"Sulleu"........for 5 days

Greetings to one and all.....
I'm back in high spirits and overwhelming energy to tell you guys my story for the last 5 days.

Note:
Almost everyone would have engaged themselves in the game " 'Police & Robber' in English or 'Chor & Police' in Hindi or 'Kallannum Policeum' in Malayalam ". The robber is usually given the privilege to take 3 time outs in the game. As and when the police gets too near for comfort of the robber he a.k.a. chor a.k.a kallan can take a time out, if any is left, and then catch his breath and continue eluding the police. The Malayalam word to call 'time out' is namely 'Sulleu'.

So, I called 'Sulleu' from my Bangalore high life for 5 days which contained 2 days casual leave, 1 more day casual leave and 2 days for the weekend. I split the 3 days leave into two parts as my company doesn't allow to club 3 or more days of casual leaves with a weekend.

With neither the luxury of a king or lavishness of a prince but joy of a son, I stayed home for 5 days in a row, the longest break that I've ever taken once I joined my first company. But that doesn't mean ki I had a blase time at home. In fact, I was sweating it out with the ayurvedic medicines that the ovoid headed doctor had given me.

First Day
The very first day, my avocation was being a photographer. I took photos of my brothers 1 month old baby with different people in different angles with different backgrounds. I was keeping a clear count of the film remaining in the camera as I yearned to have a photo with the baby and show it to people both far and near. So, I didn't hold back myself to ask my brother to take a picture of blushing 'Chacko Uncle' i.e. ME with THE great gift of GOD in my arms, which your eyes wouldn't fail to notice.

I remember myself thinking when his rightful parents took the baby from me, "Hmmmm...., I'll also have one or more such babies some day".

Second Day
05:00 A.M
I was roused from sleep by my mother to drink a mixture of 25gms of ayurvedic power and warm water. I gulped it in a single go. Little did I know that it was for clearing my stomach.

I woke up with a uneasy feeling in my underbelly, it was then my mother revealed the plot of the ayurvedic story. Before any of the ayurvedic medicines are to be consumed, they generally clean the stomach. And, O my GOD, the story started at 8 in the morning and there I was at 12 O'Clock, in front of the TV with 12 visits to the toilet. I was drained and tired and I no longer wanted to maintain the abstemious diet that I had thought of following to burn 15kgs of fat from my, more fat less healthy, body of mine.

Third, Fourth & Fifth Day
Aftereffects of the second day lasted for the remaining days. The change were drastic and I didn't have both mental or physical control over my appetite. I felt that my obstinate hunger was leading me towards nirvana, but it was not to be. Thus the inertia and the momentum of my hunger rolled to a stop with 5 days of homely food, sweetly and soundly cooked by my mother, even when her mind would have been populated with how much more deposits she needs to reach the target for the quarter. Kindly withhold from having misapprehensions about the quantity of food that I may have had, but I can ensure you that many of you could not have had the equal amount in 10 days.

Now I'm back in Bangalore, modulating my fight with hunger and luckily for my purse my need to trim myself is emerging victorious. I'm also mollifying my hunger but taking care not to mollycoddle it.

I would like to epitomize this article by providing a very important piece of advise to all of you. Please take care the next time anyone of you even think about having any king ayurvedic treatment!!!!..........

Gastronomy - Art of eating or style of cooking

Disclaimer: One of the most most important necessity for me is FOOD and I'm not ready to compromise on the quality and the quantity of it. Thus anything and everything meant in the article means a lot and I do not want to hold back anyone from thinking anything other than what I would have really meant or tried to convey as ones freedom to think is an inalienable right of its own unless you move into a condition of hibernation or coma due to many reasons, particularly with respect to the current topic of discussion, FOOD. But mind you guys, I'm not a gourmet or a gourmand and this article is not written by any of the spirit, mind or body of Mr. Chacko, Saju Rajan, but by a very honest appetite in pain.

And as it seems my company or let me be more sympathetic, my building in particular, gives so much importance to their culinary products that the associates return to their cubicles with elation that they are under diet and their tummy's are gonna remain put. Also, every company would want me to believe that the green figures in their balance sheets are due to me remaining healthy.

