I AM GOING HOME! AFTER 2 AND A HALF LOOOOOONG YEARS I AM GOING HOME :))

I CANNOT WAIT TILL I GET TO MY OWN SWEET PARADISE THIS SIDE OF HEAVEN.

FOR THE NEXT FEW WEEKS AM GOING TO BE SHUTTLING BETWEEN NAGERCOIL AND TRIVANDRUM.

SO LONG AND FAREWELL TILL THEN. CATCH U ALL LATER :))

When the mountains cry in anguish;

You float by, but hear no whimper.

When the fury ebbs, the mountains sigh.

Deep within, the earth roils;

Her sweat pours forth

A beautiful bloom,

Borne in the prime of pain.

As furrow by furrow,

Man hacks through

In search of gold,

Of gold and lust.

Lost amidst the days of yore,

Some atavistic memory

Cries out to a prehistoric God,

That silent rides the mountains high.

Though he had travelled all the way to the other side of the world, a trip to Kolkata never seemed to materialize. He covered all the metros. Mumbai, Chennai, Delhi . why he had even made the Kailash Manasarovar Yatra, but Kali's city somehow eluded him. Finally when his sister and family made the trip and brought back Kali's Prasad for him, he could take it no longer. He had decided once and for all that he was going to make it, he was going to rendezvous with the Terrible One within a year, and he did.

And finally when he did set his eyes on Her, surely he closed them in bliss. A tumult of emotions that welled up within surely flowed down his eyes unabashedly; tears of pure unadulterated joy, of a longing finally fulfilled.

And at last when he was tranquil enough to let his little sister know that he had seen Her, he knew that no words could fully express the magnitude of what he had experienced. So he resorted to one of Tamil's greatest poets, a wizard of words who long before Shakespeare proved that brevity is the soul of wit. Kambar, who spoke volumes in the two words that fell out of Hanuman's mouth when He returned to Rama after his successful quest to find Sita. "Kanden Sitaiyai," was all He said. But He conveyed a world of meaning in those two words.

And so, he borrowed the words of his sister's ishtadeivam to tell her that he had finally succeeded in his quest. After all, she was the only one in the family who could really appreciate the fine nuances, the power, and the significance of those two words," Kanden Kaliyai".

Diwali lets you go tamasik. I really don't know if that is a Tam tradition on a Mallu one. Anyway, its one of the best features of living in a mixed culture like that of Kanyakumari district. See, like I said once, the best of both worlds. In Kerala, Diwali is not at all a big thing. Just a bursting of crackers, And often even that goes by with just a whimper. Mallus are big on crackers during Vishu, or so I understand.

Anyway back to Diwali, and this time too as usual, I was tempted with e-mails and now scraps on orkut too, from the folks back home, all about the awesome mutton curry my sis-in-law made or the delectable chicken biriyani my sis made. Yea that's de rigueur, mutton curry and dosa for breakfast and chicken for lunch, either fried or as biriyani.

And then the diwali palahaarams. The sweets and the savories. Parippu vada is a must for us. The rest can follow as the case may be. Stuff that everyone made, -the friends and neighbours- would come pouring in. and it is sweet indulgence indeed to sit with family and a cup of chaya around the dining table, comparing the merits of my mom's vada against my aunt's or the silkiness of our kesari against that of our neighbor's or how so-and-so's unniyappam could have been just a li'l bit softer. And two days after diwali all the parippu vadas mysteriously reappear as rasa vadas. I love the parippu vadas just for that, in anticipation of the rasavadas that are to follow.

This year round, our family seems to have had a standard menu when it came to the palahaarams. Whether it's the Nagercoil/Trivandrum/Bangalore/Vishakhapatnam or the US branch, everyone went for unniyappams and parippuvada. The more enterprising ones (read everyone other than me) made more stuff like seven cups and kesari and diamond cuts etc. I made unniyappams for the first time this year. I went ahead with it since every time my mom or sis-in-law made it at home, it would come out perfect, soft and 'poo pole' (soft as a flower, so to say) and would stay so for days, unless it got over by then. It's this foolproof recipe that we got from a neighbor, which uses just rava, jaggery and ghee. It simply cannot go wrong, something like 'Unniyappam for Dummies'.

Well I proved them all wrong. I have this unique talent for making the most 'fail-safe' recipe fail. If a recipe can be messed up, rest assured I shall do it. Even if it cannot be, leave it to me, I'll find a way. So my unniyappams turned out rock-hard. Mind you, they were tasty, once you managed to break through the crust without damage to your teeth.

They reminded me of the 'eripadakkams' or 'throw crackers' back home. You know the ones you hurled hard on the ground and they went boom. Those were my favorite kind of crackers and I miss them so. And maybe that is why I unconsciously made my unniyappams turn out like them. Ahhhhhhhh that's it. That's why they failed, I didn't actually mess up. It was my sub-conscious effort to psychologically reconnect with my cherished childhood and indulge in comforting, warm, fuzzy, nostalgia to counter the debilitating effects of being far from home on a much loved festival. (phew!)

So folks, Happy Diwali or like we say it, Deepavali! Yeah yeah, I know I am late. I was too busy indulging in my favorite pastime nostalgia of course!

Yup, he's out. Chief Warlock of the Wizengamot and Supreme Mugwump of the International Confederation of Wizards, better known as the dearly departed Headmaster of Hogwarts, Albus Percival Wulfric Brian Dumbledore is gay.
His creator JK Rowling pushed him out of the closet just last week while answering questions at Carnegie Hall. Well, that was a bolt out of the blue.

Yes, he was pushed out, he did not come out on his own. What I do not understand is why Jo had to do it. What points was she trying to score? Of course, she has always been awfully PC right from the start. She has been very careful to show no discrimination based on race, religion, sex, gender, class, financial condition or intelligence. But she always steered clear of sexual orientation, to an extent that all teachers at Hogwarts were portrayed as almost asexual. Maybe this was because the books primarily started off as children's books, before they became darker and more serious, as the series progressed.

Except for the late revelation about the ill fated love of Prof.Severus Snape, we know nothing about the love lives of the rest of the teachers at Hogwarts. No mention about spouses or children or families. Many did speculate if the kindly Headmaster with his twinkling blue eyes and joi de vivre and his stern, strict but warm hearted deputy Prof. Minerva Mc Gonagall had something going on. A case of opposites attracting. Apparantly not.

What we now know is that Dumbledore desired a man, a dark sorcerer no less, Jo's Hitler - Grindelwald. But once they separated ways, what did he do? Did he not want to seek love after that?

So coming back to the revelation, why did Jo do this now? Was she trying to score points with the homosexual community? Wasn't it a bit late for that? If she did, she should have said so in at least one of the seven books- atleast the last one where she brought this much loved, character a notch or two down, and revelaed to us his feet of clay. When she showed us that Dumbledore was only human, she could have revealed this too.

And more importantly, if she wanted to show that she had no sexual prejudices, the fact should have come from the man himself. Since he kept it a secret, does it mean he was ashamed of it? So how does that make her look?

Frankly speaking, though I have nothing against anyone's sexual preference, I feel that this was totally unnecessary. At this point anyway. The man is dead and buried/cremated/whatever, His tomb has already been plundered. Voldy's gone forever and everyone has got on with their lives. And most of us have come to terms with his humanity. Why dig up this new controversy now?

Jo, leave him alone. Just let his weary old bones rest in peace, atleast hereafter.

P.S. hate mail expected. do drop in a line.