Aala Santhosh Reddy

I look forward to weekends. Saturday to be more precise. This is the day I and Akhil often go out for lunch. We make it a point to eat at a different restaurant each time. However, the exciting part begins after the lunch. A visit to the Crossword book store and then a cup of coffee in Brio. The restaurant located in the store. Do check out their range of coffees. Personally I think they are much better and cheaper than the range one would get elsewhere.

As usual last Saturday we had lunch at Indijoe. Followed it up with a visit Crossword to and picked up some books. The only sore point was that we couldn’t get a cup of hot coffee. Bad luck. Of the three books we picked up, one book caught my attention - The Pregnant King.

Mahabharatha and Ramayana are my favourite epics. I particularly remember Mahabharatha quite well. This is where the story of Yuvanshva caught my attention as I never came across this character in Mahabharatha. To my delight I found this was the work of the author — a fictional story.

The Pregnant King

Publisher: Penguin Books India
Author: Devdutt Pattanaik
Published in: February 2008
Price: Rs. 295
Classification: Fiction

Verdict: Interesting Read

Description:

Author Devdutt Pattanaik takes the liberty of using his imaganation and inspiration from folklores to sketch an impressive story. This is the story of a King who becomes a mother to become a father to become a king. A story of Vallabhi, a kingdom which yearns for the rightful king who never comes.

Set during the time of the Kurukshetra war, the story unfolds the desires and egos of the inhabitants of the royal palace of Vallabhi. It starts with the crowning of the new King of Vallabhi — Shilavati the widow queen (as a regent) as she carries the heir (Yuvanshva) to the kingdom in her womb. Then the struggle of Shilavati, a woman with the head of a king, to hand over the power to her childless son who has three wives. The son for whom things go awry. There is also the brahman couple who return as brahma rakshasas to seek revenge on him.

In brief the story is of Yuvanshva’s many questions for which he seeks answers. About his failure to produce children even with three wives, why his mother doesn’t crown him the king and finally the question of whether is a mother or a father.

And there are other characters like his son who finds the story behind his birth unbelievable. The second queen who rejects Yuvanshva as a husband. Arjuna and his story of how he felt being like a woman. The ugly-looking yaksha, Sthunakarna who spends his life as a woman and a man helping characters like Shikandi and Somvat. The book ends with Yuvanshva finding the reasons for his confusing existence and events that happened in his life. Overall a good book to read once.

And do head to Goodreads. This is yet another online service that helps us see what our friends are reading. We can also keep track of books read and organize them into shelves.

Image Courtesy: Rohit Markande

A decade is a long time. I still remember the day I first had punjabi food. Way back in 1998 I along with my two friends had some lip smacking punjabi food for lunch. It consisted of two Butter Rotis and Punjabi Channa Masala. After that I had visited many eateries in Hyderabad but never got to taste some authentic punjabi food. The closest one being a few months ago when I and another dear friend of mine decided to have Makai Ki Roti and Sarson Ka Saag. Though we could get this famous dish there was something which was missing, the punjabi flavour and style.

And now almost after a decade I finally could please my stomach with some lip smacking punjabi food at a joint close to my new office premises. The food was good considering the limited opportunities I had to check out Punjabi food in all the restaurants I have been to in around Hyderabad. Today’s lunch menu consisted of the following:

• Paneer Channa Masala
• Egg Burji
• Butter Chicken (Boneless)
• Dal Fry
• Gobi
• Onion Parathas
• Egg Paratha
• Phulkas
• Mango Pickle
• Chilli and Methi Chutney
• Lassi

I really enjoyed the food and that it came after a long time I just dug into the food and had my stomach’s fill. The place was not great in terms of ambience but the pricing (very cheap), the portion size and the service were quite good considering the location of the place and people that come to the joint. Now that the place is nearby I will explore some other punjabi dishes soon.

It has been a strange and tiring week. For the first time I have been troubled by a rather strange and persistent cough and cold that are relentlessly trying to get me down for the past two weeks. Strange, as I recover quite quickly. My doctor informs that this is due to some new bacteria or virus and people say this is due to global warming (I do not know why they choose global warming!). Interestingly scientists are using cow dung to know the changes in climatic patterns.

Strange as it seems, we did get to see some unexpected rainfall in February in on two days in the last week. The already overflowing traffic in Hyderabad choked at every nook and corner on two days when it rained. A few centimetres of rain showed what it could do to a fast growing city like Hyderabad if the necessary infrastructure is not put in place. It is high time that the government and citizens understand the need for robust draining facilities and some much needed traffic sense.