Through the last few months in the new office, my taste buds have been tested thoroughly and I've started to realize that even if the software bubble bursts I can easily get through an alternate profession. Its been a journey through the different tastes that I wouldn't have tasted even if I would have gone all around the world, which is again slippery dream. I'd like to take you through the different culinary delights that I go through everyday, but I cannot ensure to give you the real simulation of what really happens, and this is now when I realize "There are some things that even words cant express."

8:40 AM -- Reading the Menu
8:45 AM -- Realizing that its the same menu for the last 2 months.
8:50 AM -- Someone behind the long queue says, "Dont have food from PNN on Monday, its the left overs of Friday."
9:00 AM -- Reach the counter to take coupons
9:05 AM -- Argue at the counter over change.
9:08 AM -- Give me a slip for Rs. 9/- balance.
9:10 AM -- Pray to God, "Let todays Idlis be soft and spongy".
9:15 AM -- Understand that God has not answered my prayers.
9:18 AM -- Get seated.
9:20 AM -- Try to cut the idly with the spoon.
9:22 AM -- The spoon and me surrender to the pressure of the "Hardness" of the Idly.
9:24 AM -- Stand in queue for another spoon.
9:27 AM -- Cut the spoon with the Idly.
9:30 AM -- Finish eating the spoon.
9:50 AM -- Thank God, I'm still alive.

It takes hardly 10 minutes for me to reach office from home and I retain the same freshness of spirit, mind and body after the goodnights sleep and the over-chlorinated water used to clean my body, thus this would mean that I neednt take one more bath atleast for the next 12 hours. But, no dude. It isn't gonna be that way.

I would impute 0% tolerance from my commonsense to accept certain names of Karnataka's culinary delights( or supposed to be delights) like the many (public) baths available at the canteen. I never tried my luck with them just because my internal inhibitions held me back even before my taste buds got the chance to reprimand me. But one thought that constantly nags me after the color, smell, taste, viscosity, look, feel, etc etc is the name of the final product.

(Its just that my sense of humor is getting affected by some of the newly found ingredients at the Center of Excellence in food and gas at the L-Center)

The story at the PNN, as I call it "Please, Never & Not" disturb sign outside the loo, is also the same. Pure 'N Natural alias PNN a.k.a "Please, Never & Not". The humdrum conversations at the counter have started to bore me. It has always been a confusion regarding which side of the counter I should be standing. On one side there would be the PNN staff wearing their incandescent green shirts and on the the other would be the associates with their company tags. These tagged people provide their sudexho or cash at the senescent machine and then would move across the counter to direct the PNN staff regarding how whatever they ordered is to be made. There can be two reasons as to why the associate is forced to assume a role of a recipe. One, the PNN guys don't know how to make or two, the PNN guys make it horribly bad.

I've heard someone asking the PNN staff as to the difference between a milk shake and an ordinary shake. In the milk shake they put ice cream and in the ordinary shake they put milk..... Anyways, that too is none of my concern. The only dish that I've ever consumed from the PNN counter is an array of depleted corn and obnoxiously black mushroom. Okay, I'm getting a little too much hyperbolic. Spare the pun.

Punchline of PNN
"Milk" is a cosmetic, also serves as a camouflage in milk shakes.

Burp........ Can’t wait for lunch.

12:30 PM -- Lunch is served.
01:34 PM -- I see the menu.
01:34 PM -- LUNCH FINISHED.
01:40 PM -- Thank god the cooler water comes free.
01:45 PM -- Bantering away through the airs of freedom.

Burp....... can't wait for tea break.

04:00 PM -- The menu screams "Today's Menu"

Sometimes I feel pity for the menu. The menu displaying the same items day over day is ready to gladly accepting the wrath of every gentleman or woman who expectantly reads the menu hoping to see new entries to list of experiments by the evening cook.

1) Asserted Samoosa's
Please excuse the canteen boys English, that was meant to be assorted.
But then, could that be a candid warning, maybe he meant assaulted.
These samoosa's alias "Killer Samoosa", come in blood shot beetroot red color and looks obnoxious, like one of those aliens that suck blood from your neck in a cheap space fiction serial or the vampire from the affluent cinemas.
The day I buy them will be to puncture my boss’s skull.

