Had to share this... A girl you should date.

Wish I could write like this... it's so evocative and meaningful. Content taken from this blog; okay you enjoy this fine piece of writing while I check out her other articles. 

Date a girl who reads. Date a girl who spends her money on books instead of clothes. She has problems with closet space because she has too many books. Date a girl who has a list of books she wants to read, who has had a library card since she was twelve.

Find a girl who reads. You’ll know that she does because she will always have an unread book in her bag. She’s the one lovingly looking over the shelves in the bookstore, the one who quietly cries out when she finds the book she wants. You see the weird chick sniffing the pages of an old book in a second hand book shop? That’s the reader. They can never resist smelling the pages, especially when they are yellow.

She’s the girl reading while waiting in that coffee shop down the street. If you take a peek at her mug, the non-dairy creamer is floating on top because she’s kind of engrossed already. Lost in a world of the author’s making. Sit down. She might give you a glare, as most girls who read do not like to be interrupted. Ask her if she likes the book.

Buy her another cup of coffee. Let her know what you really think of Murakami. See if she got through the first chapter of Fellowship. Understand that if she says she understood James Joyce’s Ulysses she’s just saying that to sound intelligent. Ask her if she loves Alice or she would like to be Alice.

It’s easy to date a girl who reads. Give her books for her birthday, for Christmas and for anniversaries. Give her the gift of words, in poetry, in song. Give her Neruda, Pound, Sexton, Cummings. Let her know that you understand that words are love. Understand that she knows the difference between books and reality but by god, she’s going to try to make her life a little like her favorite book. It will never be your fault if she does.

She has to give it a shot somehow. Lie to her. If she understands syntax, she will understand your need to lie. Behind words are other things: motivation, value, nuance, dialogue. It will not be the end of the world.

Fail her. Because a girl who reads knows that failure always leads up to the climax. Because girls who understand that all things will come to end. That you can always write a sequel. That you can begin again and again and still be the hero. That life is meant to have a villain or two.

Why be frightened of everything that you are not? Girls who read understand that people, like characters, develop. Except in the Twilight series.

If you find a girl who reads, keep her close. When you find her up at 2 AM clutching a book to her chest and weeping, make her a cup of tea and hold her. You may lose her for a couple of hours but she will always come back to you. She’ll talk as if the characters in the book are real, because for a while, they always are.

You will propose on a hot air balloon. Or during a rock concert. Or very casually next time she’s sick. Over Skype.

You will smile so hard you will wonder why your heart hasn't burst and bled out all over your chest yet. You will write the story of your lives, have kids with strange names and even stranger tastes. She will introduce your children to the Cat in the Hat and Aslan, maybe in the same day. You will walk the winters of your old age together and she will recite Keats under her breath while you shake the snow off your boots.

Date a girl who reads because you deserve it. You deserve a girl who can give you the most colorful life imaginable. If you can only give her monotony, and stale hours and half-baked proposals, then you’re better off alone. If you want the world and the worlds beyond it, date a girl who reads.

Or better yet, date a girl who writes.

– Rosemarie Urquico –

Loacker Paradise...

When my brother came down recently for our cousin's wedding he bought these dainty wafer cookies, and I was a goner from bite one. I specifically told him not to bring any chocolates, cause there is another big wedding coming up in the family and nobody wants to pack on a few extra pounds. These can be eaten without all the remorse and guilt, it's mostly wafer with some lovely chocolate filling... and they are so darn good. You get started and you have to will yourself to stop... but it's no big deal cause I'm sure this is way more healthy than ordinary chocolate.   

There are many flavours, this is the chocolate one... 

And you open the packet to find...

manna in your hand. 

Okay, everything stated here is entirely my view and nobody in Loacker's contacted me to write all this, though I am feverishly hoping they will after this :o)

Have a pleasant weekend everybody. (I like the way I fool myself into thinking I have a lot of readers, 'everybody' probably means my sister, mom, one or two other people and some hackers from China who keep posting random nonsensical comments).

A small town living and a cousin's wedding...

Growing up in a small town, I used to tell my sister that we were like Tom Cruise here… people used to talk about us the way we talked about Tom Cruise. It’s not that we stood out or had celebrity parents; we were kinda different from the rest in our interests, thoughts and most importantly dressing. Life was pretty good in a small town, slow paced and entirely taken up by school activities. But somehow along the way, I kinda started drifting away from known people and the relatives; I found that I had nothing to say to them and making small talk was genuinely uncomfortable when I was struggling with the language. Many of them (the aunts) were actually real nice and kind. A few were like cows, grazing the pasture for fodder to fuel their gossip. Over time, it became quite easy to spot the genuine caring aunts from the cud chewing aunts and their typical gasbag husbands. Now when we (us siblings) see them coming, we say a little prayer for our sanity, and then we smile and nod away to whatever they drag on and on about. There is always a parallel conversation going on in my head about what I would really like to reply to their inane questions and eventually I have to strain to keep the laughter from bursting to the surface. 

