My Gradma in Pictures

My mom likes to collect the photographs and it is always cherishing to look, ponder or recollect the memoirs while turning the albums. On my recent trip to India I got back a couple of photographs of my grandmother. One with her family when she was a 4 year old girl and the other with her mom, grandmother, daughter and granddaughter - A photograph of five generations.

It is sad that no one from this photograph is alive today but it would have been a proud moment to see and live with 5 generations of family.

Digital albums have the advantage of easiness, quality and proficient but it could not replace the experience we have with traditional album. None the less, it is the digital technology which has provided the same

Photos from India

Vanaguntala Peeta

Flowers that I often encountered as a child

Folded Flowers

సీతమ్మ వడికిన వడుకు

రాముడు నేసిన నేత

పదివేలకు ఎవ్వరూ నెయరు

పదిపైసలకు ఎవ్వరూ వల్లరు

Weaver bird nest

Chinta chiguru

Majestic Bull with its Gangadolu

Pictures from car on return journey from Tirumala

Entrance of Tirumala

Gulmohar - Fire of the forest

Annamacharya

Soumyanatha Temple

Soumyanahta Temple - Side view

Soumyanatha Temple - Front view

Things Change

Things Change...
Yes, they change...
And they are good too.

I was pondering on these words while reminiscing about my recent visit to India. No surprise that Hyderabad went through a metamorphosis in the last decade or so, but my native village and its people have changed in their living style and in their culture to some extent.

My Grand Parents used to have the cattle of about 70. There used to be at least 3 persons dedicated to take care of it. Today we have One Bull, One Cow and One Calf. Most of the families in villages are just getting rid of their cattle since it is difficult to manage. Farmers are shifting or rather shifted their crop from Agriculture to Horticulture. Where there used to acres of Green Paddy, now it just turned to be acres of Mango trees.

Human Resources are the major reason for this transformation. It is difficult to find a helping hand to take care of cattle or to manage various stages of Paddy. I think the very starting of this scarcity of human resources was when Money is replaced for Barter transactions. My grand mother used to give paddy in exchange for the services of those helping hands. Now all the transactions are in Rupees. The second would be the abuse of minimum wage policy without work policy by politicians.

My grand father never let the cattle to be sold to the butcher. Every cattle was take care even when it was not in a position to walk or sick. There was a helping hand just to take care of weak cattle - to make it stand for a while in day, so that it won’t be infected. The time has changed. Farmers are adopting commercial dairy. That humanity is lost. Cattle are no longer perceived from its divine nature.

Villages are adopting Plastic and other bio hazardous material without proper recycling system. When west is moving towards Organic, we are moving towards synthetic hormones. There is “Organic” buzz in metros but it certainly not travelled into the villages.

We have come to US in search of change, for a good change. We wanted a better life style. It might not be fair for me to expect the system and environment in my native village to stay still like it was when I was growing up. There is no harm in getting satellite dish, cell phones or adopting salwar instead of sarees and lehengas in villages , but my heart feels sorry when serenity and purity of once village environment is lost.

The change that we need to adopt should be like the cell phone revolution, where we have taken advantage of the research and technology of west and put it good use. India needs to be part re-cycling and organic revolution now rather than undoing these at later day. We should take advantage of cattle but there is a need to perceive it as divine – that would be a Good Change.

P.S. – Things Change is the song from one of the Sesame Street episodes.

Gifted Kids - A Challenge To Parents

The current moment in life has the hue of toddler parties. Birthday parties filled with jumping, tumbling and celebrating. It was one of those parties last weekend and the clown was entertaining the kids with his usual tricks of juggling and pulling the string of colorful scarf from his mouth (instead from his pocket :)). All the kids were giggling and screaming as usual.

In the middle of all this, clown filled a balloon with air but didn’t tie the end of the balloon and gave it to a kid, to hold it. The trick is to make the audience laugh when the balloon goes Swoooooooooooosh in a zig zag angle before the kid holds on to the end of the balloon passed on by the clown.

And as usual kids started laughing and clown was saying to the kids “………hey what happened to the balloon…. I gave you to hold……” in a typical clown’s tone. Here an 11 year old gifted boy said to clown that “You should say…. Newton’s third law is making the balloon to fly….”

I was surprised and was recollecting what Newton’s third law was. However, I couldn’t recall. I was thinking what fun will those gifted kids have? Why din’t the boy giggle along other kids? He is looking for reason for the cause instead. May be their fun is in discovering those reasons.

I was wondering how much challenge it is to the parents and teachers of these extraordinarily talented kids to provide an entertainment, a conversation or an activity to play on a rainy day. And how difficult it is for the kid to find a peer who could enjoy the reasoning behind everything that goes around them?

Seeing an A+ on report card may not be challenging as it is for parent like me, but it takes an ample amount patience and dedication to nurture these kids.

And Google helped my brain to gather my memory on Newton's third law :) - Every action has an equal and opposite reaction.

Glee

Netflix has recently included Glee Season 1 into their online streaming collection, and ever since I am watching it back to back episodes late night. No wonder that it has captured so many Emmy awards and higher ratings.

It has been a while since I have enjoyed any sitcom. Glee’s retrospective of very subtle norms of education system and society in general is very brilliant. It makes you wonder if the directors have chosen the songs for occasion or created the occasion for song, but everything in the series is very Gleeful. Amazing performances by Jane Lynch and Chris Colfer.

