Teacher Appears (read Teachers Appear!)

"When student is ready, teacher will appear!"

This statement has lot of meaning. This has very deep meaning of one has to be ready for the opportunity. Be prepared, and you shall reap the fruits.

This is true in all of our cases. Some of us may just not be aware of this happening to us.

In Harrisburg, we have a small group of friends, getting together on Sundays, for a Satsang. We discuss Hinduism and it's effects of its ideologies and literature on our daily lives. So far it has been very rewarding in learning new things and applying to our lives in moderate doses.

The only challenge was none of us understand Sanskrit, which is the base language of all Hindu scriptures. There are other sources as well, in Malayalam and English, but the root source of all come from those Sanskrit scriptures.

Then one day, it just happened.

Sri Mannadi Hari (Sapthaaham fame) happened to visit US and we invited him over to Harrisburg. He is a very learned person and it was a blessing for us that he visited our small group and attended one of our Satsangs. He gave a discourse on Dharma Sastra and its relevancy in today's world. Very informative session, it was.

After two weeks, our Satsang initiator Gopakumar told that Sri Udit Chaitanya is visiting US. He is a Swamiji and a Brahmachari (unlike Sri Mannadi Hari). He has amassed wealth of knowledge in Bhagawatham. Gopan invited him over and he was very kind enough to accept our invitation and came over. We organized a small gathering at our temple in Harrisburg (HARI Temple).  It was another enlightening day of discourse.

We were ready. And the teachers appeared.

India Trip 2009 - 1

Kuwait Airways - Low rate or Low service?

When my travel agent quoted the deal of $670.00 per person for a trip to India (Chennai , to be specific), I could not say NO. Grabbed it then and there! $670.00 is a SUPERB deal! I have never ever seen a deal below $1000.00 for a to-and-fro trip to Chennai or Trivandrum, from USA. The flght is from JFK, told my agent. Never mind, for $670.00, I wouldn't even mind walking from Mechanicsburg PA to JFK, I said. And laughed.

Kuwait Airyways was never number 1 for anyone's list flying to Kerala. The service was not at par. But it is better than Air India, which has its own internal issues to solve first, before showing some good customer service. The individual TV sets did not work properly and the seats were not that comfortable. It was ok for both myself and my wife, but for our 6 year old daughter, it was BORING!

The flight to Chennai was ok. The flight we took, was via London. So we had security checks in JFK as well as in London. Hassle, it was, but we did not mind as it was for our own cause. Once we reached Kuwait, we had to change the aircraft. There are airport officials every where in the airport, but knowing English is not enough. Because they dont know any. The airlines desk staff helped us find the gate.

Chennai - The City

A seemingly surprising wonderful weather in Chennai welcomed us. My brother-in-law had come to pick us up, with my sister and nephew.

Chennai had changed. The Airport fly over, which was in the beginning stages of construction in 2007, had completed and was pretty pukka! Chennai has its own charm even in midst of heavy traffic and unethical driving sense. The emergence of MNC and its clones, and the eat outs catering them have polished the face of Chennai.

We visited the Crocodile and Snake Park on our way to Ideal Beach Resort in Mahabalipuram Road.

The ambience in the beach resort was ecstatic. The resort was very clean and neat. The food was awesome. And the beach - simply superb!

World's greatest cuisine - Anything that Mom prepares!

The best part visiting my Mom is getting great food! She is a great cook. She is passionate about cooking! And she likes to see people eat and be merry! And guess what? All we did in Chennai was shopping and eating! From Beef Cutlet to Mutton Pulau - anything that came our way... sumptous indeed!

Kerala Cafe - The film of films

Sangam was playing Kerala Cafe. I had read numerous reviews about the movie and seen interviews about the same. And above all I am a fan of Ranjith, the director, who is the producer of the movie. Kerala Cafe is a compilation of 10 small movies. Yes, 10 movies, directed by 10 different directors. All the stories engulfed me. We had a good time at Kerala Cafe. Some of the credit indeed goes to the theatre and the setup. Sangam is a great theatre.

Trivandrum

Time went by very quickly and we had to fly to Trivandrum. Simi's parents came to the airport to welcome us. Trivandrum was very hot, an unusual condition for December. The only change I saw in Trivandrum was the emergence of flats. More number of builders have occupied the lands and build more flats in the city. More people have immigrated to the city thanks to the flourishing Technopark.

But again the infrastructure of the city has not moved an inch yet. It has moved, of course, towards the worst. The roads are in a very bad shape, thanks to the not-so-focussed politicians, and failing projects.

(To Be Continued...)

Unpopular Chief Minister. Unpopular Remarks

I would not expect anything more from him. Oh ya, I am talking about our own Achuthananthan, who had done NOTHING except getting unpopular!

The recent remarks against Major Sandeep's family is just an example. The remarks were a colloquial one, I agree. But, it was not proper. It could come out from only a person who does not have any self respect.

I am not a Congressman, if you doubt! Never. You can call me a bully, but don't call me a politician! You may say, what is the difference! And I would laugh at your remarks!