Anyway, I was home (yeah, that's a picture of home... it's the first sight that greets you early in the morning just before the train halts at my place) recently for a cousin's wedding and it was great fun, I did come across a few such cud chewers and that's what prompted me to write this post. Me and my sister crack up whenever we make up stuff to feed them... it's like our very own live sitcom show.
Here are a few random pictures from the wedding...

The bride's house all lit up...

The bride on her way to church... 

Some babes in beautiful sarees at the wedding...

The bride's bouquet...

 Gold bangles on one of the bride's cousins...

 The pretty bride...

 The bridegroom putting the wedding chain on his bride and the sister of the groom helping her brother to fix it properly.

The bridal couple in church...

Of Hunger Games and Mockinjay's....

So my sister was in town and I knew she would drag me to see the Hunger Games movie like she dragged me to see Real Steel and Mission Impossible (Ghost Protocol) during her previous visits. In all fairness Hugh Jackman and Tom Cruise are themselves enough of a force to drag a non moviegoer like me to the cinemas... it's just that I can't stand the sound of everything crashing or blowing up or firing away in the confines of a darkened room. Couple these deafening sounds with the fast moving images on screen and I start hyperventilating... yeah, I know, I'm no fun. I prefer movies that most people usually avoid like Jane Eyre or any of Jane Austen's adaptations or the Sound of Music or some true story drama where emotions are pretty intense and you start bawling your eyes out and falling in love with the characters on screen. This was true in Real Steel, that little kid could smile his way into anyone's heart. Ghost Protocol was pathetic compared to Real Steel, but Tom Cruise can still charm his way into any girl's heart... but that's about it, the movie has nothing else to talk about. 

Anyway, getting back to Hunger Games, the book seemed to make my hospital visits less dreadful, so that was something good. The concept was intriguing: the ancient gladiator-ish form of entertainment set in the future dystopian world of Panem, where children are randomly selected and forced into an arena to fight each other to death. Of course, you can't set the book down once you get started, you get drawn into the arena waiting with bated breath to see how the main characters fare. The author, Suzanne Collins, manages to end almost every chapter in a cliffhanger and before you know it you are done reading it. You also realise that you've become old when you don't fall for the disarmingly charming baker boy... I know, sad but true. The book ends rather abruptly and then you are on to the second book in the trilogy, Catching Fire, which starts off well but this time you aren't drawn into the arena like before. The whole thing seems like it was thrown together like some avial dish, and you find yourself incessantly wondering --- are we done yet. The third book Mockinjay was pointless, I couldn't bring myself to read it, so I jumped, skipped and hopped my way through it to get to the ending which was like dishwater to say the least. Grey, bland and bleary as it sloshes down the drain... there is only so much drama a story can take. The last two books had more plots than a cemetery (yeah, I know... I came across this phrase somewhere and thought it was pretty funny too). When you reach the end of this trilogy you realize meaningful books with literary value is what you should be reading next.

Coming to the movie, it was okay... you don't get the sense of urgency and survival the book invokes in you. The characters are all good looking, except Gale... who is great looking! (Miley must be one contended girl, she is dating Gale in real life. I don't even know what his real name is). It was good while it lasted, the whole Hunger Games drama. Me and my sister read the books, then watched the movie together. After that we would bid each other goodnight or goodbye in the manner of District 12, with the three finger salute. Here are a few pictures...

Nice picture, right... the three main characters. I like how the light catches her hair... this could be a nice sibling shot too. 

The rest of the tributes... another sunny well taken picture. 

Curly hair... finally!

So I came across this picture on Pinterest and since then I've been behind my sister to try it on me, and yesterday we finally did try out the pillowcase tutorial to get curly hair.  And here is the result... 

My hair is really straight, and I've always wondered how it would be to have curls... it's the classic case of the grass being greener on the other side. Straight haired girls want curls and curly haired girls want straight hair. Anyway, these curls were pretty cute... they stayed on for almost half the day and I really liked them, thanks Nam. So, what do you think...

