On saturday night we saw “Chak De”, a movie about 16 women hockey players from all over India, who with proper training from their coach go on to win the World Championship. After the movie, me and M had a discussion as to why sports in India only means cricket and why sports is not encouraged as a full time career in India..Cricket seems to be our national game..all the other sports are not given enough coverage or support…

Every time that we Indians return from the Olympics, there are heated arguments as to why we as a country with such a great population are not able to get a medal…The blame game starts and for some time committees are formed to study this matter…They all would like to know why a country like China can win medals and be near the top of the medal list and why we are nowhere to be seen in the medal list???…then after some time the whole story dies…and we go participate in yet another year of Olympics…

If we look at our sports persons, most of the them who represent India (in a sport other than cricket) are either from Kerala or Punjab or Chandigarh etc etc…why is that people from other states do not actively participate in sports…Is it that people in other states are not gutsy or is it that they want to continue in the same conventional safe life style…

Ask any parent on the plans for their child..he/she would definitely want their kid to be a doctor/Engineer/ MBA etc etc..There might be exceptions on this issue, but i am very sure that this percentage is very less or negligible…

Should we blame the Government for not supporting other games , recognising and support talent and not getting sufficient funds or should we blame the lack of sports persons (dont think this is the reason) or should we blame it on the lack of new blood…or maybe it is the case that talent is available but they are not able to afford the training or the amenities…

Whatever the case might be…ultimately the loser is Indian sports and the fact that we are not to be seen in the medal list…

In todays world where nobody has any time for others and where we all are stressed with our assignments and deadlines..lets take out time to  have a look at people who dedicated their lives for something for which they are / were passionate about…

Thought of writing this after i read a story on Jane Goodall, this sunday in Deccan herald. A lady who has dedicated her entire life to chimps, studying their behaviour, evolution… and understanding them…

One other person who devoted her life to take care of others is Mother Teressa, a person who cannot be described in words..have never met her but everytime i see her smiling face, i feel loved..i feel like she always has open arms waiting for the next person to hug her…

Salim Ali, the Birdman of India, devoted his life to wildlife. Systematically studied the birds, their behaviour, their living conditons etc..his books are now used by ornithologists and bird photographers with equal enthusiasm…

Other than these people, there are always those unsung heroes, who we all might not know and might never come to know, but have made a difference to somebody in their life time….

To all such people i bow and dedicate this part of my blog and hope that we always have such people amongst us and hope that their goodness makes this place a better place to live…

I am a self proclaimed foodie and hence i simply enjoy cooking, eating and cooking for people. So it was about time that i started a new blog on… what else… cooking;“Spices in life”.

The moment i started to write the recipes in the blog, i found that to make any cookery based blog look good two things are required..the recipe and pictures.. The recipe is definately important, but more important is the picture showing the end product…and in a short period of time i realised that just any picture is not sufficient. The photo of the food item should be taken in such a way that the lighting is correct, the food item is placed in an appropriate container, placed with a proper background, with accompaniments etc etc for the final product (ie the picture) to look good on the web…

Like, any other photography i realised, photographing a food item is also an art. I go through so many cookery books and websites, and now everytime i go through them i realise the hardwork that goes through, in making the food pleasing to our eyes…pleasing in such a way that we go through the whole receipe and try it at our home…

Rains always had a calming effect on me… and yesterday i really had a nice time with Mahesh…though i normally do not enjoy to get wet in the rain, Mahesh did convince me about some simple pleasures available in India so here’s what we did…

We both had just come back from a long day at office and seeing the light rain outside, we decided to take a small walk outside… so we set out with an umbrella in hand to take a walk in the rain…

We walked for some time and decided to have a hot cup of tea and samosa. I had hot dhokla… its then we realised it is not possible to walk outside in rain like this for a short distance and have a cup of hot tea in small shops anywhere else in the world…

I guess each one of us should take out time to enjoy such simple pleasures in life…

Have also just started a blog to pen down my experiences in the kitchen, the food that I cook and its visuals… Hope people like it…

Check out: http://priyaskitchen.wordpress.com/ 

More than 19 hours of journey to and fro, but not a word to complain. This Independence Day, some 13 of us decided to visit the Jog falls.

We started on tuesday night, reached Jog on wednesday morning, and back to Bangalore on thursday early morning.

