interested in making their own bucket list.