jayantiblogshere

  It was somewhere in November 2017. It was the eve of Haloween. Some kids from our apartment situated in the IT hub of Bangalore, were getting ready all dressed up as monsters and witches to go around and knock the doors playing ‘trick or treat’. Earlier in the evening the parents flocked to the nearby shop to stock varieties of candies so that they had something to dole out when the kids came knocking for ‘Trick or treat’.   Our neighbourhood ‘ kirana’ store was run by a middle aged man who never really understood what this American ‘Trick or treat’ was all about.  That evening all the stock of cadbury's chocolates - perk, five star and even Ferrero Rocher was sold out. Many parents were walking away after enquiring, possibly to explore stocks of candies in yet another neighbourhood 'Kirana' store.   Massively irritated, he decided  to push his ‘Swadeshi’ agenda thus to a bunch of US born kids and their US returned parents.   Retrieved from...

  Kispay !  Kispe bharosa karoon ? Many years ago,  I was one of the first few people who signed up for Paytm.  This was much before the demonetisation days.  UPI PAYMENTS were not so popular in the pre -demonetisation era. I was sold out on the idea and truly thought it was cool and exclusive thing to be signing up for the digital way of payments through the phone without having to handle cash.    With demonetisation, Paytm had the first mover advantage and a windfall considering its business model scaled up due to that what management consultants would term as the ' black swan event'  called demonetisation. Until then currency notes and funkily shaped coins would go out of print and mint and fade away from public memory every now and then. It  was all seamless and painless and nobody really gave it a thought leave alone give it a name.  This was before ‘demonetisation’ became an adjective, verb and assumed historical significance. It h...

 Ootta from Namma Thotta ( food from our garden)  It has been a slow and steady progress , what with these incessant  and unseasonal rains attracting the pests, rotting out the seedlings and making sowing and harvesting so unpredictable.  A big shout out to all those small farmers whose livelihood oscillates and depends upon mother nature's mood swings. Mother nature seems to be showing menopausal symptoms.... But ye shall not complain about the incessant rains... we need to soak in as much water as we can, because the summer is going to be scorching without all those trees that were sacrificed for the namma metro. And to keep us urban monsters fed and hydrated is getting to be a tedious tasks year on year.      The harvest has been slow and steady.  The conventional vegetable plot has been yielding some harvest although it has now massively slowed down.  The circle gardens are a new experiment on the adjacent plot.  This is my home...

 Being gender neutral ...  I always associated the term  Batter to 'idli' and 'dosa'. The other day I was watching an interview where Sachin would constantly repeat the term 'Batter'.  I put it down to bad english although this was not the Sachin from the 1990's but a very mature, well heeled, sightly middle aged but the usual baby faced Sachin talking about how he and Rahul Dravid foxed bowler Chris Cairns with some of their shrewd and rather funny antics while Rahul was at the crease and Sachin at the other end at a match in Mohali.    Interesting piece of story telling that one.  And a must watch.  That is when I learnt Batter is the new gender netural term since the gentlemen's game has now caught on with the ladies as well. Although with the ladies' version the fanfare and bankrolling is nowhere near to what the gentlemen's version of IPL commands.  Talking of gender neutral terminology, here is one one such place - the play arena 9 badm...

Ootta from Namma Thotta ( food from our garden) July 2022  It was a lovely morning and the Road to Khajisonenahalli was lit up with the bright morning sun as I drove back from the farm . On that early morning drive from Bangalore to Chennai, I looked forward to rejunevante the vegetable patch that eluded me through the 2-3  COVID filled years in Chennai.  Harish was kind enough to take care of the plot while I would still be serving my notice period and then return to Bangalore.   Everything seemed perfect for the new beginnings.  On the  way back on the NH47 Alexa aided the driving mood and blared Subramania Bharati's  'Kaani Nilam vendum' perhaps more than 100 times by several different musicians until the city traffic hit us out a put a stop to the mood.    That was indeed a memorable drive filled with the promises of the new beginning.  Here is the blogpost by Raja Thatha from where I have picked up the lyrics and its Engli...

 That quaint red box at the end of the street with a flap that said next clearance by 5:30 pm or whatever. How faithfully they were delivered ...carrying messages of love and longing...of loss and hope... of news good and bad... The cream coloured postcards and the blue coloured inland letters that filled up even at the flaps... And for those wishing to write longer epistles there was the envelope again cream in colour with a brownish Ashok chakra embossed there.   And they came affixed with the postal  stamps... And because there were stamps there were stamp collectors... Pictured at the back yard of a dilapidated post office this morning...