It also gives a little glitch when visualizing the American High School environment, which has to be taken on by my kids one day :). It is worth watching to made a day filled with Glee

Mahatma A Hero

I was reading books about African American leaders for my daughter, that she got from school as part of her home. There were books about Barack Obama and Martin Luther King. Both of them consider Mahatma Gandhi as their hero.

That made me to recall that when I was in elementary school, I never visualized Mahatma as a Hero. My grand father was a true Gandhian and he was nick named as “Shadnagar Gandhi” - Shadnagar is the province of my native village. As a child, I had few negative influences about Gandhi.

At our native home we had a unique poster of a huge tree with all the Indian Freedom fighters’ faces as leaves, fruits, branches and trunk of tree. It had numerous faces which were not very popular as ‘Captain Lakshmi’. At the center of the tree was of course Mahatma Gandhi.

Once in a while my cousins used to admire that picture, going through all the faces and reading their names. Every time we used to either hate or curse Gandhi, for being in the center of the tree. Not sure, how we ended up with that thought, but we used to think that Gandhi was bad for India. May be as a kid we were just following the leader in the group. It was always Bhagath Singh and Bose that we admired as Heroes. Of course , even as of today that admiration did not diminish.

During that time we never understood the meaning of ‘Hero’. Was it because of Tollywood effect? May be or May be not. Because most of fairy tales were also involved of fighting with enemy rather than making peace with it.

I was almost in high school, to realize that, it is not Gandhi’s decision on partition that made him a Mahatma, but, it was all about his principles and binding to them, and his simple life. One of my English lessons in high school was about Gandhi’s last day. I remember my teacher mentioning that who would say ‘Hey Ram’ when he gets shot from a bullet? Gandhi dint say ‘Aah’ or any other word that an average man would otherwise utter, but it was ‘Hey Ram’ in a very mild tone. We don’t hear any complain or pain in the way those words are uttered. No ordinary man can act like that.

I am glad that, today I could make my child see as why Gandhi has to be a hero. And thanks to the brilliant Hollywood movie ‘Gandhi’. And thanks to all those books out there which are making
parents and kids to think and wonder.

Continuing Our Struggle...

It’s been a year. A year of agitations, A year of restlessness and more importantly a year filled with losses. Loss of Souls, Money and time over the past year and half, which are irrevocable.

After incurring all these, we are still circling round with same issues and demands of separate Statehood. There is no progress from Government or the leaders, towards that goal except. Over the last year and more, time has increased the strength and unity of the people of Telangana if not anything else.

Last year, Government and Police could stop Assembly Muttadi that was conspired by students with a great armed force. This year, people’s strength has overcome that force from Police and were able to achieve their aim.

It does not seem a likely factor that TDP and Congress leaders would resign to create the vacuum, as the likelihood of re-electing them after the resignation is very slim compared to that of last year. In this heat, people would not vote for them even if they resign for the cause.

Will the Government pass the bill in parliament for separate statehood or do we need to wait for elections of 2014? People have waited for 50+ years for this and they might wait for another 4 years. But at what price? Congress has spent 40+ crores on SKC, which they know from the day one, that the outcome of the committee would not be regarded. Was it worth to spend that kind of common man’s money for the sake to merely pause the agitation for less than a year? How much would they spend and how much people need to loss in another 4 years?

Last year, people of Telangana might have not seen people from Andhra and Rayalaseema with indifference. It was the conception that the agitation for separate statehood is nothing to do with the people of other regions, but everything to do with its leaders. If this agitation continues, I think the indifference and hatred would grow between the common people of three regions.

Lets hope and cross our fingers about passing the bill in Parliament by end of March 2011.

A Cooking Mishap

Weather you cook with a passion for cooking or cook because it is one of the daily chores, we do come across cooking mishap at least once. Reason for the mishap could be anything from misinterpreting the instructions in the recipe or recipe itself has missed few ‘obvious’ or ‘default’ steps of cooking which are not so obvious or default for the beginners in the cooking.

With numerous recipes by cuisines over the net, I am sure people do stumble upon making a blunder and end up either laughing at outcome or cursing about the time and work that has been wasted on the recipe.

Corn vada (Mokkajonna Vada ) was one of my favorite snack in India. I like the hot and spicy food compared to the sweets.The most bizarre part of this recipe is taking the seeds off the kernels. It is a time consuming process but all the effort is worth while for those delicious vadas.

After coming to US, I saw frozen corn seeds. Seeds removed from kernels, processed and ready to cook. I was excited because it took off the time consuming step of peeling the seeds off. So, I got them and blended them with ginger, garlic and green chilies…. the regular ingredients.

The blended paste dint look like how it supposed to look. Nevertheless I convinced my mind that, it is alright since all it matters is the taste. I heated oil in the pan and started dropping the batter into it. I could not make the shape of the vada with the batter as it was too soft. So, I went ahead and dropped the batter as round balls with the spatula. The batter was breaking in the oil which it was not supposed to. Then I was little suspicious that there might be a mishap on the way.

After frying the first batch of vadas or balls, I have put one of it in my mouth with imaging the authentic corn vada taste… as salty, spicy and with little crunchy. To my surprise…it tasted too SWEET :(. I dint read the bold letters on the package ‘Sweet Corn’. :(

That was my last attempt of making corn vadas. Though I am not very passionate for cooking, I do try new and old recipes from the family, friends and of course from cyber. Nothing yet has disappointed me as Corn Vadas.