Tea party politics

A political drama has come to an end after TN Governor Rao’s resignation. At the same time, another interesting one has begun with the TN Government disclosing the transcript of the conversation between the Chief Minister Jayalalithaa and Union Home Minister Shivraj Patil. Leaving aside the question whether it is proper to disclose a supposedly confidential conversation to the press, the funniest thing about it is Patil’s reasoning that the Governor is being removed for not hosting a tea party on the Independence Day. Looks like a school teacher sending a second grader out of the class for not doing the home work. When would these guys grow up?

Shorter Days & Longer Nights are back again. I realised this when I started for work at 7 in the morning. It was very dark outside that I would have been forgiven for thinking it is 5 a.m. Once the Day light saving time takes effect over the weekend, the realisation would be more complete.

Reunions

Frankly, I don’t know what I had in mind when I opted to have a web presence, but now, it appears to be the best thing I have ever done so far. Few weeks back, Ramchi jumped from nowhere, left a message in my guest book and followed it up with a call. Both of us were studying at Aptech, Trichy and the last time we met was sometime in 1995. He had stumbled upon my blog when my unusual name has rung a bell but a look around the site made him get in touch with me.

For quite sometime, I have been reading ‘Ahambaavam’ Guru’s blogs. I had made some comments against his entries as well and he too has been reading my posts. I was pleasantly surprised on seeing the comments he left for my previous post – he is the same guy with whom I had done my schooling but remained out of touch for the last 12 years or so. What a way to get connected.. I am so proud & excited!

TV

Our TV is not functioning anymore. Just as I was ogling at Natasha Kaplinsky in BBC Breakfast yesterday, the picture shrunk, turned green before vanishing in to tiny dot. Initially I thought that the heavy winds have blown our antenna away, but sadly I realised that it has something to do with the picture tube.

I was not an avid TV watcher (I am not comfy with this term, but using it for want of a better one). While in India, thanks to my younger sibling’s schooling, we never had the cable connection at our home until after I left the shores. Even otherwise, most of my evenings were spent at the offices of Ramco doing something or other (only god knows what!) & weekends on the MCA classes. First two years of life in UK, where I stayed with 3 other friends of mine – were literally spent watching innumerable Tamil movies that we rented from the shop nearby that programmes were never even considered. We would have watched about 400-500 movies in those two years at an average of 4 to 5 a week that in case we watched any other programme, it was definitely not out of choice. When I moved to Bournemouth in mid-2002, I didn’t get Tam movies here, but it was the time I forcibly drowned myself in studies that TV never came in to the picture (pun unintended). But for News at 10, Cricket matches, Wimbledon & WWTBAM – nothing really interested me much.

After my wedding last year, my wife had no choice but to kill time watching the idiot box. Over a period of time, she had her own favourite programmes & comperers that whenever she used to talk about Carol Vorderman or someone else, I was like who & sometimes what! After all, I like watching only the likes of Andrew Marr & Gavin Hewitt – the Political Editor & Special correspondent of BBC News respectively. Only in the recent few months, as a consequence of the “mornings r 4 me & my books, evenings wd be spent with u” agreement reached with my other half, I got to realise that there are quite a few nice programmes, that I would eventually like. At a time, when we got set to a routine and started making best use of the idiot box, it has ceased functioning. For now, we have hit upon the idea of eeing how life goes without a TV at home. Let me see how long we manage.

Digital Organisers

Not long ago, there was this electronic thingy called Digital Organisers (or Digital Diaries as it used to be called in India) that used to be the proud possession of so many. Model after model came out with increased memory and it was a very handy tool to carry the phone numbers around, particularly for those who didn’t have mobiles. Even last year, I bought few of those and gifted them to some of my folks in India. Probably time has moved faster than I kept pace with, I am unable to find that gizmo(?!) in the shops where I used to find that earlier. However, Digital Organisers do exist now in the form of PDAs. Problem with PDAs are that the ones in the lower end of the price range are quite heavy that one feels like carrying a brick in the pocket and the lighter ones burn a hole in the pocket with their price tag. See, how a product that was so popular could lose its market within such a short span of time. Reminds me of how Vim Dishwash Bar kicked out Sabena cleaning powder in a matter of weeks back in 1993.

Buy one, Get one FREE

I have seen this offer been made available for shirts, chocolates, bread loaves and even mobile phones. When I walked inside Sovereign Shopping Centre in Bournemouth on Saturday, I couldn’t believe myself. A huge board conveying the above message was over a… hold your breath.. CAR. It was a Vauxhall Meriva priced at £9995. Unable to believe, I asked the sales man about that. Perhaps he thought that I didn’t look like one who would buy a car, he said that the offer is genuine and is valid for that day alone in a tone that suggested, “don’t ask any more questions”. Bad salesmanship. Anyway, that’s not something I am gonna bother about.

I am certain what they had displayed on that day were brand new cars, but looking at the dealer’s website, I have reason to believe that the offer might be for used cars. Whatever be it, its true that I was taken aback.

Saraswathi Pooja

This is one day of the year which I used to look forward with glee. This used to be the only day when my parents would ask us to be away from the books and keep it for pooja. I, like scores of children in whose households they practice this ritual, would wish that they have this Saraswathi pooja every month or even every week. Today, as I tidied up the house and placed my books before the gods & godesses for pooja, it brought back all the memories of yesteryears where we used to clean up the house, more particularly our vehicles and apply sandal paste & kumkum. It is especially during these times, we miss India very much. I don’t want to write or even think too much about that as it would spoil my current mood and I would again start contemplating of returning back to India at the earliest. I have set some targets and it is important that I don’t lose sight of that.