Nuclear projects and the demise of common sense

I really really hope the nuclear power plant at Kudankulam never starts functioning. I know its wishful thinking at this stage, what with crores of rupees already pumped into the project. I don’t know why the community was so dormant while the plant was being setup, why didn't anyone create a furore during the initial groundwork phase? I guess, like me no one really knew the real dangers lurking behind this massive nuclear power undertaking, until Fukushima brought it to our notice… even today, almost a year after that mind boggling tsunami catastrophe, the people in Fukushima live in constant dread and anxiety. Of course, there is no physical manifestation of that fear yet, but we all know it’s only a matter of time. As in the cases of Chernobyl and  Three MileIsland, it is an undisputed fact that exposure to radiation causes cancer and after reading Siddhartha Mukherjees’ award winning book The Emperor of All Maladies, the completely debilitating effects of cancer are revealed, bringing home the point that there is no cure yet. What more justification and validation do these people who commission, authorize, approve and install such deadly nuclear power plants require?

I understand many learned and scholarly people (not to mention the ones with vested interests) are at the forefront of this project, but did they pause to ask to what extent. I know the benefits and advantages are numerous, but are they worth generating power at the expense of human life? Is there any way to guarantee that this plant won’t face mishaps in the future? Unless he is God, I don’t think anyone on this planet can ascertain what is going to happen in the future. I mean look at the Japanese, wouldn’t they have considered and re considered every aspect before installing a nuclear power plant and wouldn’t safety be their utmost priority, considering that they were the first to be affected by a nuclear explosion the likes of which the world has never seen before. And still, when the massive tsunami of 2011 struck, their safety measures did not hold up. Do these people responsible for the Kudankulam reactor seriously think they can do better than the Japanese? I read an article recently about how life has changed in the regions surrounding Fukushima, people are scared to venture outside. Even drying clothes outside is not advisable, doors and windows remain perpetually shut. And mothers are advising their daughters to avoid having children after marriage, how disheartening is this. Imagine the quality of life there, all because of some radioactive material that had no right to be among humans in the first place. Is this the quality of life we have to look forward to, the constant fear of genetic abnormalities and slow cancerous deaths due to radiation? I’m sure the current situation of studying by candle lights, hanging out with neighbours, playing board games, forgetting the TV and the computer and picking up a book are far better prospectives than languishing on your deathbed without the time or the inclination to enjoy the uninterrupted power supply from the nuclear power plants that were setup in the first place to make life better. How can the authorities, the scientists and the others who favour nuclear projects not see the irony in this!

The major problem faced by such nuclear projects is the safe disposal of nuclear waste, and so far no such guaranteed waste disposal system exists. The half-life of nuclear waste is known to be tens of thousands of years and why would seemingly intellectual beings (so called higher authorities) want to generate nuclear waste that they know they have no way of disposing permanently? Why spoil life on earth and destroy our beautiful planet in the process? Sometime I wish a place like Azkaban really existed where people who go about destroying everything good in nature and humankind can be thrown together. They would be at home in that joyless place, feeding on the fears and festering greed of each other, after all they seem to have mastered that role. Meanwhile we the people who strenuously oppose any kind of nuclear projects can live a beautiful normal life picking out names for our children and grandchildren, who are going to inherit this world. 

Let the children's laughter remind us how we used to be...

This song has been on replay ever since I heard that Whitney Houston passed away. It was the only song I liked of hers and I used to listen to it nonstop back while we (me and the siblings) were growing up along with Elton John's Sacrifice and Richard Marx's Right here waiting for you, these are the songs I remember constantly rewinding and playing, till everybody got sick of it. This song of hers made an impact more than any other song of that era because it was not the usual sappy love songs every other pop singer was churning out. This was about learning to be courageous and living a life of dignity, and growing into a good human being. It is a song about overcoming obstacles, learning from experiences and discovering who you really are in the process. You realise that you have to first learn to love yourself before you expect others to do the same. At that impressionable young age, this song really meant a lot... especially the last stanza where she sings about finding that special somebody, "And if I chance that special place, that you've been dreaming of, leads you to a lonely place, find your strength in love." It was that age, when you're in love with the idea of falling in love... and I think this is what the lyrics mean, after you evolve into a secure person who is not afraid to face life, you will chance upon the special person you've been dreaming about and when you're with him make sure he is the real deal. His love should continue the process of self evolution, it should make you a better person. Your love in each other should be something sacred (my catechism influence) you become better individuals because of each other and therein lies your strength. This song was actually written by a woman suffering from cancer, she wanted to show her children the way to live a meaningful life... this explains its poignant nature. 


The day she died, I couldn't seem to shake off the feeling of sadness that engulfed me... it was the same when Michael died. When you hear news like this, its like a video plays in your head of the past, of the way you were... how they were a part of that memorable, fun and uncomplicated childhood. And you wonder why they didn't derive the same strength from their songs... the same happiness that infused the warm little homes that built us...