Raise a toast to the Boy who lived!

We waited, guessed, had premonitions, even tried to predict the ending..... and finally it was unveiled. I'm talking about the one and only "Harry potter and the deathly hallows"

The only thing i did during my flight journey was to read harry potter...You wouldn't believe but there were many other co-passengers doing the same thing. The euphoria, the rush, the hype all has come to a befitting end since i truly believe it could not have been ended in any other way. the good has once again prevailed over evil. Am i reviewing the book??? hmmm may be. I'm just jotting down my opinion about the book and the cult following for this epic.

Somewhere deep inside me, I always knew Snape was a good guy since Dumbledore believed in him. The fact that RAB referred to Regalus and that Dumbledore had truly passed away were also obvious using the clues from her previous books. but the way Harry had to be killed and was made to come back alive all over again was something i just did not expect....The imagination of the author was soaring the skies trying her best to push through the realms of reality and fiction. Somehow at the end i even felt sorry for Severus!(The first time i have ever felt that for him)

I'm glad the book did not entertain certain rumors i had heard such as Harry was the grandson of lord Voldemort or lily was a death eater who turned her back towards You-know-who etc. J.K.Rowling has proved yet again that she is truly the master of the world she has created. its funny that just as harry, we never thought of Dumbledore as a teenager either, atleast i never did.... "its as strange as imagining a polite blast ending skrewt-J.K.Rowling", that really cracked me up.

Im eternaly grateful to Rowling for the fact that she did not venture to kill Ron, Hermoine, Neville or Harry. The last few pages that dealt with their kids was as cute as ever. Wish she would write many more in this series but somehow its like the end of an era. With mixed feelings of both joy(Since goodness prevails) and sorrow(since the story has ended) I bid farewell to Harry Potter, The Boy who lived!

TAGGED!

Been tagged by Santosh! Hope you guys enjoy this non-sarcastic, honest portrayal of my self(I can see that expression of mistrust on your face!)...

1. Pick out a scar you have, and explain how you got it?
Which one to pick??? I fall down ever so often!( my friends can vouch for that! ) So many to get nominated but the one I pick is the scar on my right index finger. I got hurt while trying to sharpen my pencil with a blade in my third standard and it is still there.

2. What does your phone look like?
My phone looks like an antique piece that is currently out of production. It is a Nokia 2300 which I bought for 5k some 3 years back. It’s white display was the “in” thing in those days…I have not yet changed it coz I believe it reminds me of simpler times(Well I wanna get an apple iphone but just waiting for the prices to come down)

3. What is on the walls of your bedroom?
If this question was put forth to me some 4 years back I would have said “17 posters of Hrithik Roshan” but now all I have is a calendar and a picture of Porsche carrera GT(I dream about getting it someday)

4. What is your current desktop picture?

Always Calvin n Hobbes....



5. Do you believe in gay marriage?
I dont judge others. Each person is the judge of their own decisions.

6. What do you want more than anything right now?
I wanna get finished with packing, shopping, packing, shopping, packing, shopping…..

7. What time were you born?
Sometime after 12 in night on 24th of February (so technically 25th)… My dad didn’t even know that I was born until the next day morning. So no one actually timed it :-)

8. Are your parents still together?
Yup

9. Last person who made you cry?
I don wanna name! Actually I don’t cry that easily…I consider myself emotionally strong

10. What is your favorite perfume/cologne?
Hmmm instead of answering that I would just like to say, I like the smell that arises out of the soil when the first drop of rain touches it. I like the smell of the sea… I like the smell of fresh cut grass and that of red roses. These things can never be manufactured in a bottle. They are natures own gift to mankind.

11. What kind of hair/eye color do you like in the opposite sex?
Black… I find the other colors artificial

12. What are you listening to?
Lag ja gale…. An old hindi song that I listen to almost twice everyday.

13. Do you get scared of the dark?
Yes I do. The dark is always synonymous with the unknown and unseen… may be that stirs the fear buried deep within me. In one way though It also inspires man to go further in his insatiable quest for the unknown.

14. Do you like pain killers?
This should have been rephrased as do you like pain… And the answer would have been an emphatic NO. Why should there be so much of suffering in this world when life by itself is so short? I believe in living your life to the fullest, enjoying every second of the one life that you have in your hands. If I could distribute pain alleviating medicines to all the people in the world who are suffering, I WOULD!

15. Are you too shy to ask someone out?
I guess I have grown out of it! 

16. If you could eat anything right now, what would it be?
Aloo paratha, with melting butter on top of it.

17. Who was the last person you made mad?
I guess I make a lot of people mad…. first and foremost my mom :-)

18. Is anyone in love with you?
I wouldn’t know…. This question should be asked to the person who is actually in love with me.

I would like to tag Nivi, Aditya, Ramesh, Cm-chap and Princess banter :-)

There lay an angel!

Is this poetry? is this prose? I know not the answer for this riddle...but the words poured out and I couldn't help it.

There lay an angel...

Her eyes sought some long lost picture
But all she could see were people moving along,
Dilapidated buildings and crowded markets.
She could look at the whole wide world
But the world could see only her eyes….
Only a pair of green emeralds, glittering at times with grief.

Did she ever feel pleasure or pain?
No one could make a guess,
Her stoic countenance never gave much away.
She had lost touch with herself
The past still hung upon her present
As a shadow that frightened away happiness.

