The meaning...

Each morning I wake up, I take a deep breath, and decide to get another day over with. Each day is a challenge, each day is wait. I am not sure what I am waiting for, but I am certain, that whatever the future holds, has got to be better than the present. Things have been progressively on the downward trend for a while, with hobbies dying an unnatural death, the amount of time to reflect upon oneself increasing significantly, debts and earnings going way out of sync, the want for all my vices disappearing and a lot more that I have missed out, accidentally or purposefully. There are days like today when every breath is a strained one and it's days like this  that makes me wonder, how long before I will be alive again. I, like many others before me have often wondered about the meaning of life, and it was while watching a movie, that I had an epiphany. May be one day I will be resurrected. Until then I'll be right here, tackling each day as it comes.

The Woman from Iran

I slept with the TV on last night, and got up to this morning to a very dreamy tune. The TV is still on, and VH1 still has soft music playing. I'd walked for over 4 hours yesterday. I don't know if it is the music, or the feeling of waking up rested from a deep sleep, or may be it is the thought of the woman from Iran, or some other unknown reason, but I have a feel good factor, despite the long tiresome day that lies ahead. And the way that the frequency of such a feeling is dwindling, I intend to make the most of it. So any how, it was a Friday evening, and me and a friend of mine were going over to a friends place, and we stopped to get some fuel. So this woman comes up and tries to ask the petrol pump attendants for help. Unfortunately, she could barely speak or understand English, let alone Hindi, while the attendants didn't understand a word of what she said. I helped her translate, and it turned out, her car (parked across the street) wouldn't start, and from her description it sounded as though her battery had run out of juice. The attendant asked her to leave her car at the pump and to come back for it, the following day, to which she turned to me and asked me if it was safe to leave her car there. I wanted to tell her that this was India and her car wasn't safe even if she slept in it, but instead I told her that if she spoke to the manager and he said it was safe, it should be safe. There was something peculiar about her deep blue eyes, which said that she was scared. It's kind of strange how we still communicate at a primal level. I sighed and told her I would help her start her car. Despite numerous attempts, I could not explain her the procedure to push start the car, and it took me a good 3-4 mins to explain her that the car should be in the third gear. She asked me to take the drivers seat, and I asked her teen aged son to help push the car. Luckily the slope was downhill and the battery had enough power for half a self. Soon the car was up and running. Both the woman and her son thanked me, and I left. I never help strangers, especially at night, and this was probably the first time I'd done so. Why I did it, I don't know, but the one thing that I do know is that helping the woman from Iran helped me feel good about my self as well. May be I ought to be more helpful to strangers. I have often thought about starting a "Pay it forward" program, but I don't have faith on the average Indian to keep the chain going. May be I haven't met someone so desperate, but if opportunity knocks, I'd like to give it a chance. I've also been considering giving away money to a good cause, for a while now. I'd like to take my father's advice on it, but I don't want him to know about it either. It's not that he isn't supportive, he has always supported me. When I do save some money, I am going to give away a menial amount, and when I do, no one will know, not even my lonely blog. I'd rather be just another anonymous entry in an NGO's ledger book.

How to make delicious chicken : Ginger Lemon Chicken

The other day I was really bored, so I decided to try my hand at cooking. Why cooking you may ask, well, I am kind of a foodie, and mostly my instincts about flavors that would go well are bang on. So anyway, it turned out to be really good, so I thought I'd put a post on cooking as well, here's how I went about it :

1. Collect the following ingredient :

• Chicken - 500 gms
• Lemons - 3-4
  
• Ginger - One medium size piece, about 3/4th of the size shown in the image below
• Garlic - 4-5 cloves
• Rock Salt - To taste
• White pepper - To taste
  
• Green Chilly - 1-2
• Olive oil - Enough to oil a pan
• Herbs for seasoning (oregano, basil and parsley)

2. Wash and put the chicken in a container and stab it with a fork.

3. Grate or make a paste of the ginger, crush the garlic, squeeze the lemons, add rock salt and white pepper to taste, and deseed and add the green chilies and marinate for 6-12 hours.