And while the stock markets in India keep playing the game of rise and fall, a prominent politician Rajnath Singh of the BJP feels that Terrorists have something to do with this. Supporting his views are that FII’s have close ot 40% of the investments in India and also Mr. M K Narayanan the National Security Advisory who expressed his apprehensions one year ago that Terrorists might use the FII route to manipulate the stock markets. Well this was a different take all together on the Indian stock markets that have been quite volatile in the last few weeks. We have already seen two major IPOs being withdrawn and share prices of Reliance Power tumbling with some heavy selling on its counter.

Down Under in Adeliade Oval, India missed another wonderful opportunity to place itself in a strong position in the 7th ODI of the ongoing Commonwealth Bank 2007-08 triseries. Bowling out the world champions for a measly 203 India failed to capitalise on the advantage and lost to Australia by 50 runs. The young Indian brigade did put up a decent show but that was not enough to defeat the unrelenting Australians

On anther note Pepsi feels that the youngsters of the present Inidan Cricket team can give more to its brand. With a host of options to choose from, it has replaced Ganguly and Dravid in favour of the young and upcoming Ishant and Rohit Sharma for its new ad campaign “Yeh hai Youngistaan Meri Jaan“. The new ad campaign intends to ride on the promise and appeal of the young Indian cricket and film stars to position itself as a youth brand to garner a good market share in India. I am sure this saves them some money. Pepsi can save some money on the sharmas.

I often look foward to weekends to catch up on reading books. But with my health not co-operating, I have been unable to make any progress in the last week. The Lazybug also has been struggling a bit but at least is making some progress - some Conventional Wisdom here. The list of books that I have to finish has been slowly growing, something which I dislike.

• Measuring the World by Daniel Kehlmann
• Unrational Leadership by Charles Fleetham
• The Fifth Discipline by Peter M Senge
• Inevitable Ilusions by Piatelli Palmarini
  
• Being Indian by Pavan K Varma
• The Dogs of Justice by Nina Sibal

Finishing them off will add to my list of books I have read and bring me close to the half century mark (My current count of books I have read stands at 43).

All in all this was a strange week for me and I was really feeling it. With some signs of me recovering soon and hopes of finishing my personal and official assignments well within time I look forward to a great week and also the marriage of my close friend the next sunday.

A series of bomb blasts within a gap of 10 minutes have killed more than 40 innocent people in one of India’s oldest cities, Hyderabad. This comes after less than 100 days after the blast in mecca masjid in the old city area of Hyderabad.

Why should innocent people die, blood be spilled for no fault of theirs. Is it a crime to live in a country that accommodates–and is at peace with– so many diverse religions, people, ethnicities and ideologies? It seems so, as these heartless and shameless terrorists keep killing innocent people in the name of religion, land and hate-filled ideologies.

Why should people die and what does one get by killing? Simple reasons abound:

• creates fear in the minds of people
• shakes the very foundations on which a nation lives - peace and security
• the nation loses its stability and security
• makes it easy to destabilise the country

With none of the above happening even when India had encountered more powerful forces, these shameful acts of killing innocent people will not allow the killers to get anywhere closer to their goals. They can still refer to the way of how a nation of billion people with all its military might, technology and people willing to die for this great country still doesn’t even think of exacting revenge. Especially on the very same forces, people and countries who have inflicted countless, blood-spills, terrors on it. And still thousands of innocent people die for no fault of theirs.

But, what do I do when my country bleeds? What do I do in a country

• which allows a person to go free by paying a fine for killing a fellow human, but punishes the very same person with long jail-term for killing a protected animal
• believes and advocates that people should be patient even when their blood is spilled
• allows someone to kill a person but still hesitates to punish the killer with a death sentence, gives patient hearing to the pleas from human rights groups for not giving a death sentence
• which never asks if a killer ever hesitated to kill his victim?
• allows people to assist terrorism acts, but spends months and years to decide if they even need to be blamed
• keeps extending its helpful hand to countries even though they try to bring terror upon it
• where politicians (read: public servants, public servants) appear out of nowhere to condemn the attacks, blame the government for its negligence, demand that the responsible minister resign, demand that the government pay ex-gratia’s (which anyway is the public money) and then leave
• where media instead of condoling, assisting and helping the affected cashes on the incidents with special bulletins, expert opinions and round the clock coverages of the incidents and only create more fear, pain and insecurity in people

Now what do I do when my country bleeds? Pray that the souls of the innocent people who are killed rest in peace and that the people who killed these understand that killing fellow human beings doesn’t give them anything but pain again.

Vande Mataram