Life is an illusion

 Yesterday I read a tweet from some one saying that "once all this is ever, there must be legal actions on all these TV channels who have brain washed, gas lighted and preached all kinds of hatred and spluttered venom every day". Not my words. OK. I am as much a devout Hindu and god fearing, government fearing nationalist like you are. Some one else's words.  Do you think those words are true? At least a little bit?

This is one title all my people agree upon. They may even suggest that I change my blog title to this. Tip no 1: When making shira - kesari bath - do not roast the banana pieces along with rava (suji).  rava will not be roasted,  but instead banana fruit pieces will become hard.  And when you suspect this, remove the mix from microwave and at least try roasting on the stove.  I didn't do this because I was elsewhere engaged in preparing poha. So I let the dreams of making delicious shira which will taste like prasada of Sathyanarayana puja (making a dish like prasad might be sacrilegious to some of you), was shattered. Tip no 2: Don't fight too much with IDEs. You will any way lose.  Earlier in the day, I was trying to remove one library from project. This said library would have made program compatible with older phones. Which any way most people do not use. So I decided removing the library. And the program asked me "Do you want to continue in the safe mode?". Of co

 How many compartments are there in mind? That is what I was ruminating while trying to read a book.  One part of the mind was reading the not so difficult book "The sun also rises" by Hemingway. Another part was picking sentences and trying to relate and deduce that how I was a bad person/mother/wife/daught Yet another part was thinking will this be enough to make me fall asleep, are my eyes closing?  And yet another irritating part was singing few lines of the song "Shankarabharanamu" in a loop. Don't worry.  I am certain I don't have multiple personality disorder.  But this multiple thoughts running through my monkey mind, may also mean that I am not 100% there in whatever I am trying to do. "Mindfulness" - bulls**t. Or I may have a hyperactive mind. Anyways. Mind is just a concept. So it can't have compartments.  And heart is the one with 4 compartments - left and right hratkarana - left and right hratkukshi - I think. But Good news among a

When does this transition happen? And how? One day you are rebellious woman who has grand plans to change the world. Next day you are god fearing, church going (or temple or mosque going), highly religious   irrational mom.  Of course, that transition hasn't happened to me because I have been irrational always .   I understand being afraid. As a mother you are always afraid and worried constantly from day one of your motherhood. About your child's health, growth, future, friends, family everything. It's like you want to protect your child always from everything and which is certainly not possible.  And that makes you feel helpless and you look towards heaven for help from there. You feel that, if you pray to God with true heart, with all devotion, with fasting and praying, he will protect your child.  Aha, see, it is a simple solution.  Or another reason for transition could be, as your child/children grow into adults and leave the nest, a large earth sized hole is created

 Do you remember emergency in India? No! Most of you were not born then. But if you are an old soul like me, you do remember the dark times our country faced. Or you heard  your parents discussing about it in hushed tones and half understood.  But we overcame that. Emergency was repealed and an election should were announced. And Indira Gandhi faced a miserable defeat and for the first time in history, India saw a non-congress government at the center.  Look at  USA. They had a worse situation with trump. An openly racist, misogynist and unqualified president who made the world question the ability of their nation to make right decisions. But he did have lot of vocal, angry, loyal supporters too. But in the elections, he was defeated and had to go home.  So, what I am trying to say is this too shall pass on. People have witnessed the ugly repercussions   of demonetization, lockdowns, hospital crisis, and very very dark days of deaths and floating bodies. And the way the entire history

 I remember one Kannada film song - "grahini neenu yaara manege, taayi neenu yaara maguvige".  That is what is Martha. She is taking care of two teenagers Paul and Francis. She is taking care of Lynda - who is neurotic and her moods keep changing. She is taking care of the entire house.  There are two more children - girls Jill and Gwen. Who are practically here all the time. And there is also a mother in law - Margaret. Who has married again to a man who is non-practicing gay. And she feels isolated from her husband, from her grand children, from every one. Martha she is a mother to all these people. The only other responsible adult in the house is Mark. How is he related to her? Martha is his writing assistant. And his kind of girl friend.  Francis, Mark's son is head strong, argumentative and has decided to leave school. Paul, Marks nephew - who has lost his mother, is moody, does not listen to any one and does not have the sense of right and wrong. After being unable

 I have been facing lot of problems. Reading Willian Faulkner's book. The book is called "The sound and the fury".  In the introduction, author has mentioned that this book was very close to his heart and he will never be able to write another one like this, etc. etc. But the style is very very strange. It is more like thoughts running through your mind. No structure, no logic, no cohesiveness. I tried reading the book summary to understand who are all the people being mentioned in the book and who is the narrator. Then I also watched few minutes of the movie based on this book.  Even then it is a difficult book to read. And it is not my excuse not to finish the book. I will certainly finish it.  Candace, Benjamin, Quentin and Jason are the children of Compson family in a small town in Southern USA in 1910s. They are children of self centered, hypochondriac mother and alcoholic father. The black servant Dilsey raises these children.  Caddy - Candace is promiscuous and bec

