Journey of the Journeyman

There they sit, the two children of the hills of Namdapha:




She is, obviously, spinning stories for the younger one....what gossamer thoughts of far away princes, dragons and wonders is she weaving, that the little boy sits rapt next to her, gazing into the far distance, lost in what his childish imagination shows him?

Children live in fantasy, and to them, stories are part of the fabric of life. I felt lucky to be able to watch these two in their world, even if just briefly...sitting there in the sunlit meadow, free (for a while, at least) of the cares of household chores or school, being...just children...,

All these OTHER photographs from Assam and Arunachal mean...that I have not finished uploading the pics of the birds and the mammals (OK, I admit they are quite lousy, but I *am* going to post them here as usual!)

And meanwhile, I am off to Thattekkad today, with (in alphabetical order) amoghavarsha, anushsh, and Sandeep ...so even more birds (hopefully) to add to the list... I am sure that in the next Bangalore Bird Race, (on Jan 17th) I am going to start identifying birds endemic to Assam, Arunachal, and Kerala!

When I come back from Kerala, it's a trip to B R Hills in Karnataka....I am laying up a store of wildlife memories for the long short, cold days ahead when I am back to GD-care in St.Louis, at the end of the month!

I have asked asakiyume to make up one of her (pun intended) fantastic stories about these two goats I found in the hAt (weekly market) at Miao...




But...any of you can do that...what are the issues that these two are at loggerheads about? What has...got their goat?

Let me know what YOUR story is...

A couple of us decided to explore Hessarghatta lake on Dec 25th. We had heard so much about it that we wanted to explore it atleast once. After struggling to find the right route, we finally managed to reach the place. It was already late but still the birding was quite good if not amazing. We didn’t see any of the Harriers which everybody who goes there manages to see. The only big birds which we saw were the Black Kites and Pariah Kite. But we saw a whole lot of small birds- Garganey, Greenish Warbler, Booted Warbler, Tawny Pipit, Yellow Wagtail, Oriental Skylark, Ashy-crowned Sparrowlark, Common Sandpiper, Northern Shoveler, Common Coot and a few other birds.

This is the Hessarghatta lake. Some history here: Ooru Neeru. Then this place was dry. This time we saw quite a few water birds here including the Northern Shoveler, Common Sandpiper, Garganeys and Common Coots. Location: 13.1433°N, 77.4849°E

Greenish Warbler
Just below the bund, there was a tree which had a lot of Indian Robins hopping around. Among them was a single Greenish Warbler (Thanks to Praveen J for the ID help).

Ashy-crowned Sparrow-lark - Location: 13.1486°N,77.482°E
We enjoyed watching them for a while

Tawny Pipit - Location: 13.1489°N,77.4828°E
We saw a couple of Tawny Pipits. They are paler than the Paddyfields . They are winter migrants to this part of the world.

This looks like a Paddyfield Warbler to me because of the prominent supercilium. But trying to ID warblers is always a pain.

Wood Sandpiper - Location: 13.15°N,77.4842°E

The Lark In The clear air

Oriental Skylark - Location: 13.15°N,77.4842°E
This one was the singer of the day. He kept singing non-stop :)

Oriental Skylark and its habitat

Western Yellow Wagtail - Location: 13.1506°N,77.484°E

Common Hoopoe in flight

Booted Warbler - Location: 13.155°N,77.4841°E
We saw quite a lot of these warblers in the wooded area. I had never seen warblers in such large numbers before. They were all over the place. I am IDing them as Booted Warblers but I could be wrong.

Lesser Whitethroat - Location: 13.155°N,77.4841°E
Another lifer for me.Now you know why they are called Whitethroats ;-)

Apart from these, we also saw these ground birds which took off every now and then. It was difficult to look for them in those scrubs but when we moved closer to them unaware of their presence, they would take off and disappear within a few seconds. They had yellowish feathers with some variation.

