Variety is the spice of life

What can i say about an year, which literally changed my world upside down in a matter of moments. It started of in trepidation of something that was threatening to happen for several months and when it actually happened, more than fear it left me with a sense of profound anger. God was mighty caring in the sense that he showed me a new path right away and despite it being the hardest couple of months, somehow with his immense grace, managed to survive those tense times. Hopefully next year should be much better and path breaking into newer frontiers. Whenever i go through certain unpleasant times, i always realize at hindsight, they kind of prepared me for where i ended up down the line. "Testing" is barely the word to describe those passages of time for they are so traumatic that it sends one into downward spiral of negative thinking of which i am already a master. In fact at times, i hate to read positive quotes or avoid self motivational books, for they sound so phony and...

Self peethals time again with this space scoring another milestone mark of 600 thousand hits.  With the last 100 thousand coming in this year alone, makes it one of the most traffic prone time for this blog. The credit for all and everything goes to one man you all know by now and he is none other than our dear Thala, who with his continuous words of encouragement, ensures that this kodumai continues for all of you who happened to stop by this place. Thanks once again and several times again thala for your positive words and comments. I look out for your comments more than the post themselves, which happens to be just a medium for cashing in on your wise words. And for all saga prayaanis who took their time in reading out the contents, thank you so much for pushing the needle further.

 Getting haircut is nothing short of a great incident in every kids life. Some may have good experiences and pleasant while for majority of them, the barber with their scissors, making that tickety-ticket sound and the half blade razor that makes a scary appearance towards the end, scratching the skin behind the ears and right over the backside of the neck, above all one cutting plier like contraption that is used for plucking out hair to its lowest root (also called as summer cut) - to even think of those days makes me shudder. Odeon saloon, which was right at the entrance of our street, used to be the venue for so many of those painful memories. It was a 10 by 10 room with two rolling chairs, that rivalled the hot seat in KBC. The elderly man who cut our hair (i am particular in not mentioning it as styling for every single one of us who ever had hair cut during our school days ended up being commented as having had our hair cut in a rats hole (eli bondhu)) was quite scary and wo...

 I thought i had mentioned about this series when the first season went live but apparently haven't. This series on Netflix has an interesting premise of a lady stalker who is after her guy and even manages to marry him, only to find herself in a terrible situation at the end of season 1, which was a cliffhanger of sorts leading into the next season. We've seen innumerable number of stories where, typically it is the guy who does all these - chasing behind his childhood crush, despite knowing she has set her heart on someone else, terrorizing the boy friend and his family into submission, with the girl's dad conveniently in the employment of the stalker guy and giving into his adamant demands, his all powerful and otherwise ruthless dad ensures the marriage happens, all this while the lady in pursuit conniving with her boy friend on how to escape the clutches of her maniacal lover, eventually getting married and in some cases, even settling into a domestic arrangement with ...

I had almost forgotten about this book, but the one thing i remembered was i hated it when i read it the first time. The sequence in which Dan Brown's books happened for me was "Angels and Demons" was the first, followed by Digital Fortress and then only i read Davinci code i guess. Basis the fantastic premises on all three of them, with Digital fortress being my first favorite (but for its ending, because of which Angels and demons pips it down to second). Since almost all his other books are from the religious symbolism premise based on Robert Langdon, these two books have a space of their own amongst his collections as odd ones out. I was curious to figure out what was that thing about Deception point that made me feel so strongly against it and began reading it again. To my surprise, and to be honest had anyone given me this book without the wrapper carrying the author's name, i would never have believed that this was written by Dan Brown. Ditto goes for digital f...

Since there aren't any kids of his age in our apartment me and junior are our playmates. Be it board games or any other games, more often than not we are the partners and competitors. Instead of just forming the regular rules, i often try to make it "funny" (also read as antics that will make wifey mad with rage). Since junior is keen to study about geography (guess it comes with this age) we will play mock quiz with each other on countries/capitals, sobriquets and whatever little else i played with my friends during school days. Wifey likes abbreviations and remembering their full forms. Apparently, one day she was asking for the expansion of DRDO for which junior has responded "Dr.Dolittle"!!! Sathiyama idhu naan solli tharala. But the moment he started laughing at his own version of the full form, wifey turned beet red in color and started scolding (not him...but me). She started complaining that junior is not taking anything serious and is always trying to m...