Life is an illusion

I had some idea in my mind - about a blog post - slightly poetic - very much political. But in Hindi. The words stuck in my mind were Hindi.  It started some thing like this - Ham muft me bantenge - ghar ghar me - gaon gaon me - shahar shahar me - muft me bantenge - nafrat bantenge. But I decided against writing it because a) it was in Hindi - which is neither my mother tongue nor a language I am fluent at. b) And most importantly, this is not a time for political posts. Ham to kayar hain hi. It is funny how the words which came to mind were Hindi. I read English, watch most series in English,  speak Kannada. But I think some things in Hindi. Very strange.  I tried translating them to Kannada without much success. Ok, today's post is not about all those useless things. It is about a serial called Hundred . No, I am not writing about my math puzzle app called Hundred now called Shataka  which no one likes, no one comments, no one installs.  I am talking about a ...

 It's like any other weekend.  Woke up at 6. With tea, spent an hour on e-commerce site. When I couldn't bear the boredom any more, went to coding. Did a little bit of tweak here and there. That thing worked and this thing crashed and it was 9.  Cooked dosas trying to have a conversation with spouse. But you know spouses, they prefer the words out of the mouths of news anchors - doesn't matter how venomous those words are.  Cleaned a little bit more for the weekend and then tried to fix the crashing code. When it couldn't be done, came to this blog. Added more photos to blog posts, hoping to recover some icloud space. I think it doesn't work! Should I pay for space? Ha, ha! Good joke! If I some how drag the time for 2 more hours, I can go back to some repeat show in Netflix or hotstar and spend rest of the day in some kind of stupor.  Yes, stupor. That's what we all want. Our means may be quite varied - TV, alcohol, God.  But the need is same - numbness....

         पूछो न कैसे मैंने रेन बितायी  इक पल जैसे इक जुग बीता  जुग बीते पर नींद न आई  पूछो न कैसे मैंने रेन बितायी    These are the actual lyrics from a Hindi film song. The lyricist knows our pain!

Of late, I have started looking forward to cooking. What on the earth did happen? Did I suddenly develop an affinity to this feminine work? Nothing of that sort happened. I am just glad that I get an opportunity to get up from couch and do something. And not stare at the @$@#@ screen.  So I came to kitchen today and started thinking about tomorrow's breakfast. A lie! I would never. Planning a meal 12 hours ahead is not my cup of tea.  Take a look at my search history  (theoretically- because paranoid me periodically delete history) - you will find it filled with instant breakfast recipes.  No, I glanced at 4-5 bananas which are shouting that they are well past their prime. Black spots everywhere. I could try refrigerating them, but they will taste quite bad. So I decided banana dosa tomorrow and banana roti for dinner today. Soaked the rice for 1 and a half hour. Ground this rice with bananas and the batter will be nicely ready tomorrow. This morning, I had made rag...