Original Entry

In India time is a fleeting concept. We all celebrate at least two 'new year beginnings' - one of the Georgian calendar and the other of our own state. Like for me the Bengali New year is in April. We celebrate that too pretty boistrously, though like another Indian festival, with sweets, food, new clothes and meeting frnds and relatives, and of course, the business community starting new account statements.
So making resolutions on 31st has never been big. Something that occurs twice a year cannot be special enough to prioritise new beginnings on. Every day is a good day to start something new. I tried a few times as a child, but it didnt make sense.
But then, 31st December is like the famous motichur laddoo. It is important because a few billion people think it is. You want to celebrate it, though you intrinsically know it doesnt make much sense in doing so. If you dont, then you have nothing to say the next day in office. If you do, you can talk but feel lame at the commonness of the party - just like any other day. No matter what, at work life, in school life and in day to day life, 1st January heralds a new beginning. Resolutions or not.

It has been another year.
A year marked by a lot of travel, meeting of freinds and some changes.
All in all, looking back I can probably say it was a good year, but then who is completely satisfied with time gone by? But overall, keeping the end results in mind it wasnt so bad afterall. Perhaps life too is like that - with everything sort of sorting itself out ... in the end.

I started the year with trepidation, thinking of all the trouble that the world I know and me in particular had gone through in 2008. And wishing that 2009 goes well, that things improve, that lives become better.
Sitting comfortably in the first week of January 2010, I can safely say yes, it went well. Most importantly, this year I learnt a lot.

I kick started a year with an intuition between three of us about it being probably the last time we will all be bachelors. And voila! Were we right or what?! Sashdude joined the ranks of married men around the world and began another phase of learning in life - a new PLC if you must. As did my brother.

As for me? It was travel all the way. With me finally getting my passport in Jan, Goa gave way to loftier goals. And I was on my way to a trip to Europe within 6 months. I will go there again, but I wonder if it will be the same again ever. The fun was the unplanned bit, staying in untested hotels, with a freind who shares similar tastes, yet is as new to the place as me.

It was a year, where incidentally every month had a visitor over at my place, or had me visinting some place. And lots of Calcutta.

In December 2008 I was wondering about the year and hoping that 2009 ends well for a new beginning.
My wishes seem answered. I have moved on from the troubles, from the forlorn feeling. A new job, a new life, a new lease to myself. It took 12 months, but in retrospect it is nothing but a blip in time. Things seem to be falling in place. It started off bleak, but a few trips to keep the mood positive can work wonders.

The bad phase, improvement of it and a good phase, is but a recuring phenomenon. The monks in some Buddhist Monastries make beautiful art using powder colour and wind pipes. Intricate, colourful, and never stopping. They call it life. They say it should never pause - the work should go on. And so they strive to complete it - to make it whole. Like a solved puzzle.
And then they destroy it. No work ever ends, they say. And so they start again. Entropy at play.
And so it is. What looks good will form a piece of a larger puzzle where this finished puzzle is just a piece.
Today things are calmer. Wants from things lesser. Not just for me but my near and dear ones. But it is just a phase, and we keep learning, living and improving.
2010 I hope will brings into perspective. it is an exciting year for many of us as we will see the fruits of what we sowed in 2008 and strove to maintain in 2009. It is a year I feel of work, which is never easy, but work we know. Work we are familiar with. A year of doing well. A year of not just trying, but succeeding. So that the next years bear the fruits of our work.

Indians indeed, do not have a rigid sense of time. Everything flows into the other. But we do slice it up occassionally. I have done it yet again using the Jan-Dec calendar, but I await everything flowing together seamlessly into my memory as more time passes me by.

Since LJ has been blocked, this is just a test post to check if I can still use semagic or not.

Here I am, quoted in the Indian Express by Saritha Rai, a journalist whom I respect.

click here



I do agree to having faced ageism in Chennai...and often facing it in life...