4. Heat up a pan (preferably a grill pan) and grease it with a few teaspoons of olive oil.

5. Once the oil is warm enough, drain the marinade and add the chicken to the pan, put in some dried herbs of your choice.

6. Cook the chicken on a shallow flame, which is warm enough to keep the chicken sizzling, but not enough that the chicken gets burnt or cooks to quickly. Take at least 20 minutes cooking it turning it over and over again.

Voila... Making delicious chicken is as simple as that.

Shutdown -r

I am not someone who gives up easy, for I have had to fight for everything, but right now I am at a point where things have been rough for a long while, and I’m just plain tired. I am dissatisfied with everything, dissatisfied with life itself. How is it that you work hard to build something, and all of a sudden you get tired of it? I know I have been going on about change for a while now, but now it’s time. Wheels of change are in motion, and everything from this life must go, everything that makes me sad. I do not regret anything that I’ve done, for every incident, every scar teaches you something. I am just scared of what the future might hold. As a start, I’ve decided to lose the pot belly I’ve grown in the past few years, and have hence started pushing my body beyond what I thought it was capable of. I’ve grown fond of running. Nothing beats the feeling of having no thoughts at all, except the one about gulping down large volumes of air, and still being breathless. Sometimes I even get “runner’s high”. Fewer hours at work has been a side effect of this new addiction. There is a lot I have to set right. Recently, I read this blog post and really liked the analogy. I have realized that I have been concentrating so hard to get my pebbles in my jar, that I haven’t left much room for the rocks. It’s funny how it’s the rocks define you, yet the world judges you by your pebbles and sand. There were so may things I’d aimed at achieving, so many goals I’ve missed. I guess it’s time to reboot.

Scarred... For life?

When ever people interact, they inevitably scar each other. Now I don't mean actually physical scars (even though quite a few people have given me those as well :P ), but deeper metaphorical ones. The worst part is that there doesn't even have to be an exchange of words for people to affect you. Most times you are lucky, and the scars are only superficial, and soon disappear. Sometimes though, they last a lifetime. Moving on to actual physical scars (my inspiration for this post), each of em have a story to tell. Like this tiny black dot where I was stabbed with a pencil as a kid, or the scar near my lip where my sister hit me and I lied to my parents about it. Physical or metaphorical, I've got quite a few of them that appear that they would last me a lifetime. However, I think I'm ready to come out of my cocoon and be scarred again.

How to erase memories and forget stuff?

Bored and frustrated, trying to distract myself from my monotonous life, I went and bought myself a camera. Yes it's a DSLR. Having always enjoyed photography, but never having ha decent camera, I bought phones with cameras which were ahead of their times, and I even clicked some decent pictures with em. However, when I used a friends camera over a road trip that we made, I was in awe of the control one could have over light. It took me a while to justify the expense (and to pool in the money) but eventually, I ended up buying one too. It's amazing how quickly I got comfortable using it, and now am even planning to buy lenses, filters and other stuff for it. I got a feeling, that my camera is gonna be a bigger white elephant than my bike, especially since I didn't earn when I was passionate about bikes, limiting my expenses, but now there is nothing holding me back. Oh, and for those of you who see things from my perspective and wish to follow me, you can Google my real name, and my photo blog does show up in the lower half of the first page. I've even started a Flickr stream if you'd like to follow me there.

The andro post.

So where have I been all this while? Well, "lost" is the word that best explains it. I have been in a world of my own, cut off from everybody, waiting. I have been wondering for a while now, as to what I am gonna do next, but all I end up doing is waiting. But now that I am back, I do hope I post another one soon. One, in which I can put down a lot more, for this is all I can type on my tiny phone. With hopes of being back soon, with a longer post, I leave you with a picture of my latest (though not so new anymore) possession.