Burning Paan

Traditionally in South India betel leaves, areca nut, coconut, turmeric and flowers are given to females on most auspicious occasion and is known as tambulam During weddings this given to both males and females in decorative carry bags when the guests leave the marriage hall. Chewing the combination of betel leaves, areca nut and lime (Chunna) is supposed to help digestion after heavy meals and you can see in most South Indian weddings a plate with these ingredients are place outside the dining hall for the guest. This combination is generally chewed and swallowed.

In North India it is also consumed and is known as Paan and various combinations are eaten. Saada paan that just has betel leaves, areca nut and lime, Meetha paan with additional ingredients such as sweetener and so forth, or with tobacco. Normally the paan with tobacco is chewed and then spat out… you can see splotches of red markings on roads, walls, railway platforms etc in most Indian cities on account of these.  Each of these paan shops try to bring out unique paans with assorted ingredients so as to catch fancy of the consumer and one such paan is the burning Paan. I came across this video about this paan and am sharing this with you all. It is all in the taste of the consumer and I find it quite surprising that such things happen in spite of the health hazards. Enjoy the Burning Paan :)

Adaptation of a book into screenplay

#Screenadaptation

I have always have been an avid reader right from my younger days and have seen quite a few Hollywood movies based on those books. Most movies have been extremely well adapted from the book and as I had read them it was a pleasure to watch the scene unfold in visuals before my eyes. Couple of names of these books crop up in my mind as I write this blog for Indispire as examples

Guns of Navarone a fiction written by Alistair Maclean : A second world war story where a small team of soldiers are inserted behind German occupied Greece to blow up guns that guard the coast so that allied invasion can take place.I read this book long before I saw this movie and re-read the same after seeing the movie . The movie did do justice to the story told in the book.

The Day of the Jackal a thriller written by Frederick Forsyth a story of an assassin who has been contracted by dissent French paramilitary force OAS to kill the then French President Charles de Gaulle . Truly a gripping movie even if you have not read the book. Again the adaption to screenplay is faultless.

Well there are others such as Where Eagles Dare, Puppet on a chain, Way to Dusty death, Angels& Demons, Da Vinci Code, Exodus, The Godfather, Absolute Power, The Count of Monte Cristo, Sherlock Holmes, Bourne Series and lot more that I have read and seen too. As usual in Hollywood the adaptation of the books into screenplay is well done with little changes unlike in Indian film industry where the screenplay is tweaked to cater to our local population thereby changing the entire meaning of the story as written.

Do you believe in Ghosts and do they exists

A lively discussion at home regarding the final rites as per Hindu culture to be done in case of death of the family member and the reason given was that these rituals are conducted so that the soul of the departed is appeased and proceed to heaven. In other words if no rituals are done, then the soul is left wandering as a ghost on this earth forever. Does this mean the persons of other religions who do not have any specific rituals when they die remain in this universe in form of a ghost???

If you do believe in ghosts/ spirits you are not alone in this world since millions of people do believe in them, in terms of percentages of the population it could be in the regions of 30-40% which is pretty high considering the fact that there has been no scientific evidence of the spirit or the ghost. Now why do people believe in them in spite of no proofs is that our fear of our own mortality plays an important role in belief in ghosts. Most of us desperately want to believe in life after death – and the idea of ghosts seems to offer support for such an idea. The belief offers many people comfort — who doesn't want to believe that our beloved but deceased family members aren't looking out for us, or with us in our times of need?

Right from medieval times stories of ghosts or spirits have enthralled and also frightened people in this world. Medicine men or the Oracles have swayed the thoughts & decisions of many Tribal chiefs and Kings by their actions or statements of talking with spirits and deciding the events that were to unfold. They were the most powerful personalities of the times revered even by the kings and people had blind faith in them and their bidding.

Even I used to believe and fantasize about the ghost while I was young and one particular story comes to my mind where it is said that if you get a strand of hair of a woman ghost and hide it in your body beneath your skin then you will get all that you aspire in this materialistic world. Thinking about the way I used to be looking for that strand of hair during my childhood does bring about a smile on my face even today.

The thoughts of ghost may arise as the result of honest misinterpretation of naturally occurring phenomena (for example, seeing faces and figures in the shadows or hearing noises made by animals in the night), or common but frightening anomalous experiences. An example of the latter would be sleep paralysis episodes that can occur between sleep and wakefulness. During such episodes, the sufferer is temporarily paralyzed and may experience a strong sense of presence and a variety of bizarre hallucinations. Although it can be terrifying, sleep paralysis is essentially harmless and I have written about this in a blog titled Amaku Pishsasi (Crushing ghost) few years back. I also wrote of a person hallucinating after excessive drinking while on night duty at Iraq and the blog was titled Neither here nor there..floatingin air.

Well friends many more pages of incidents by people can be written and there would be no end to this blog and so I rest my views here. I am not an believer of ghost or spirit now that i am grown up and added to it the fact that there is no scientific proof of its existence. I do not berate people who believe in them and I would surely like to know your experiences if any of paranormal activities that you have come across or some interesting stories. Please post your comments

Bottoms Up

Well it is not the call to drink up your booze in one go or the capitalizing of the boat but the phrase that popped up in my mind when i saw couple of mallard ducks with their heads under water looking for their food.

This was captured at a water body in Chennai early this year.