..but I want to make it clear that for the most part, I said the EXACT opposite to what is quoted...I said, VERY clearly, that in Bangalore, and in wildlife and birding circles, I have never come across ageism at all. Between what one says to a professional reporter (even one who is a personal friend) and what that person hears and writes...there seems to be a very wide gap!

Let me state once again, that the birding community, the young-theatre-group community, the wildlife community, the cycling community,the quizzing community, the LJ community...all these seem to have NO ageism at all, and I find myself, and even older people, accepted for who they are, and indeed, age and its attendant experience is often given great respect.

I will be writing to Saritha about this, never fear. For my age, I am quite active, and so are my tongue...and typing fingers!

Deepa.

This is for (a) my non-Indian friends, but it's for (b) my Indian friends too...jalEbis, as (b) and many of (a) know, are sweets, made of flour batter that has been fermented, fried and then dunked into hot sugar syrup. Which of us have not fallen for the jalebis at weddings, hot off the syrup kadAi....?

At DakshiNEshwar, in Kolkata, Geetanjali and I had just finished having bhAdEr chA (tea in those special mud pots...its taste is unique), singhAdA (the Bengali samOsA) and heengEr kochudi (kachOris made with asafoetida as an ingredient)...birdwatchers, these are the "endemics" of the Bengali snacks world!..... when I realized I could record the making of this delicacy.






The circular motion with which the halwAee (sweet-maker) starts looks as if he is stirring the batter...but if you notice closely, he's actually filling up a vessel which has a hole in its bottom (please, no dirty comments at this stage!)


Then, he positions the vessel over the hot kadAi (large wok-like vessel) and, extremely skilfully starts making the series of circles, in a spiral fashion, ending up in the middle of the oil. The batter is extremely slippery in the oil and when L-boards (er, you can guess one example of a person unskilled in this...yours truly) and can make terrible lumps and tangled squiggles.....it's NOT as easy as this halwaii makes it seem! Of course I *could* say that with daily practice I would also be as good....but that would be not true, I think!

At the end of the video, you can see him using the perforated ladle to turn over the earlier batch of jilebis, which is soaking in the hot sugar syrup (to his left.)

Jilebis (or jalebis, as you wish to call them) are one sweet that is no longer made at home, for the most part. In the south, we have a variant of this, called "jAngri"..the word is derived from "jahAngiri" from Mughal times! This sweet, too, is made the same way, but is substantially thicker and the batter is not fermented, and for some reason, is now generally bright orange in colour, as opposed to the golden yellow-to-orange variation for jilebi.

(many of the south Indian sweets have names derived from Mughal times..."pAdushAh" is derived from "bAdshAhi"!... interesting sideline that I am not going to follow right now...)




Oh, yes, we went back to Geetanjali's in-laws' place bearing some of the hot jilebis! And you can be sure that some of it is now smiling back at me from my waist and hip, when I look at the mirror....

I was mightily tickled by this one:




Talk about ancient! I hope those biscuits were not made back in 1883...

In Dibru/Shaikowa, we stayed on the banks of a water body called Magori Beel (beel is lake) which connected to the Magori river. As we went around looking at waterbirds, I saw this horse all the time:





Our guide Binanda told us that for some reason, this horse just does not like working and the owner pampers the animal, too! It was lovely watching the animal under that simple shelter...






Here he is, his coat shining in the misty sunlight:






We think being human is the greatest thing in life...but I'd like to be that horse in his house of hay....!

I thought only males possessed a pair, but apparently sarees have them, too....

Background;

I’ve been spending some time writing trivial XUL extension for my own needs.

XUL is a weird way of doing things – for me al least. I’ve been writing thick client applications using various toolkits ( Gtk/ Qt / Jambi ) for nearly 6 years now and using JavaScript , XML and CSS to write a desktop application seemed .. weird.