2) BU’n’S at Express Day
In fact this highly sophisticated dish makes us looks like the word made by replacing the 'n' with an 'M'. They have to go buy the buns, attach a Coffee Day Express cover to it, make it sound exotic like Shangrilla Buns and just serve them to the dumb. The rest is done by the hungry software engineer.
Plain buns they are, oops...not just any plain bun, soggy depleted "Buns"; mind that.

3) Set Dosa.
Same as the breakfast dosas.
Just that they had "SET" it up in some place nice and cozy like maybe the refrigerator or the oven.

4) Paper Plain Masala.
Special dosa in which the position of the "masala" comes after Paper and Plain.
If the name had been Masala Paper Plain then the so called masala would have been inside.

Even this variety of Dosa have been suggested to the Guniness Book of Records and to Ripleys Beleive it or Not as the thinnest dosa repeatedly made.

Chalo its 05:00 P.M and time to relive myself from this defiance of the administration of the building and the canteen.

Note: I've tried to explicate the truth in a little or more exaggerated fashion. Kindly size up your thought process to the delineation. I've tried never to be deceptive in this narration. If anything explicit is noted, kindly add it in the suggestion column. Thanks everyone.

Any Given Sunday

Year of Release
1999

Language
English

Director
Oliver Stone

Cast
Al Pacino, Cameroon Diaz, Jamie Foxx, Dennis Quaid

Any Given Sunday, is a power packed movie, with lots and lots to offer to a person who is watching it. It takes us some games of football being played by the club name 'Miami Sharks', managed by Christina Pagniacci (Cameroon Diaz) and coached by Tony D'Amata (Al Pacino).

Its been a rough patch for the team with 4 straight loses in the league and facing an eviction from the Sunday Playoffs. With the caption and quarterback of the team, Jack 'Cap' Rooney (Dennis Quaid), out of the team due to a ruptured disc, the 3rd tier quarterback, Willie Beamen (Jamie Foxx), of the team gets the nod. Even after they loose the match, the team needs to persist with Willie as the quarterback. But the next game, he performs and delivers the goods and the team wins. But in midst the game, he starts changing plays that the coach asks him to play.

All of this is followed by pressure from Christina to sell the club. The players, the coach and the support staff, everyone is under pressure. All this time, Willie, bathing under the glory of his sudden famedom, starts going over the top and considers himself above the game and the players. The coach tries to explain to him that the game has to be about more that winning and that a leader is all about sacrifice, the times he's got to sacrifice because he's got to win, by example but not by fear.

Willie is too selfish to give importance to everyone in the team, but prefers to shun other players as well, which creates displeasure inside the team and starts itself drift towards loosing games. 'Cap' Rooney, gets ready for the final game before the most important playoffs. This is what the coach has got to say before the match,

"When you get old, things get taken from you.
That's part of life.
But you'll only start learning that,
when you start loosing stuff.

You'll find that, life, gains by inches, just life football. Because in either game, the margin
for error is so small. One half a step too late or too early and you don't quite make it. One half a second too slow or too fast and you don't quite catch it, the inches that we need are everywhere around us. They are there everywhere, every minute, every second. And you have to fight for that extra inch. And when we add all those inches, thats going to make the difference between winning and loosing, between living and dying. In any fight, its the guy who is willing to die, who is going to win that inch. And I know, if I'm going to have a life anymore, its because I'm still willing to fight and die for that inch. Because thats what living is. You gotta look at the guy next to you, you look into his eyes and you find a man who is going to sacrifice that inch for you. You'll see a guy who will sacrifice himself for the team because he knows, when it comes down to it, you are gonna do the same for him. That makes a team. So, we here win as a team or die as individuals. You decide."

Watch the movie and get to know what happens towards the end, whether the team reaches the playoffs or lays off after the most decisive match for everyone in the team, for the players for better contract and coach to continue coaching.