 One good thing about apartment complexes is that you get to see beautiful plants, flowers and even flowering trees. But these are not your plants, right? But from another angle, you get to have beautiful garden without getting your hands dirty and mind stressed at all.  When I was writing some facebook posts about this new house, one of my facebook friends had suggested me to go back to xyz - which is my ancestral village. Brutal!  But again in my ancestral village, they have garden hundred times prettier than this.  I did try to grow some plants in my 1X1 feet balcony. Of course, I am exaggerating, the size is slightly bigger. But this teeny tiny balcony does not receive sunlight at all for 6 months of the year - during summer. So only plants which survive are aloe vera and vinca.    Again you must say that, because of this lack of direct sunlight in summer, my hall which is adjacent to the balcony will be cooler. Which is a accurate too. But. But we are discussing the drawbacks here

Once upon a time I attended one year course in counseling. Why did I ever join that? I am not a people person and I can not talk good to strangers.  May be the reason was my counselor was rude to me and I decided I will become somebody's non-rude counselor. And at the end of the course, I didn't try for any counseling jobs, paid or voluntary.  I just learned some jargon - and most of which I have already forgotten.  But I remember a story one of my classmates in that course had narrated. No, I don't remember the story as much as the conclusion. We are angry, disappointed, furious many times with our close family members - spouses, siblings, parents, children, because we have expectations from them and often they are not met. Where as strangers are fine, because we don't have any expectations, and even if they smile at us, that is very pleasant and welcome surprise for us.  We often do most things with some kind of expectations and when we are disappointed, we try out al

 Google decided that the preferred development language for its apps will be kotlin. Why?  ok, these companies want to change. Not the world into a better place. ( which I think is impossible for even brahma). Something like a logo (you know meta,right?) or a development language. They say Kotlin is better than Java. But any language is better than bloated, inefficient Java. C is better than Java. Does that mean I should arm myself against segmentation fault again? It is a scripting language and doesn’t need semi colon at the end of every line. That is the only pro of this language.  But as one is expected to do, I embraced this new language grumbling and swearing. And laboriously, line by line changed my old code to kotlin. Ok, I used a command for conversion, but then it needed very many corrections. Now my silly little laptop rejects to build app, if written in kotlin. You think I have a  syntax error? This project  is a silly hello world project auto generated by IDE.  And the best

 Anti intellectualism - hostility and mistrust towards intellectuals Are  we seeing rising anti intellectualism in the world and in India in particular? What are the underlying reasons for this new trend? We as a nation used to be reverent towards scientists, authors and thinkers. But of now, we respect only the past glories and those who glorify past. What surprises me is, by nature one tends hate and mistrust those in power. Be it father in a household, principal in a school, boss in an office or head of the state in a nation. But of late, we have started adoring and worshiping those in power and hating those who talk  the truth instead of parroting. How and why did this change happen? If things go wrong in our life - as they often do, we tend to blame others for these wrongs. A new rulers are finding  ways to redirect this anger, mistrust and hatred towards others. Convince us that for all our collective and individual problems, the responsibility lies with xyz. This xyz were jews i

 It was good while it lasted.  Why do we not say this instead of lamenting, venting, grumbling and blaming others when we lose something, anything?  If you haven’t already guessed my topic yet, you don’t me at all. Said she to total strangers while  avoiding actual people. Yes, my IDE is really troubling me. It denies to compile giving inscrutable reasons. Now it is the time to give up. I will recover a bit and get excited again my decision of reading 40 books this year. May be a little bit JavaScript is all I need and all I must devote to. And may be it is time to sew yet another bag from blouse piece. Or start knitting some yarn. 

Caste - han, I thought it was uniquely Indian phenomenon. And when I found out that many twitterati had read the book and wrote positive reviews on it, I was intrigued and started reading it. The book is good. The author has analyzed the 2016 fiasco of USA and its aftermath using the caste system. The white population in USA is upper caste. And they are feeling threatened with even some predictions that they will be a minority. And to make matters worse, a black president is voted to power is very successful too. And also feel the others - black and brown population need to be shown their place because whites are always the ruling class, they are a superior race. And when Trump stands for election with his promise to make america great again, that is whites great again, they ignore all his follies. Insulting of media, his utter disrespect for women, his complete lack of experience in politics, everything. He is going to teach other people their place. Let us vote him to power they deci

a) These are not the news from today. But recent news. b) As we all know, the Indian TV channels do not show us any news, unless it benefits the rulers and harms us. So we don't get to see any news but most often falsehood. But more about that later. bell hooks :  Gloria Jean Watkins known by her pen name as bell hooks was a feminist writer, professor and poet. She died of liver complications on December 15th at the age of 69. She wrote on gender, race and sexuality and published more than 30 books.  "Some times people try to destroy you precisely because they recognize your power" - bell hooks "Feminism is a movement to end sexism, sexist exploitation and oppression" - bell hooks Denise Ho Denise Ho a pop singer and a pro-democracy activist in Hongkong was arrested for "conspiracy to print seditious material". She was a former board member of media group Stand news.  Denise in 2014 participated in Umbrella movement and spoke in UN and US Congress.  Th

 Finally finished my 12th book of the year - "Olive Again" by Elizabeth Strout. I am happy. because a) it is not hundreds of years old b) it is actually good. So it is the story of an aged person called Olive and her struggles with life and old age. Aha, can I relate to that. When I was reading a chapter where she struggles with her son's family visiting her, I could clearly see myself in future. Daughter in law with a fake smile, hostile grand children, son trying to some how balance these people.  And then the final destination - no, I am not talking about your heaven or hell. I am not a believer in myths.  The old age home. She finally accepts her frailty and agrees to stay in an assisted living for elderly people.   Again I can relate to that and feel that this day is not very far at all.