Furniture Saga: ED skills

This is how our bookcase cum computer table (left) and wardrobe (right) should look like. The carpenters should start their work within few days, and finish by March end. The bed is yet to be designed, but should follow soon.

I was happy with the fact that I could put my engineering drawing skills to any good use (other than solving exam papers). And I am very happy that they are still sharp :-).

Old pics of old Pune, Part II

That's the most prominent hillock in and around the city of Pune called Parwati (which literally means "the hillock" :-). It has a very old temple of Lord Ganesh on top, built by the Peshwas. The photo above is more than 120 years old, you can tell that by the turbans (again, *sigh*). The lake you see there is gone; instead there's a very crowded residential area with tall apartment complexes and a big slumy area with not-so-tall shanties.

BTW, I like the away that guy there is standing. I didn't know they could pose in those times ;-).

Candy floss and Gola

Candy floss and barf ka gola (flavored snow-ball): essential parts of any visit to a fair. They sure bring out the child in you; memories of days when going to the fair was an occasion. When candy floss sticking to your lips and tongues becoming red with the gola was fun :-).

Play in the dark

We went for a play on sunday evening. A black comedy, a political and situational satire spoofing the story of Mahabharata. Our ribs were hurting with all the laughing. That is, the play was good.

And the theatre was dark. Much dark. I've noticed that during plays, the theatre is much darker than during a movie. The darkness really takes you in. May be a play needs more concentration than a movie. Movies are anyway so dumb these days. Hmm.

Buckets full of pickles

We went to an exhibition-cum-fair yesterday. Many things there: from 52-inches projection TVs to huge sofa-sets, from aloe juice to ethnic fabrics, funky cooking pans to house management software, super-spicy mutton to sweet candy-floss and sassy sales-women to rude pamphlet boys. We thought it was a good idea not bringing much cash ... it was a heaven for an impulsive shopper. We bought only one thing, and that is shown in the picture above.

The most crowded stall of all was the "pickles in buckets" stall. Apparently, Rajasthani pickles. They had more than 20 types of spicy, sweet and tangy pickles filled in big buckets: totally mouth-watering, tongue-shattering affair. Mango, garlic, chillies, lemons and what not. You could see people drooling in buckets over the scene.

Old pics of old Pune, Part I

These are changing forms of Shaniwar-wada, probably the most popular and important monument in the city of Pune. It is from here that the Peshwas (prime-ministers of the Maratha king) ruled a big part of India for 150 years before the British came in.

In the center, you can see an old photo of the wada, apparently taken around 1870. There's a bustling market in front of it, with people wearing big turbans, which I didn't know were so common in this part of India. And there are those bamboo baskets full of roundy things; I think onions and potatos.

Top right, is how the wada looks at night these days: it hosts a light and sound show every night. There's no open ground in front of it anymore, so no market; although, it is surrounded by the densest commercial area of the city. There's a wide lawn in place of the open ground now, with fountains and a statue of Peshwa Bajirao (image at the bottom), the most influential Peshwa ruler. And then, there are no turbans. People just wear what the British gave us: shirts and pants.

Turbans. Big turbans. Hmm, need to revise my history.

Spring Time, Part I

Spring is here! Colors are changing everywhere. The road to our workplaces is lined with these tall trees full of bright yellow flowers. It's refreshing to see the blooming colors while going to office. A change in color is just what the doctor recommended for people not wanting to get used to their routines ;-).

And then, pink gerberas are in the market. Pink is a pinky pink all-gooey-gooey color ... but its still beautiful, especially on flowers :-).

City sunset

It's not very often that you can enjoy a blushing sunset in a busy city-life. The balcony of our little adobe looks down on the Baner hills, around a kilometer away. Till that point its all modern civilization, which thankfully is less taller than our view. Sadly, you can't catch the disk of the sun ... too much dust and pollution in air for that. Long live light-scattering.

Oh, and today's valentine's day. Blah, whatever. Long live marketing.

Your home, at night

Here's a picture I received in mail some time back. Its a collage of satellite images of various parts of Earth taken at night. Its a collage because all parts cannot have night at the same time. Looks beautiful ... and bluish. And here I was thinking the color of night is black. Well, the satellites have proved me wrong ;-).

You can tell major population areas by looking at concentration of lights. US eastern seaboard is clear, so is Japan, UK and western Europe. There's subtle concentration around Rio de Janeiro in Brazil as well as Johannesberg in South Africa. You can also clearly mark Sydney, Canberra, Melbourne and Perth in Australia, Bangkok in Thailand and HongKong in China. And notice how the Nile river is suspiciously marked bright in Egypt (Africa) ... I wonder why.

In India the lights are quite uniformly spread, but you can still distinguish Mumbai and Delhi.

Picture literally worth thousand words

A part of my book collection. Crammed into the almirah like this because we don't have space to keep all the books in one place, just too many of them. Soon plan to build a nice book case.

You can see some of favorites there: Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings, Ludlum's The Matarese Circle, Alan Moore's graphic novels Watchmen and From Hell, Heinlein's Stranger in a Strange Land, Stephenson's Cryptonomicon and Frank Herbert's Dune series.

Spooky doors

Spooky hand-prints on an old rusty door near Sanjyoti's hostel. The door remains closed and its always dark around it. And the night adds its own color to the scene.

I say, spooky things have a certain charm.

Hot Chick

Our first homemade non-veg fare. We made roasted chicken and Black Chicken. The former turned out fine and was gorged in few minutes by two hungry pigs err ... souls. The latter turned out too too spicy because of certain turny turn of events. We also had some external stomach-saving grace: gulab-jamun and seekh kebabs.

Room No. 19

Sanju's room in her hostel, the Sandwich. Room 19 used to belong to Dr Purnima and Dr Sanjyoti. Now it belongs to Dr Purnima only ... who is sleeping there cozily inside the room without noticing us coming in, taking a snap and khee-kheeing on a not-so-good joke ;-). Notice the balloon, Sanju still has a child left in her: if it goes away, she'll too ;-D.

Our first furniture

Our first piece of furniture: the living room entertainment unit. We also got a dining unit with this, for crockery etc. Both still need to be polished, decorated and finally, filled up :-). Got them second-hand from Anand, my boss. Next in line are the wardrobe and a double bed.

Home and office; as in desktops

Desktops at office and home respectively. Actually, the one at home should be termed broken-teepoy-top and is in fact a laptop. Dell GX on the left and HP Pavillion on the right. The one at home is also connected to the TV via a SVideo-RCA cable and doubles as an all-media player.

Puliyogare

Tonight's menu had Puliyogare, tangy tamarind rice from the state of Karnataka. We felt our first attempt at it was quite good. Tangy and slightly spicy. We had it with leftover kadhi (curd curry) and paalak (spinach).

Day and night

Sanju got some flowers yesterday. Gerberas and her favorite Nishigandh. Snap taken in the morning and then next in the night. The flowers had opened a bit in the water. The Nishigandh makes the hall sweetly fragrant.

Daal, kadhi, pickle and papad

Garma-garam paalak daal with steaming kadhi, fried papad and spicy pickle on a cold evening. Whats missing from the picture are the wafts of steam coming off the rice and the aroma of hot kadhi.