Antara Echoes

Of all the delusions that I may have, the one I definitely do not carry is that of my singing capabilities. I am no Lata Mangeshkar or an Asha Bhonsle is but plain knowledge but definitely am not a female voice version of Anu Malik too. Now Why am I raking this all of a sudden? My son has caught the seasonsal flu and is at home at the time when I leave to work. Its not called the age of 'terrible two's' without reason. So for past few days he runs up to me, clings and starts bawling saying I am not supposed to leave him and go to work. I then cajole him, make up stories of a bad boss who will be bad to mamma if I dont work and end up making lots of promises to take him to his fav jhoola park; malls etc and feeling wretched leave home. Well today was no different except that sonny boy was half sleepy with droopy eyes. So I thought why not sing him a lullaby of sorts and then can make a clean exit while he has sweet dreams. With such good intentions I cradled him and for what...

He early on let her know who is the boss. He looked her right in the eye and clearly said, "You're the boss." -- Anonymous And that I say, is the key to most happy married life. ;) But jokes apart marriage has a away of growing upon you. Its a wonder what good companionship can actually do. In the age where quarter-life-crisis is the norm, 5 years of being married (with a child in tow) can be considered close to eternity. And going by this standard, it qualifies me to get a little preachy too. However am not going to abuse my reader's sensibilities by stating the mundane of not stepping over each other's toes or ask to whisper sweet nothings all the time. Heck, there are times when all you would want is whack your spouse for mulling over a lost wicket while your child is contemplating using the sofa cushion as his potty-seat. Marriage is just like - say shopping. You itch to wear that new outfit at every given opportunity till the sheen wears off. Not sayin...

Its been quite some time I visited this space but today I strangely feel compelled to write here. Like renewing an old friendship, I come to say a quiet 'Hello' to the blogging world. Like when we meet old friends and promise to keep in touch, I silently promise myself to write more often. There are so many things one wants to say but with a little passage of time conversation comes not very easily. As I write this I hear my 2.7 year old son humming - 'Papa jag jayega' on a loop. It makes me laugh and want to write stories of him. I look out of my window and see bright lights of vehicles dotting the darkness of an early night painting a vivid digital picture for me. Life is indeed beautiful. It seems like the initial awkwardness and hesitation is already disappearing. With a self assurance to make regular appearances out here - Ciao

Time-tested lessons for writers in English. 1. Verbs has to agree with their subjects. 2. Prepositions are not words to end sentences with. 3. And don't start a sentence with a conjunction. 4. It is wrong to ever split an infinitive. 5. Avoid clichés like the plague. (They're old hat.) 6. Also, always avoid annoying alliteration. 7. Be more or less specific. 8. Parenthetical remarks (however relevant) are (usually) unnecessary. 9. Also too, never, ever use repetitive redundancies. 10. No sentence fragments. 11. Contractions aren't necessary and shouldn't be used. 12. Foreign words and phrases are not apropos. 13. Do not be redundant; do not use more words than necessary; it's highly superfluous. 14. One should NEVER generalize. 15. Comparisons are as bad as clichés. 16. Don't use no double negatives. 17. Eschew ampersands & abbreviations, etc. 18. One-word sentences? Eliminate. 19. Analogies in writing are like feathers on a snake. 20. ...

An interesting way of asking, - 'Who is your competition?' [This is written by Dr. Y. L. R. Moorthi is a professor at the Indian Institute of Management Bangalore. He is an M.Tech from Indian Institute of Technology, Madras and a post graduate in management from IIM, Bangalore] Who sells the largest number of cameras in India? Your guess is likely to be Sony, Canon or Nikon. Answer is none of the above. The winner is Nokia whose main line of business in India is not cameras but cell phones. Reason being cameras bundled with cellphones are outselling stand alone cameras. Now, what prevents the cellphone from replacing the camera outright? Nothing at all. One can only hope the Sonys and Canons are taking note. Try this. Who is the biggest in music business in India? You think it is HMV Sa-Re-Ga-Ma? Sorry. The answer is Airtel. By selling caller tunes (that play for 30 seconds) Airtel makes more than what music companies make by selling music albums (that run for hours). Incidenta...

The Vodafone Zoozoo ads have long gone from our television but my son still seems to hold a fascination for the white rubber-bodied eggheads. He smiles and claps happily while they animatedly run about the screen. Feeding him gets easier while he watches the reruns of the 'Zuzu' (as he calls them) ad films from a DVD. This ad called - "Wonders" was running while the supposedly gibberish zoozoo language suddenly seemed to make sense. Listen carefully to the ad on Zoozoo's on Roaming Services and it definetely sounds like the zoozoo's are mallus after all. One can hear distinctly - Parota, Puttum Kadalaem, Kappa-Meen (all kerala's popular dishes) :)) Hilarious indeed.