There are plus points to learning XUL:

1. The “applications” themselves are lightweight and can be deployed using XULrunner as standalone applications – eg ChatZilla!
2. The applications pretty much guaranteed to run on Windows, OS X and Linux ( and other OSes supported by Mozilla Firefox )n- as long as you dont use native code inside your applications.[1]
3. This is great for building small utilities that you want – though full fledged applications like SongBird and Thunderbird have been built using XUL technology
4. You can get a lot done using your web development skills

Using your web development skills to write desktop applications is cool in a weird way , IMO :)

Where XUL helps you:

XUL allows you to write simple desktop applications / firefox plugins just like you would write a web application. You use JavaScript for all the logic, XML for all the UI and CSS to theme it.  If you are interested, going through the XUL Tutorial might be a good starting point. There are IRC channels and mailing lists to help you out , of course

Problem Statement:

I want to be able to extract rich text + markup from a web page so that I can put it into something else ( a Word document for example)

The Solution:

The code for that is simple, as long as you are familiar with Mozilla’s DOM API.

The code is pretty self-explanatory': I’ve hyperlinked some API calls with the documentation for your reference:

 

getSelectedRichText: function () {
  //this method extracts out the rich text from the selection
  // refer:https://ubiquity.mozilla.com/hg/ubiquity-firefox/file/55f148ad19d6/ubiquity/modules/contextutils.js#l60 for more
  var range = this.getFirstRange()
  if (!range) return "";
  var newNode = document.commandDispatcher.focusedWindow.document.createElement("div");

  newNode.appendChild(range.cloneContents());
  range.detach();

  return this.absolutifyUrlsInNode(newNode).innerHTML;
  },

// A couple of helper methods

absolutifyUrlsInNode: function (node) {

var attrs = ["href", "src", "action"];

for each (let n in Array.slice(node.getElementsByTagName("*")))
     for each (let a in attrs)
         if (a in n) {
             n.setAttribute(a, n[a]);
             break;
         }
return node;
},

  //this method returns us the range of the selection
  getFirstRange : function () {
  var win = document.commandDispatcher.focusedWindow;
  var sel = win && win.getSelection();
  if (!sel || !sel.rangeCount) return null;
  var range = sel.getRangeAt(0);
  var newRange = win.document.createRange();
  newRange.setStart(range.startContainer, range.startOffset);
  newRange.setEnd(range.endContainer, range.endOffset);
  return newRange;
  },

 

Saving the selected text to a .doc file:

Create a simple xhtml file – fill out the sections in blue with your data.

<html xmlns:o="urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:office" xmlns:w="urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:word">
<head>
<xml>
<o:DocumentProperties>
<o:Author>Your name</o:Author>
</o:DocumentProperties>
<w:WordDocument>
<w:View>Print</w:View>
<w:Zoom>100%</w:Zoom>
</w:WordDocument>
</head>

<body>
Your text goes here

<p> a new paragraph </p>`
</body>

</xml>
</html>

Save this with a .doc extension and voila! MS word can open this as a .doc file. This is very cool stuff.

Taking this into account lets write our saveToDoc() method:

SaveToDoc: function() {
  //lets initialize a simple prompt here for debugging purposes
  var prompts = Components.classes["@mozilla.org/embedcomp/prompt-service;1"]
                        .getService(Components.interfaces.nsIPromptService);
  //lets constuct the doc string here.
  var initialSectionStr = "<html xmlns:o=\"urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:office\" xmlns:w=\"urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:word\">";
    initialSectionStr += "<head>";
    initialSectionStr += "<xml>";
    initialSectionStr += "<o:DocumentProperties>";
    initialSectionStr += "<o:Author>Your name</o:Author>";
    initialSectionStr += "</o:DocumentProperties>";
    initialSectionStr += "<w:WordDocument>";
    initialSectionStr += "<w:View>Print</w:View>";
    initialSectionStr += "<w:Zoom>100%</w:Zoom>";
    initialSectionStr += "</w:WordDocument>";
    initialSectionStr += "</head>";

    var bodyStr = "<body>" + this.getSelectedRichText() + "</body></xml></html>";
    var finalStr = initialSectionStr + bodyStr;
    //prompts.alert(null, "foobar!", finalStr);
    //writing the file
    var file = Components.classes["@mozilla.org/file/local;1"]
                      .createInstance(Components.interfaces.nsILocalFile);

    file.initWithPath( "C:\\output.doc" );
    file.createUnique( Components.interfaces.nsIFile.NORMAL_FILE_TYPE, 600);