I never had any inclination towards any political parties, nor do I have now. Political parties in India have not become so people-friendly till now. It might change, and of course I am looking forward to it.

People are fed up with these anti-heroes and their anti-heroisms.

When would they learn? When would we learn?

The New Year!!!

Well, another year is passing by...

2007 was a fast year for me and my family. My daughter turned 4, my brother-in-law got married, we go to visit India, I got MCAD. Lot of good things happened... Bad things happened too, but I tend to forget all the bad things and project the good things that happened to me... that keeps me alive and energetic...

Wish you all the readers a happy new year 2008!!!

Cheers!

Stage and me

I always wanted to act in a movie, when I was a teenager. I still have the passion of acting! That might have seeded in me by seeing my father on stage, on different occasions. No, he was not a professional actor. He was better than lots of them, but he acted in his official annual function skits.

My only outlet was the extra curricular activities in my school. I was totally involved in those, that I almost forgot (another term for being lazy) to study. And that hit me hard once, which I will never forget. Since then I have been keeping myself away from arts and theatre activities and concentrating on my studies and mainstream job related activities. So my hobby list included reading .NET books, writing .NET related blogs and attending actively in the local .NET user group.

Once again, the acting bug has hit me. It is with the local Kerala Association (Kerala is the state in India where I am from) connection. And they have made me the Entertainment Committee Lead. I am excited as well as afraid at the same time. When I am on stage, I forget everything... I just go with the flow...

This time, I have sworned myself that it would be different. I would be more careful than before. One lesson in life is more than enough to learn, right? My family and career comes first and everything else is second (or third or fourth...)...

What a Request

A request, from 113 MLAs to the President of India, to show some relief to the jail resident Madani, was not welcoming to me.

The question is who are these MLAs? Relatives of Madani? It is an open secret that he was responsible for Coimbatore bombing.

By releasing such a creature is doing injustice to our country!

SOMETIMES, I FEEL THAT THESE WRETCHED POLITICIANS ARE FOOLS BY BIRTH!!!!

10 Years, that is!

Celeberating 10 years in IT Industry. Yes, I am that old (no grey hairs till, but!).
I have learned from a lot and given a lot to the industry in the past 10 years. Its been a great journey and am still on it. I have seen the ups and downs of the industry and myself. If you (or Larry King) ask me how do I feel, I would say "GREAT!!".

The New House

We just moved into a new house (4 year old town house) and are enjoying it. To be frank, we had not enough time to sit and relax and enjoy the house, but been relatively busy.

There are lot of things to do, which I plan to do myself, with help from my friends. There are couple of projects that interests me and would start on them relatively soon. I will document those in this blog, so that some day some one might get help from the ones I post.

Celeberating the Death

I was never interested in Politics. May be because I was born in Kerala. You would be thinking what a nincompoop I am. Being born in Kerala should make me more aware of politics and should make me more agile in learning the political developments in the state. That's true. But you don't see the other side of it. In my opinion, there is a politician in every man in Kerala. People think politics and they discuss politics as it is their family matter. And that is where we go wrong. We discuss and we are concerned about what one party is doing to another, but we seldom understand that the both parties are the same - just with different faces.

Why am I so irritated with Politics? Just because it has never given our State a good image. NEVER. Communism or Congressism...both are same...they chose different paths to torture the people....

Not all politicians are bad. There are politicians, whom I have heard of and read about and whom I know personally, who really take their job seriously and with passion. One of such politicians is our respeced P K V. He was true Comrade. How could the politicians be so cheap by creating violence in such a situation? This is a time for mourning; to be silent; and praying. Instead they are "preying"!!! Kashtam


According to UNESCO, Kerala is 96.5% literate. But it could never tell how many percentage of the God's Own Country is EDUCATED!!! 9%, may be :-(

My Lady Love

I hug her and she looks at me...

I kiss her on her cheeks and she looks at me...

I kiss her on her nose and she looks at me...

My fingers stroll through her hair, and she looks at me...

I look at her, and her gleaming eyes tell me quitely....

"You are the best dad in the world!"

What Do I Read?

I liked reading. Not a lot, but still I used to read. Novels, poems and biographies.
They inspired me. They inspired me good!

Now that I dont get enough time (finding no time is an absolute farce!), I spend my free time in reading technical books. .NET has been my latest love for the past 2 years. So I read more about that reigning technology.

Reading has been a gift to my family. My maternal aunt is a voracious reader and writer. She is not published though. She is quite shy, in that matter. I have insisted umpteen times to get her works published, but she has been dodging through my attempts.

Well, my wife is also a voracious reader and she completes a book in 2 days. 2 days! Well, thats unbelievable for me atleast. Recently one of my closest friends, who also happens to be a heavy book worm, got her a novel - The Da Vinci Code. As she was busy in some other novels, I put a hand on it. And that was it. I got hooked. But it took me 4 - 5 weeeks before I completed the book.

This book was awesome. It taught me a lesson - there are things that we do not know. THAT WE DO NOT KNOW!

Karunakaran - The live Tsunami