Read at your own risk ..

...I am in a foul mood today...

I had a terrible terrible night….awake for most part, tossing and turning, this way and that. I blame it on my monthly insomnia, where once in a month, for no particular reason, I just cannot sleep. I tried everything…increased the fan speed, decreased the fan speed, chucked my blanket for a lighter sheet, held the phone, held myself, read for a while, sang songs in the head, thought pleasant thoughts, and all I remember from the night is staring at the clock, watching the seconds hand go round and round, slow as ever.

The last I remember is watching it turn 5 AM and I think I finally caught a few winks before I woke up in the morning. And here I am, sitting in office, sleepy as hell, feeling tired and most importantly feeling low.

I am sick of everything. I am so so restless.

A simple Indian wedding..

My cousin was in Hyd a particular weekend. He wooed me into attend a random wedding and being totally jobless that weekend and since the wedding was at my fav town , I obliged ( grrr.. regrets) . Typical Indian connection like “aunt’s son’s brother-in-law’s something ki shaadi”. Dude, my cousin has some capacity to socialize!

Of course he brought more food stuff to eat that I was happily bragging about and sharing with friends.

Anyhow, so the two of us, the Boy (why do only boy-cousins ask me to accompany for weddings.. ptch ptch )and me, ended up driving to Warangal for the wedding. Of course being the enthu cutlet the boy is, we reached early. Before anyone else. No girl’s side and no boy’s side. The chairs in the garden were still upside down and the band wallahs were lazing around on the grass in their baniyans. You can imagine! 

The boy looked at me sympathetically, and told me I should hang out someplace and be back in about two hours, just to meet the bride and groom. And of course he was totally comfortable there, having spotted someone we’re supposedly related to, and of course I haven’t met, ever in my life. Before I knew it, random kids were calling him anna,bhayya and touching his feet and I was lost. The boy? Lesser said, the better. I ran away to a corner and called all friends in warangal to see where we could go. The only friend I know who lives there was busy so I was on my own.

And so I landed up at some Plaza and squealed in delight spotting a nice restaurant there. And then the realization. Just as I walked in. Dressed up in “I –am-attending-a-wedding “attire, with matching footwear ( borrowed from the boy..), I looked quite silly. And the Sholapur chappal clicking on the hotel’s marble floors were not helping!

Any how, so I settled in for a beer. The waiter looked quite concerned, and asked me if we wanted to be seated “upstairs” if I wasn’t comfortable! *rolls eyes*

And that’s that. I went to pick him up, ate a hurried dinner, congratulated the people in question and left. Now that I think about it, I still don’t know the names of the bride and groom.

We were from the bride’s side, in case you’re wondering!


P.S: you must have heard of bachelor parties before wedding days.. but I havenumerouse hilarious experiences of bachelor parties on wedding days where the groom wasn’t allowed to go marry.. :P
Will put that up soon..

No communication is better than bad communication…

…. But … Let’s talk!

I hate the formal pleasantries in general discussions but sometimes I feel the hunger for a conversation. Interaction. Communication. Being in touch beyond the customary “How are you? All good?”..you know what I am saying..

And I notice it every time... How a face to face conversation with a friend is nicer than one on the phone. How a phone conversation is nicer than a text. How a chat on Gtalk is nicer than one on Twitter…you get the drift?

I have finally come to terms with the fact that Facebook, for instance is NOT a place to “keep in touch” with friends. It’s a social network, best to share interesting links with people from all walks of life. Seeing someone’s vacation pictures and liking someone’s status updates is NOT being friends. Being in touch means so much more. If we stopped making the effort of picking up the phone and actually talking, how much do we know really?

Gifts or Cash or Cash-gifts ?

…. the holiday season is back at its full swing in North America.

As far as I can remember, Amul chocolates were the first ones to cash in on the whole "gift for someone you love" idea in India, much before Archies and Hallmark came about and created a thousand reasons to buy cards, pendants, cassettes and a whole lot  of gift items.

I was considered one of the uncool people in school, I didn't believe in Valentine's Day. According to the Valentine's Day myth, if you 'proposed' someone, they had to say yes. The idea had terrified me, more so because a) I didn't have that many suitors and b) I was rather shy then (!). After much resistance I decided it was worth the effort of making a Valentine's Day card... Only to learn I was still uncool because who wanted a hand-made card? Archies had much better options. So I scraped money to buy one only to be told there was a Rose Day and a Chocolate Day card -- and a rose and chocolate respectively -- to be bought as well...

Making Dosas…

…IS AN ART !! Yes, Really!

I make South Indian style veg food, but have no idea about dosas . I love eating them though! My mother tried to teach me, telling me making dosas was the simplest thing, but really, its one of those things I kept saying “Some –other- day” to!

On a visit to the Indian store here in greenville, I found readymade dosa batter, so thought I’ll pick it up for me to try at my apartment. I thought I should be making them comfortably .

In the evening over last weekend, my roomie, Mr. Atheist and I were looking for a snack to eat. And we remembered the left over dosa batter. So we thought it’ll be fun to try out making dosas and gobbling them up as we waited for one more friend to join us for dinner.

The 7 Female Poses of Facebook

For reasons that I’m not going to explain because it makes me look like a giant loser, I was recently looking through all of the girls named Vidya Iyer on Facebook. First, let me say that there are a lot of females named Vidya living in this world. Although I didn’t find the Vidya I was originally looking for, my quest became a truly interesting study of Facebook photos and their purposes. As a guy, I choose my Facebook photo primarily by how unrealistically attractive I look in it. It’s narcissistic, but you can’t deny that you do the same thing. I’m not going to lie, sometimes when I’m getting ready to go out, I’ll evaluate whether or not I’m looking “Facebook-worthy” that day. In other instances I’ll even attend certain events just because I think I’ll get a cute Facebook pic out of it. Overall, it’s accepted that guys use their Facebook pic as an outlet to display their “Oh my Gawd I look cool!” pictures. What about girls? With girls it’s harder. It would be a little difficult for a girl to display a nicely cropped photo of herself trying to look as cute as possible, working all the right angles. While I was searching through the Vidyas, I discovered that there exist 7 different standard shots that girls use for their Facebook picture. It’s like girls got together and agreed that these 7 poses will make them look good without trying too hard. The best part is that most of them are a hilariously horrible call. Let’s do a little case-study, shall we?

A day without mobile

One fine sunny and warm morning- i started off to the office .


For the first time in years (far longer than I can actually remember for sure), I’ve forgotten to take my mobile phone with me. As I was half way along my journey to work i realised this ,which means I will be separated from my phone until at least 7pm today.


I already feel a bit cut-off, but that will soon change when I get into the office. Suffice to say, if you need to reach me today, you will actually need to call my office landline for a change, rather than going straight to my mobile.



I do get rather fed up with people, usually work contacts, who insist on using my mobile phone number as the primary way of contacting me for work-related queries (and I’m talking about the pointless stuff like “did you get the lunch invitation which we sent you a week ago” rather than the more useful “My manager is running late for his lunch meeting with you”.