        // file is nsIFile, data is a string
    var foStream = Components.classes["@mozilla.org/network/file-output-stream;1"].
                             createInstance(Components.interfaces.nsIFileOutputStream);

    // use 0x02 | 0x10 to open file for appending.
    foStream.init(file, 0x02 | 0x08 | 0x20, 0666, 0);
    // write, create, truncate
    // In a c file operation, we have no need to set file mode with or operation,
    // directly using "r" or "w" usually.

    // if you are sure there will never ever be any non-ascii text in data you can
    // also call foStream.writeData directly
    var converter = Components.classes["@mozilla.org/intl/converter-output-stream;1"].
                              createInstance(Components.interfaces.nsIConverterOutputStream);
    converter.init(foStream, "UTF-8", 0, 0);
    converter.writeString(finalStr);
    converter.close(); // this closes foStream
    },

 

We plug this in and thus we have a firefox extension which can take stuff from any web page and render it almost exactly onto a word document. Cool isnt it?

I realize that Namdapha must be a sort of butterly heaven during the season...because I went out of season, I wasn't even looking for any, and yet I just could not resist clicking some of the common ones!

Let's just start with the beautiful HIMALAYAN JESTER:



( Here's a long Hanuman's tail of pics that will be of interest only to butterfly lovers (and I assure you there are NO rare finds in it!) )


I end with the WHITE STRIPED BARON:





I am not sure of many of the id's and would appreciate any help or corrections, please!

I have also decided that instead of hunting high and low for id's, I am just going to call these butterflies "Krishnamurthy", "Subramaniam", "Vahini" and so on!


I can only imagine what it must be like during the butterfly season in this remote corner of India!

I've a Acer Aspire D250
It's got WinXP SP3 + Android in a dual boot configuration ( preloaded / factory option )
My review of it -> http://manish-chaks.livejournal.com/103322.html
My usage:
This netbook is going to be my travel machine. I use the "reliance netconnect broadband+" datacard to remain connected to the matrix.. err. the internet while I'm travelling.
While XP SP3 was fine initially, I'm beginning to miss Linux on this machine.
The Android OS is pretty good, but it lacks
- anyway to recognize and dial the data card - so no connectivity in places without WiFi - the biggest deal breaker
- Apps for organizing / editing photos
- other native apps that I use less frequently but would be good to have while travelling
XP SP3 has pretty much everything I require, but
- As I install more software, it seems to be slowing down ( Standard windows problem)
- Lack of a good CII
- It's windows.

What I want:
I want to install a nice, "lightweight" distro , which
- works flawlessly with all the hardware I have - sound, wifi , datacard and hibernate/sleep are a must
- doesn't hog too much RAM.
- a good-to-have would be that the distro is compiled specifically for the Atom CPU, so that  I can extract the maximum out of this netbook ( I'm open to cross-compiling Gentoo for this , if that helps )
- KDE4 would be a good-to-have, although I can live with fluxbox + some basic apps as well.
- Good power management - I'm not sure how good/bad linux is with power management as I mostly use it on my desktops or inside a VM on my mac.
- Please dont suggest Kubuntu - anything Debian or RHEL/CentOS based would be desirable - I dont mind not have the bleeding edge software - I can compile what I want -  I want stability above all else - irritated with breakages in the Ubuntu/Fedora world. [1]

Any suggestions?
( posted from my notebook from the train - from somewhere in the middle of nowhere )

[1] - I've had Ubuntu and fedora kernel upgrades breaking sound, VMWare modules and Wifi amongst other things. Used Debian for a year on another laptop ( till mid 2009 ) and never faced any problems

Karthik has posted an interesting article on Jumping Spiders. He has also posted a whole lot of Jumping spider photographs on his website here.

