चुकली दिशा तरीही... : Day#30/30

Last day! :)
Want to post this poem, by  Vinda Karandikar, just to keep reminding myself...

Loosely translated the poem means :

(I had to google and think quite a bit for the equivalent words...translation is a difficult task! Promise, I won't laugh at Google translate the next time around ;-) )

"All is not lost; even though the way is lost;
For a wanderer, every star is his friend.

I walk ahead, because I want to go on;
In the stupor of this pace, the roads seem all alike.

For those who fear the storms, I have this to say :
Once you break the sails, all winds are favourable!

I have torn the fate mapped by proud destiny;
And embers of the past now lie extinguished.

Even if you lose the way, you still stand under the same sky,

One who realizes this, can go anywhere.

Hope and hopelessness matter to the cautious;
The unguarded need not fear these cinders..."

Image taken from somewhere on the Internet

Margins : Day#29/30

The second last post! #Almost there :)

My desktop calender says this today :

Time to look at the 'margins' in life.
After all, they hold the most important lessons! ;-)

Motifs : Day#28/30

I dragged PP to a संस्कार भारती (sanskaar bharati) rangoli basic workshop, organized by मराठी संस्कृतिक मंडळ, IITB this weekend.

And PP being the sweetheart that she is, came along even though she had done the workshop last year :P

Credit for all the pics goes to her and her HTC ;-)

I wanted to write a post on "motifs", but am too tired to write a long drawn post, especially after an afternoon spent standing and sweltering in the heat of StaffC. 

Post takeaway :  A fixed number of "standard" motifs can give you unique awesome designs if you combine them correctly! ;-)

The teacher taught us basic five motifs that make up the main components of a संस्कार भारती rangoli : बिंदू (dots), vertical and horizontal रेषा (lines), केन्द्रवर्धिनी (we called it jalebi since its easier to remember) and गोपद्म (the heart-like symbol, traditionally used to represent a cow's hoofs). He drew these :

5 basic motifs

These were the first dots I made, so haphazard that PP decided they were 'pic-worthy' ;-)

Dots 101

Practice made us a lot better :

Practice! :)

Ganpati

Some pattern

And we graduated to "inventing" bigger and better designs :

butterfly

peacock

Another pattern me and PP made : 

SquareD :)

This was the rangoli made by all the participants (with groups of 6 completing each motif) Hardly took ~15 mins to complete!! B-)

Overall, two weekend afternoons well spent :)

My Fav People : Day#27/30

Love these people!
Blessed to have them in my life! :)

Including the person who clicked this : RT! :)

When in doubt... : Day#26/30

Idea courtesy : PP.
She fwded me this pic :

Then sent a whole lot of "When in doubt..." quotes from here
Extremely hilarious...

When in doubt, don't.
~Benjamin Franklin

When in doubt, take more time.
~John Zimmerman

When in doubt, use brute force.
~Ken Thompson

When in doubt, tell the truth.
~Mark Twain

When in doubt, mumble.
~James H. Boren

Combine above two, and you get :
When in doubt, mumble the truth? ;-)

When in doubt, do something.
~Harry Chapin

When in doubt, throw it out.
~Jeremy Jackson

When in doubt, exchange.
~John Zimmerman

When in doubt, make a fool of yourself.
~Cynthia Heimel

This is as good as :
When in doubt, run in circles, scream and shout.
~Laurence J. Peter

When in doubt wear red.
~Bill Blass

Probably, this author didn't like red much :
When in doubt, go with black.
~Leigh Lezark

When in doubt, sing loud.
~Robert Merrill

When in doubt, take the next small step.
~Paulo Coelho

When in doubt, take a selfie :P
~don't know the author

When in doubt, google it out! (seems legit ;) )
~don't know the author

I'd say :
When in doubt, stay doubtful !! ;-)
(I looked it up, no one's said it yet...probably because it doesn't make sense when you are in doubt...but that's only going to take you in recursive circles of thought :P)

When in doubt, what do you do??

PS: PP says,  When in doubt, you can always turn towards the sea. :)

Inked! : Day#25/30

I have skipped almost an entire week and it's also the nearing of the 30 day challenge too...promise I will post the missing ones soon enough!

I have had my own reasons for skipping writing - a code freeze looming up @office and (the real reason!) I was busy 'wolfing' down (pun intended!) book 2 of the Game of Thrones series.  ;-)

Simply UNPUTDOWNABLE :P Superbly brilliant.
I just finished reading it and so so wish I could just run to my library and get the third book ASAP - which surely is the first thing I'll do tomorrow morning - just hope its not issued already...
It took all my willpower to not carry the book to office, or call in sick this week :P and when I did live in 'our' real world, and not in the land of Westeros :P, I remembered I had to travel home to fulfill a "voting" duty as well :)

To be honest, I am never one to hotly debate and take sides - pro-AAP, anti-Congress, Modi-fied, etc etc, but, whether to vote for the MP candidate in the area, or look at the party's PM candidate and vote for the party rather than the candidate, is one issue I thought a lot about and also discussed a lot @home, with friends...

Some interesting links : this, this, this and this cartoon...

My take :
The MP usually doesn't have much budget to spend on the constituency and is more concerned with representing his people @the national level, so if you would want someone to "look after" local issues, he's not the one to hanker after - the MLA or the Corporator is the one more likely to be actively involved.
For the purpose of Loksabha elections, just thinking a MP candidate is good, he'll do "good work" in the constituency is not enough. We would need to look at the bigger picture - the party's PM candidate as well.

Luckily, the BJP-ShivSena candidate, this time around in my constituency, is quite a "clean", highly educated, young candidate (at least at face value).
So a part of me thinks since the candidate is good, and their high profile PM candidate could prove to be good (although I'm not ready to believe him entirely innocent of the Godhra carnage and he obviously is no magician or a "saviour" as many claim. Also, I think the "Har Har Modi...Ghar Ghar Modi" line is in very poor taste too, but a leader who will speak his mind, who will take a stand will be a welcome change), it wouldn't hurt to support them.

That said, it does not mean I disrespect Mr. Manmohan Singh...I agree the man might have not "stood up" to his party president and he was much better as a FM than a PM, appeared 'meek' and all that, but he's an extremely intelligent economist and we have to respect that fact.
And the way the social media and the people at large make fun of him and his "silence" is really pathetic - people who don't know a thing about governance and economics and party politics assume they have freedom to take digs and pot shots at him - just because he hasn't bothered to lash back at them.
Seriously, give the man a break. I'm sure history will be more kind to him, as they say...

But, I digress.
The point is - one part of me wants to vote for the new clean well educated MP + dynamic PM combo, while the other half is pro-AAP.

I fear that if "we, the people" don't give AAP a chance this time, "we, the people" (not AAP!) might never get a second chance the next time around - AAP or no AAP. And that would be really really bad.
We can be sure the "big fish" out there would make sure no future "small fish" try to rise and oppose them next time. Read this, if you haven't already.

Although I was upset over all the Delhi drama that unfolded and hope they have better governing sense the next time around, it would really be a pity if the AAP "movement" fizzles out for lack of public support. Which makes me lean a bit towards them and wonder if I should shout "Accio, broomstick" today ;-) ( !(original) joke, read it somewhere :) )

Anyways, I hope I'll sort out the confusion and make up my mind by the time I get to the poll booth :)

PS: I did make up my mind. Of course am not posting my decision here!
Here's my vote selfie :)

PPS: On a lighter note, this faking news doing the rounds on fb is hilarious :P

Wordless Wednesday : Day#24/30

Clicked at Gulmarg, June 2013