Expectations -You can't always get what you want

Mankind is driven by their expectations and for most there is no end it thereby leading a feeling of regret and frustrations throughout their lives and few take extreme steps to escape it. We keep reading almost daily about suicides that takes place due to the stress of not able to achieve their expectations or terrorist attacks and so forth. These expectations can be materialistic, financial emotional, political and so forth and it is normally stems out of the society we live in.  

Now please do not get me wrong that I am advocating that there should be no expectations and goals in one’s life for without any of those there is no life at all. I am only saying that it is natural to a person to keeping increasing their expectations once they have achieved their initial targets. The flames of these expectations are stoked by yourself, your partner or parents in individual’s life and at times it becomes overbearing and unreasonable. We all seem to be in competition with our siblings, neighbors, relatives or for the unknown person elsewhere who is much higher to your present condition. A simple example all of you may agree is that your spouse or parents would want you have better things than that of your neighbor or a known relative like a bigger house, high end model car as the guy who lives down the road or have more properties and money compared to your sibling and so forth. There is hardly any contentment in what you are achieving.

Some do achieve their expectations be it materialistic, financial, and emotional but at a steep cost to oneself and this is never discussed by those who aspire for similar success, for we live in a hypocritical society where the focus of people is in only in the success of the person not failures or pains of that person. If only one is contented with what they have in their lives then they surely would be happy and in peace with their existence. 

Just a random rant that i dreamt last night .On this note I leave an old  song by Rolling stone “you don't always get what you want” 

Love to visit Iraq and Turkey again

There are many places that I would like to visit and explore the local sites but then the IndiSpire topic was about #TimetoRevisit and two countries fall under this category one being Iraq and other being Turkey. Brief recount of my earlier visit and why I would like to go back to those countries is under

Iraq was the first foreign destination at the age of 25 when I took up a job there and I was in this beautiful country for over 2 years. Within this country you had the historical place called Mesopotamia a region between the two biblical rivers Tigris and Euphrates that was also known as the Cradle of Civilization for it was here that mankind started to read, write, create laws and live in cities under an organized government. In addition to Mesopotamia, Babylon with hanging gardens of Babylon one of the seven wonders of ancient world, Mythical Garden of Eden are also there. With so much overdose of medieval history linked with this country I was quite thrilled to be there for I could explore the place to my hearts fill.

Artistic Depiction of Hanging Gardens Courtesy Google

During these two years I have traveled the length and breadth of the country to see the marvels of the ancient country and I have seen remains of Babylon city that had paved roads, mud houses exposed by excavations in those areas, the reconstructed blue tiled Ishtar Gate that was on the northern entrance to Babylon city but then unfortunately we have no photographic records of these as those days we did not have a camera with us; On weekends I have traveled to Mosul, Erbil, Habbaniya, Hillah, Samarra, Karbala and lot more places but then due to the ongoing war between Iraq and Iran there were quite a few restrictions to travel and take photos so in my two years of stay in Iraq I have not documented those beautiful places and this is the reason I would revisit Iraq and explore the country and also take images of the glorious ancient places. #TimetoRevisit (This again is not a possibility now with so much violence happening in that country).

Hagah Sofia Istanbul . Image taken by me

The second country I would like to revisit is Turkey, which like Iraq has so many ancient cultures and places to see and enjoy. In the year 2011 I had to visit Istanbul, Turkey on a official trip and after having 5 days of continuous meeting our host had arranged for half a day sightseeing tour of Istanbul (European side) and in that short span of 4-5 hours we visited the Blue Mosque, Hagah Sofia and Topkafi palace, Basilica Cistern and the Grand Bazaar. You can read my earlier blog about Turkey here. #TimetoRevisit Turkey for the country has lot more places to explored and enjoyed.

This blog is written for IndiSpire idea of the week posted by fellow blogger Anita 

Ripped Jeans

Courtesy Google Images

Recently I watching television and in one of the Bollywood function I saw the stars both men and women wearing ripped and tattered blue denim jeans pants and shirts and this was their fashion statement. I still remember that ripped jeans pants was quite a rage during late 80’s because Kurt Cobain(Nirvana) used to wear these. But then it dropped out of fashion after few years and has resurfaced now with a bang.

Blue denim jeans has been my favorite wear right from the time I started going to college way back in 1974 as they were quite rugged and fashionable as well when worn with matching shirts even those days when jeans were frowned upon by our elders. The more you wear the jeans it used to fade irregularly and more it fades it was considered fashionable. The markets came up with an idea to manufacturing new jeans using stone wash/ acid wash, sand blasting so to fade new jeans to give an appearance of being used over long period by the wearer.

Courtesy Google Images

I can still hear my mother scolding me not to wear the faded, torn and tattered jeans for she used to say it makes me look like a beggar and we used to discard the jeans when the ripping at the knee became too big or if it was not possible to stitch a funky badge over the tear or sometimes we used to convert it to shorts. Seeing the current trend in the market where a tattered and ripped jeans cost lot more than a normal pair and it does makes me wonder as to why we all discarded the jeans then J

Stars and well known personalities from Hollywood and Music industry come up with such crazy ideas of fashion and immediately everyone laps it up including the stars from our country. I have had trouble standing and wearing the naturally ripped jeans for my toes used to go and get stuck at the tear and at time make the tear bigger so I keep wondering how does stars wear the ripped and tattered jeans …possibly they would wear these only once and discard it. Just a thought!!!

The latest 2017 fashion trend in men’s clothing that was unveiled in USA this year was Homeless inspired fashion dress or the street people and this fashion show was mired in various controversies. God knows when the leaf/ loin cloth is going to return as fashion for the trend seems to going back in times.