Original Entry

The answer to the

Wotzit of yesterday .....





There is a tree in the Namdapha area whose local name is "DhunA". This tree, when its bark is cut, oozes resin, which begin long "driplets" towards the ground, which can be snapped off. The resin is aromatic, and is often smoked upon coals to give off a pleasant smell.

Here's Bidyut Barua (Bidyut means electricity or lightning!), our really excellent wildlife guide, pointing out the sap on the tree-trunk:





I had taken one of the solid "drippings", held it up to the light, and taken a macro shot for that "resin-scultpure" shot! So I guess it was sharathm who came closest to the right answer, though I found dakini_bones answer very interesting!


The water bodies of Dibru/Shaikowa, the attendant marshland and reeds, and the forests of Namdapha had so many wonders to show....as I keep uploading my very-much-less-than-satisfactory photographs, I will share them. To me, the forests are a magical place....

And the best plus of the trip? After about 6 months...I had two weeks without even a TWINGE of pain from my teeth...thank you, Dr Sheela of R V Dental College! I am going back to complete my root canal/crown (yes, I am being crowned, you lot better bow before me soon or it'll be "off with your heads!") work....

Just got back home...and it feels wonderful!

So here's the first image from Arunachal Pradesh...wotzit?






Each one allowed one guess.....

And, I hope all of you who celebrate the festival had a very, very....

Since I am travelling a lot, I bought I needed a light netbook – bought the Acer Aspire D250 for slightly less than 18k INR

Tech Specs:

• Intel Atom Processor N280 – 1.66 Ghz, 667 Mhz FSB
• 1 GB Ram ( will upgrade it to 2 GB Shortly 0
• 6-cell Li-ion battery ( has been giving me 5+ hours of backup )
• 160 GB HDD
• Card Reader
• Android OS as a standard dual boot option -  more on this later

Initial Feel;

• The keyboard felt nice – I am very particular about keyboards and this one seems to be pretty nice initially. The laptop itself is pretty small though and your fingers will cramp up after long hours of usage ( I started having problems after 4+ hours)
• The 6-cell battery gives me 4-5 hours of backup on my usage ( more on usage below ) – I’m more than happy with it.
• Atom processor is powerful enough for my usage on this machine
• The display is glossy and nice. The area around the display is prone to fingerprints though
• The laptop is really light – around 1kg and thin, Though nowhere as thin and light as the Macbook Air, it’s pretty good and light for my needs and it’s in my budget :)

How I use it

I made a conscious decision to keep the software stack on my machine as light as possible. I use windows XP SP3 on this ( came preloaded ) along with Android OS ( more on this below).

Firefox is the primary application that i use on my machine. I try and use web applications where ever possible. Which means I used GMail and Google Apps (for my TW Mail ) instead of using a Outlook 2007 as my mail client. I did try using Windows Live Mail , but I found the web interface the best deal.

I use Pidgin for all my IM needs – it’s got all my accounts ( my Y!, Google Talk and TW Jabber account) linked to it. Sometimes I use meebo as well. The heaviest application that I use on this machine is Eclipse – it’s way slower than my Macbook Pro – but then netbooks are really not meant for heavy development work. Java6 + Eclipse do really drain this machine – also because it’s got just 1 GB of RAM.

The only other development that I’ve been doing on this laptop is Firefox extension development – the laptop seems more than adequate for this task - Notepad++ being my editor of choice for this work.

I also have Emacs for windows installed on this machine – though I’ve been rarely using it.

The machine did not come with the windows XP Home CD/media with it. Acer provides a software for backing up the laptop into disks/DVD’s. I havent bothered with it cause I am going to get rid of windows and install Linux on it once I get back to Bangalore anyway.