Though we were tired after covering almost 800 kms in 24 hours, we all really enjoyed the climate. There was a lot of mist looked like got generated as the water fell from a height of over 800 feet. We also had this constant light drizzle throughout the day…overall for a first timer like me ..the trip was just awesome…

have uploaded pics that Mahesh took in the morning on wednesday, it looks better when enlarged…

har din laati hain ek nayi subah
har subah ke saath sajte hain naye khwaab
har khwaab ke saath judte hain hazaar prathanayein
har prathana ke saath jalte hain aasha ke diye

 har jalte hue diye se bujhte hain galiyon ke andhere
inhi galiyon mein milenge kahin woh log
jo kar rahen hain kisi ka intezaar
koi apne ya kisi apne ke khat ka intezaar

 us ek khat ke sang woh guzaarlenge apni baaki ki zindagi
woh zindagi jo ab ban gayi hein unke liye bina matlab ki
kisi nati ke muskurahat ke bina
kisi humsafar ke pyaar bhare do shabd ke bina

 woh to jilenge ab sirf yaadon ke sang
kisi ke bachpan ki kahaniyon ke sang
ab to sookh gayi hain ye boodhi aankhein rah tak tak ke
ab to kat rahi hain zindagi aise hi kai hum umr ke sang

 har din woh intezaar karte hain ek ujiyaare ki
ek ujiyara…har andhiyari raat ke baad
jo laayegi apne sang ek nayi subah
aur us nayi subah ke sang sajenge phir naye khwaab………..

Kya kalpana kar sakthe hain hum ek zindagi shabdon ke bin
Kya kalpana kar sakthe hain hum ek zindigi  boli ke bin 

Kalpana kijiye ek khilkhilati hui basti
Usme hain ek ladki basti 

Jo hain is shorgul se pare
Kyon ki uski zindagi hain shanti se bhari
 
Use pata hi nahin shabdon ka mayajal
Woh to ji rahi hain bas apni khamosh zindagi ke haal

Har din ji rahi woh ek sannate mein
Har dard woh chupati apne hi dil mein 

Uski hain alag hi duniya, Jisme hain haton ki boli
Har din who samajti naye naye ishaaron ki boli 

Kya sochti hogi woh, kya mehsoos karti hogi woh
Jab woh dekhti apne bachche ki khilhilati hasi 

Kya hain dukhi ke woh, sun nahin sakthi is pyaari si hasi

Ya hain woh khush ki chalakh rahi hain har taraf us gudiya ki hasi

Hain uske man mein ek hi prathana, ek hi aas
agle janam mein sun sake woh apne gudiya ke palne ki jhoolti awaaz 

Har anjaani dhun ko sake woh sun
Issi asha mein woh hardam hazaaron khwaishen karti hain bun!!!

What could be the reasons for chaos on roads in India… bad roads, lack of lane discipline, sudden change of a two way road to one way, prolonged construction of fly overs etc etc…

There is one more reaon which could easily make our schedule go topsy turvy…ministers visiting our cities!!!… The signals will not function, we will have traffic police to regulate the traffic…and the traffic will not move for some hours at a snails pace or may be we will not even move an inch…I have had an experience of getting stuck for an hour at a junction for the same reason…

 I believe if these ministers claim to understand the woes of the common man, even they should get stuck in the traffic and not get such special VIP treatment…if they have a schedule to keep up, so do we…In today’s world when technology has advanced to great levels, why can’t the ministers use the net meeting facility to conduct meetings (the one where people on both sides could view each other), or if they do want to move from one city to another use a helicopter and hop from one place to another…plus when they come to a city why dont they land at odd hours of the night and spare us the traffic chaos…

This reminds me of a comedy scene from a tamil movie called 12B, wherein actor Vivek will be stuck in a similar fashion for a long time and later he will come to know that the minister in question would be travelling by flight and the traffic police would have stopped the traffic on the road…This was shown to make fun of the whole regulation of traffic by the traffic police under such situations…the only thing that we can say is….

kab honge humare ye waiting ke dard door, kab mehsoos karenge yehi dard ye minister log;

ye kya gunah humara ke hum hain aam log, kya inka hain naseeb ke yen hain minister log!!!

Recently there has been a lot of talk on the standard of journalism or lets say lack of it… most of the stories which appear on news channels are full of hype and masala…the stories are shown only for a day and then they are forgotten..

Some of the hillarious ones are:

1. A story on the sour marriage relation ship between Raja and Sweta (Prerna in‘kasauti zindagi kay’). The journalist questions Raja for a long time and harasses him, asks him rudely whether he is drunk etc etc..to which when he grabs her and asks her to smell his breath!!!the heading for the BREAKING NEWS becomes ‘Raja manhandles lady reporter’..i  have seen this news item..if that lady did the same thing to me even i would get angry…

2. The really bad clippings of Abhi-Ash marriage..the clippings looked as if it was from a pirated CD..the quality was that bad..but what hype..the whole day all channels had nothing but this as BREAKING NEWS…yuck

3. Hype on Bipasha -John break up afer she kissed Ronaldo..really dont media people have any work to do..

4. Newspapers front page headlines also do not spare us of crap: they talk of anything and everything under the sky and usually it is about relationship status of some or the other cine star…their break up and then the best part is they try and analyse why these relationships did not last the test of time??? then come the SMS polls…eeks

During all this crap coverage, one wonders why news such as death of Col.Vasanth, or the fact that India has got ‘the last letters written by Gandhiji’ from London etc… do not receive much attention and get printed in small letters in the 2nd of 3rd page…

News now a days is nothing but silly and masaledar..they say they are reporting for the masses..are they really reporting for the masses???