The wind brushed across her face,
As if to wipe away tears that had never once been shed.
The birds sang to comfort her soul,
The waves rose high to fill her heart with hope,
Alas it was too late!
She was oblivious to the term “everything-around-her”

A lonely soldier marching up the highland
Had once been enshrined in her heart.
She wanted to see him just one last time
Since she knew she will not live long.
She had travelled all this distance and crossed the seas,
To see the one face in which she could seek peace.

Her eyes met his,
Her purpose thus fulfilled and heart appeased,
She lay in a dreamless sleep…as if never to awaken.
That night, as the first snow flake kissed her face
"There lay an angel", the flake told her friends,
"whose soul was truly blessed!"

In love all over again!

Can a piece of human invention take your heart away????

apparently it can....

I was watching an episode from "The wonder years" yesterday, depicting a scene from the Christmas of 1968, where the Kevin family is astounded by this new invention called "Color tv". Kevin tries to put in as much tact as possible while thinking of ways to open up this topic of discussion while just at the "wrong" minute his elder brother says, " so dad are u gonna get us that color tv or not?".... and there goes the eternal dream!!phut!

I remembered the first time we got color tv, way back in the early 90's....I recall telling my mom "everything looks so life like!"

It's been forty years since that fiasco in wonder years and exactly the same scene occurs in our homes when we have been bowled over and have fallen head over heels in love with an electronic gadget. The gadget in question here is a laptop.... after having worked on a 128mb ram system for over 6 years with XP os that takes 10 minutes to boot up and 5 minutes to open up yahoo messenger you can imagine my look of wonder filled with astonishment at this wireless 1GB ram system...

The wired mire that exists behind my computer table almost resembles the EB wires hanging all over Chennai in such a hap hazard way that going through it to find a particular wire is like going through a quicksand made of sea weeds in a desert...you take a particular end of a wire in your hand and fish through the rest to see if you can find a remote possibility of it being connected with the computer. Just when you wanna say "hurray! yippee! eureka", you either trip on something and fall down or have an electric shock that makes you decide "never to get behind that computer".... but then again the show must go on, you end up doing the same thing the next day!

Going wireless almost feels like I have made a direct leap from the neanderthal man of the stone age to the modern man of the scientific age...if anyone cares to disagree I'm gonna clobber them with a club! On a totally serious note, its not fair to say girls don't like gadgets. Out of the five things that I cant imagine my life without, 3 are gadgets(computer,mobile and ipod)...

It does take a little while to get accustomed to the keys(insert, delete, ctrl c, ctrl v, where are they?) and the fact that it operates at a supersonic jet speed because of which the reason for all my late submissions cannot be my computer(its not me, its my computer!)

by the way Kevin family did get their color tv but only 2 years later....I guess that's when his elder brother moved out!

Cookery lessons!

She look'd down to Camelot.
Out flew the web and floated wide;
The mirror crack'd from side to side;
"The curse is come upon me," cried
The Lady of Shalott.
                                     -Alfred Tennyson

The doom has come upon me too. The prophetic revelation of apocalypse has come true!! If you are thinking this is one of my murder mysteries, well I'm warning you this could become one.

My Mom told me yesterday that it’s high time I start cooking! Well I can start it but the end result would be something of a cross between baking, deep-frying, boiling and burning. of course I can make noodles with a lot of panache and style(uniquely my own). I would take nearly anything and everything I can lay my hands on in the kitchen and throw it in the boiling stew. From butter to corn flour, soup powder to chaat masala, nearly everything will be there in the noodles except of course vegetables, I have still not learned to chop. Now don't you regard me with that derisive stare of yours!

Being in the software industry for the past 2 years I have learnt to face extremely trying circumstances, difficult people and harsh deadlines because of which I have been able to dust off the fears that I possessed as a novice. But cooking to me is quite scary. To quote certain instances, consider the scenario of boiling milk, you never know exactly when to switch off the stove. You don't know if it’s done until the milk rises out of the container or just when it starts rising. When I stand there, almost 10 seconds would go in making this decision ("will the bomb burst now? Will it not?") At the end of which the milk would have spilled out of the container on to the stove and my mom would come running with some expletives which I will not be revealing in order to preserve the tiny blotch of self-dignity that I possess.

She often says, "You have done a B.E. Cant you even boil milk?” Good logic! But flawed argument, almost equaling casuistry. The fact being, in software everything has proper guidelines, in engineering if you get above 50% you pass, these things abide by certain rules, whereas cooking seems to have no rules. No one tells me exactly how much salt or sugar to put and what could be worse "they look the same!” Ever watched a cookery show on television? I used to think they quantify things so it must be easy for me to learn from it.... well for starters I have no clue about the names they attribute to the ingredients we use at home. They use 100 different teeny tiny ingredients that you may not have even seen ever in your life. Now the only thing that looms in my mind at the end of the show is "Why? Why god why? Why me?"

So the only thing that could salvage my reputation and save me from the verge of death due to starvation and mockery is “I like noodles! That’s why I make only noodles"(So not true! but I gotta live!)

In the meanwhile, my future plan (may be in about 20 years!) is to learn to make cookie, brownie, garlic bread and chocolate cake. When I announced my cooking intentions ever so enthusiastically to mom, she laughed. Well I'm sure basics like boiling milk could be handled by anyone, I'm gonna go on to do bigger and greater things (just to bolster up my pride a little! no offence meant). Until then “Noodles! Thou art my only companion!"