 ಸ್ವಾತಂತ್ರ್ಯ ಎನ್ನೋದು ತುಂಬಾ ಕ್ಲಿಷ್ಟವಾದ, ಗಹನವಾದ ವಿಷಯ. ಮಹಾತ್ಮಾ ಗಾಂಧಿಯಂತವರು ತಮ್ಮ ಇಡೀ ಜೀವನವನ್ನೇ ಮುಡುಪಾಗಿ ಇಟ್ಟಿದ್ದರೂ, ನಮಗೆಲ್ಲ ನಿಜವಾದ ಅರ್ಥದ ಸ್ವಾತಂತ್ರ್ಯ ಕೊಡಿಸಲು ಅವರಿಂದ ಸಾಧ್ಯ ಆಗಲಿಲ್ಲ.  ಹಸಿವಿನಿಂದ ಸ್ವಾತಂತ್ರ್ಯ,, ಮೂಢ ನಂಬಿಕೆಗಳಿಂದ ಸ್ವಾತಂತ್ರ್ಯ,, ಬೇಧಭಾವಗಳಿಂದ ಸ್ವಾತಂತ್ರ್ಯ,, ಜಾತಿವಾದದಿಂದ ಸ್ವಾತಂತ್ರ್ಯ , ತಾರತಮ್ಯದಿಂದ ಸ್ವಾತಂತ್ರ್ಯ ,  ಹಿಂಸೆಯಿಂದ, ಕ್ರೌರ್ಯದಿಂದ  ಸ್ವಾತಂತ್ರ್ಯ -  ಇವೆಲ್ಲ ಬೇಕಲ್ಲವೇ? ಬೇಕಾ ? ನಮ್ಮ ಮನದಾಳದಿಂದ ಬರ್ಬೇಕು - 'ನಾವು ಯಾರೊಬ್ಬರ ಅಡಿಯಾಳಲ್ಲ, ನಮಗೆ ನಮ್ಮ ದೇಶದಲ್ಲಿ ಮಾತಾಡುವ, ಉಣ್ಣುವ, ಉಡುವ, ಓದುವ, ಬರೆಯುವ , ಕಲಿಯುವ ಸ್ವಾತಂತ್ರ್ಯವಿದೆ. ಯಾರೊಬ್ಬರೂ ಈ ವಿಷಯಗಳಲ್ಲಿ ನಮ್ಮನ್ನು ನಿರ್ಬಂಧಿಸುವಂತಿಲ್ಲ, ನಿರ್ಬಂಧಿಸಕೂಡದು'.  ಆದರೆ ನಮ್ಮ ಮನದಲ್ಲಿ 'ಅವರು ಒಡೆಯರು, ನಾವು ಅವರ ಕೆಳಗಿನ ಆಳುಗಳು' ಎಂಬ ಭಾವನೆ ಹೋಗುತ್ತಾನೇ ಇಲ್ಲ. ಪ್ರಜಾಪ್ರಭುತ್ವ ಎಂದರೆ ಪ್ರಜೆಗಳಾದ ನಾವೇ ಪ್ರಭುಗಳು - ಇನ್ಯಾರೂ ಅಲ್ಲ ಎಂದು ನಾವು ಯೋಚಿಸುವದೇ ಇಲ್ಲ.  ಹಳೆಯ ಕಾಲದ ರಾಜರು ಹೋದರೂ, ನಾವೇ ಹೊಸ ಕಾಲದ ರಾಜರನ್ನು ನಿರ್ಮಿಸಿಕೊಂಡು . ಇಡೀ ದಿನ 'ಬಹು ಪರಾಕ್, ಬಹು ಪರಾಕ್' ಎನ್ನುತ್ತಲೇ ಇರುತ್ತೇವೆ.  ಕೆಂಪು ನಮನ ಮಾಡುತ್ತಾ, ಈ ಎಲ್ಲ ಸಾಮಾಜಿಕ ಅನಿಷ್ಟಗಳಿಂದ ಸ್ವಾತಂತ್ರ್ಯ ತೆಗೆದುಕೊಂಡೆ ಕೊಳ್ಳುತ್ತೇವೆ - ಎಂದು ಹೇಳುತ್ತಿದ್ದವ...

As I might have mentioned, I was fiddling around with an image editor app. And I have brought it to a stage, where I can draw circle, rectangle and other polygons. And erase, cut, copy and paste.  But then I came across a beautiful image editor for mobiles and tablets. Much better than GIMP too. Now I am ashamed of my image editor. It is primitive and may be needs modern libraries. So will work on it.  That will give me work for yet another month or two. Good, good.  Well, the editor - open source is too complicated. No patience. Why don't just keep netflixing? That is so much easier. And my own image editor is not so bad either. If only I could store all these draw operations in some kind of data structure - preferably a stack to undo previous action. I really can do that I think. May become less memory consumptive.  Naale. Right now, it is time for mindless blogging.

The reason behind this post (other than managing my dwindling cloud storage) is to tell you that you can draw these too. Me, the least artistic person drew these - by drawing a rangoli each for a month.  You can notice that these are all dotless rangolis. Free hand. Give a free hand to your imagination! And please the God (if one exists!) and yourself -immensely! Simple and pretty! If you add color, it will be beautiful. Can you get simpler than this! Cross hatching! Or, is it? Some kind of hatching for sure!  

A bunch of roses. Just for you! Made by HIM.  Papa (papa in kannada) flower taking pity on me, papa me! Look at the vibrant color! We call it 'gandhada (sandal wood) banna'. Is it Peach? This pretty pink hibiscus had really grown in  a pot. And this plant used to flower frequently too. Yes, I should click their photos when the plants are fresh from the nursery. And I successfully killed this plant too.  Uf! That was a good time, at least for my greedy eyes. Supposed to be natural insect killer. But the plant doesn't survive long with me :( Who can compete with these tall and majestic tree adorned with pink flowers. Beauty of Bangalore! Believe me. This huge jasmine climber was mine. And so fragrant !! Called Bhatkala mallige - might have originated from that town. What was this plant again? This is pepper corn grown in mom's house. Ah, spicy! Unnamed.flower Nakshatra huva told my sis-in-law. Comes in beautiful colors. Daily walk in the park. Miss those days. Zinnia. Aga...

A rainbow is a special treat always. Look at the outer ring too!   But here sun is rising, into the silicon city and telling its folks "GET UP, YOU NEED TO BEAT THE TRAFFIC".