With power packed performances by Al Pacino and Jamie Foxx, the movie has provided great moments of mesmerizing messages which is applicable for everyone in team activities. Al Pacino, through out the movie remains subtle and his dialogue delivery is impeccable.

Rating: 6.5 / 10

How Opal Mehta Got Kissed, Got Wild and Got a Life

by Kavya Vishwanathan

I heard about this book, when there was a controversy about the author. And I enquired about her and the book, seemed like, she had made a copy of some parts of her book from two other novels namely 'Sloppy Firsts' and 'Second Helpings', by Megan F. McCafferty. Infact it is this controversy that urged me to read this book.

Kavya writes about how a teenager, Opal, is brought up by her parents through out her life to get into Harward. She takes us through her life from when she was a kid to what she is now at school and what she wants to become. It is a hilarious novel, which forces us to ask some questions to ourselves.

Opal has had nothing else in her life, other than the getting into Harward. There is always a motive behind everything that she does, be it a social or school activity. She was basically a nerd who got rejected in her first interview at Harward, by the Dean Mr. Anderson who realised that Opal is just another girl who was academically very good, but never had a social life. The basic things that he asked her was, "Do you have friends?" and "What about romance, fun and parties?" She didnt have an answer to any of these questions.

As an answer to all these questions, Opal and her parents launch a plan or mission to acheive all these one by one. They were serious about being romantic, funny and having parties. This has clearly demonstrated how being serious can be funny.

The book has used many abbrevations like HOWGIH, How Opal Will Get Into Harward, and HOWGAL, How Opal Will Get A Life. It all looks funny during the course of the book. Opal's parents instructing her on what to do to look sexy and popular at school. They even select the guy who has to kiss Opal. But, all these plans go haywire when Opal meets Sean during a conselling session.

On the surface, the book deals with basic funny incidents that happen in life and school, but in a deeper sense, it tells you to do what you always want/love to do. The message is very appleaing and applicable to everyone in their life.

Characters to look out for in this book:
1. Sean
2. Kali
3. Dean Anderson
4. Prisicalla

Rating: 3.5* of 5
It is a must read for teenagers............

Palunku - The Crystal

Year of Release
2006

Language
Malayalam

Director
Blessy

Cast
Mammootty, Lakshmi Sharma, Jagathy, Nadimudu Venu, Nasreen, Baby Nivedita

Palunku, the Crystal, tells the story of a farmer, Monichan, who has a transition between two diverse worlds.

The film traverses through the life of a middle class farmer, who leads a pretty normal and happy life with his family. He has a wife, Sushamma, from a well off family, who aspires for a better living that she used to have before. He also has two children, namely Geethu and Neethu, aged 11 and 6. Monichan is a happy man and leads a happy life as a farmer and likes his profession, the nature and all things around him.

Blessy has been his natural self in writing this one too after 'Kazcha' and 'Thanmatra'. It is a very strong script with he trademark touches to dialogues and the scenes with care and compassion. He takes us through the ordinary life that a farmer has and the difficulties that a farmer has to go through life for the repayment of loans and other stuff.

Monichan is forced to get admissions for his children in a school in the town 12 kms away as the management of the school in their locality were planned to close it down due to lack of children coming to school. One day he has to go the school to give water bottles to his children. On the way back meets Soman Pillai, Jagathy, a lotter seller, and take a lottery and bags 500 Rs for the same. During course of time, he come closer to Soman Pillai, who was one such kind of a person who always preferred shortcuts to making money.

Monichan later shifts to the city with his family and partners himself with Soman Pillai. The film shows how a naive person from a village gets sucked into the materialistic life that one lives in a city. Even his wife falls into the same vicious circle. But soon afterwards, such an incident happens which will make Monichan realise his mistakes.

The film never confuses the viewer with anything stupid. And the cast has performed their roles to perfection. The film leaves you in a state where you are pricked at the correct point. The viewer feels hurt not for Monichan, but for what he did to deserve such a huge punishment.

The film will not push you to the edge of your seat, but will surely keep you rooted. The enigma of Blessy is clearly visible. He has successfully completed a hatrick.

Rating: 8 / 10
A must see for all mallu film lovers.