The Android OS

When I bought the netbook, I noticed the “Android ready” logo on the right palm-rest area. I thought it was marketing shill till I installed/activated the Andriod OS ( you can do this from within windows – very cool ) and booted into it. Android asks your for your Google Account credentials and then syncs with it. All your Contacts / Calendar / GTalk friends list etc are automatically synced. It lacks some essential (for me at least) apps such as Twidriod but I assume you can install it somehow – need to explore more once my travels end and I get back to Bangalore.

Acer supplies its own ‘flavour’ of Android. I didnt use the word ‘distro’ – the Android world has not yet seen the kind of fragmentation the Linux world has, which is a good thing. I plan to install the vanilla Android OS once I get back – hardware support being a non-issue as everything seems to run well anyway

It’d be interesting to try out Chrome OS on this once it comes out – I've a gut feeling that it should work on this machine too many issues.

Verdict

If you are looking for a netbook which gets the job done and lets you play around – go for this one – I’m positively in love with this once I bought it.!

This year is different from other years. This year I went to Calcutta more than three times. No wait. I went there 3 times, but my parents (yes, both of them) came over one by one. A first.

So I returned from Calcutta this weekend after a two week stay. And all it feels like is a blip in time. A look at my calendar reassures me that it really has been two weeks. Perhaps it was the hectic activitiy and series of events, perhaps it was the shuttling to Blore office on a hectic schedule, perhaps it was just that it was an enjoyable time that it seems so short.
However, I do rememeber wanting to be back to bbay. To my schedule here, to peace.

The primary premise for the visit of course, was Boomba's wedding. And it was fun 0 in its way. I was rather too happy on the final function night (cocktails) where I didnt need to be in formals (read Sari) and wore a dress. Finally wearing a sari took its toll on me.
The day I landed I attended a wedding. And I was immediately tired of weddings and dressing up. But then the main wedding awaited me. And associated functions. THat means dressing up in the morning for small functions with certain family members and in the evenings for other functions with different family members. Carrying gift to Brides home, Cocktails at the brides home, wedding proper, bringing bride home, entertaining frnds and family in evening, preparing for the big evening, bou bhaat (reception), and then preparations for the cocktails from our family. Phew!

In the middle of all this mayhem, I had to go to the Bangalore office for a day. So, on 19th there I was, right after the reception party, sitting up all night with my brother and his frnds on the terrace, waiting for my taxi to arrive. Flight at 6am and office by 10am. Back by the late night flight and up early for the cocktails the next night!

But it was fun. Though I hardly got home food, the last few days were food orgies, and I brought back food while I kept some of my clothes back in my old wardrobe at home. Who needs them anyway?

To top it all, an old frnd made his way to Cal to participate in the festivities (or a part of em anyway) and enjoy a trip to the city. Taking him around was somethign I enjoyed doing, but unfortunately it was a limited activity with my time being pressed. I wish I could show him around my college (presidency), College Street and my favortie book shops there - where almost any book can be found. Breakfast at Flury's and a drive over Vidyasagar Setu. Not to mention Phuchka, churmus and egg rolls. Imagine! This time I myself did not eat an egg roll. (world flips over)

Tired I am, hectic it was, but it was home. It was fun mixing up Bengali in my Hindi. It was fun to have so many people around me (though yes, it was tiring after a while). The hustle and bustle, constant list of things to do, and then sudden periods of inactivity. The new frnds, old frnds, frnds of frnds. The sweets, the Chingris (lobsters), mishti doi's and Biryani's - all mixed into a delightful fortnight. All jumbled up together and yet all distinct. A whirr of activity and a blur of memories.
A sweet sensation which leaves me physically tired at its mere thought.

The fun of showing my house to a frnd of mine after about 8 years!
Calcutta this time was fun, it has me yearning for more because it was the calcutta I knew in College and not the Calcutta I go to for Holidays.

Funny, those boxes for collecting donations are modeled on Sintex Water Tanks.. hilarious

How we now have plastic baskets as an alternative to the handmade ones

Original Entry