For the first time ever..

... the weather men said that the Northeast monsoon shower will start that day and it did.I can't believe it.Never has the local meteorological department been this right with their predictions. Surely there is a first for everything.

The showers started a couple of days ago and it has been a very pleasant climate since then. Mild rain and cloudy sky are my favourite things and from what I heard this is also the first time the northeast monsoon rain is on time. Looks like it will go on to put up a good show and am loving it.. :).

Picture from the archives.. Plants enjoying the rain back in August.

The weather Gods..

..always have different plans than mine. Tonight the Orionids meteor shower will peak and it is supposed to be a good year for them and I had a plan in mind to wake up after midnight and witness the shower. But right from afternoon it has been cloudy and just now it became completely dark (and it is only 4'O clock now) and started raining. 

I doubt the clouds will clear .. there are too many cumulonimbus clouds currently adorning the sky and a heavy rainfall is predicted in parts of the country. Too bad for my plans .. but good for the garden plants, so I'll compromise and wait for the Leonids meteor shower.

                                       *my first search result on Orionids shower in you tube and really liked it..

Celebrations

I couldn't do a detailed post at this point of time but I will say this.. we had a glorious deepavali celebrations at our sweet home this year. We had so much fun playing, dancing, firing crackers and feasting. I am very grateful for this wonderful festival and for all the fun we had this past week. If time permits I wish to do a detailed post but for now I will stop with a snap of this double sangu chakram that fired up in the terrace.

Lets talk about books - part 2

Has it been a month since I last blogged?

I never intended for this gap.. this blog keeps me sane and one of my goals is to keep it active as much as possible.

So without delay, let me jump to show you the treasure I found in the book fair that happened in my city. As I mentioned in part 1 of this post, this is the second book festival I had attended this year. I was disappointed when I learnt of the venue, the place could hardly hold 40 stalls and when I reached the venue there were 35+ stalls all crammed together with hardly any space to move. It was nothing compared to the book festival that happened last year here. And it looked even minuscule compared to what I saw in Chennai.

On the other hand, the quality of the books that were present were far superior this year. There were varied topics available in each of the stalls and the english book stalls had excellent bargains that I still can't imagine finding such bargains anywhere else.

The below books were bought for 20 rupees each. Some of the authors aren't in my reading list but for 20 rupees I am ready to give them a try and the Jack Reacher novel is brand new and came with the plastic wrapper on.

My favourite Wodehouse was as usual little pricey even for a second hand book but I couldn't let it go. Alexander McCall Smith's No.1 Ladies detective novels were something I had been hunting for a long time and I was surprised to see them being sold (almost brand new) for just 20 rupees. I was able to get hold of only 2 books, the shopkeeper told me there were atleast ten books earlier.

Monte Cristo and the Jeffrey Archer are from another shop for 50 rupees. Monte Cristo is the first english novel I ever read(back in fourth standard) and this latest edition will go as a gift for a my sister.

We also found great deals on children books. A shop in particular sold children books in a bundle deal - 10 books for Rs100. Most books were brand new and had some rare books that could not be hunted even in higginbothams. We were astounded. We bought many pop-up books, disney tales,a couple of 'Where is Wally', Noddy, Postman Pat and good number of Twinkle books.

My intention is not to show off but to highlight the great deals on books in a book fair that somehow felt like not publicized properly.I often read about book fairs happening in various cities but there was no talk at all about it when it happened here and even most of the local media ignored covering it. Avid readers did turn up to take the haul but with proper notice and a good venue it would have been a great success.

Okay enough rant, let me finish off with a cute find. I got this brand new book for my niece for 25 rupees(the original price was 299).. It is about a cute little dog Spot and his activities on a Snowy day. I really like how he pops up through each page and..

..finally after a fun day's work sits in a cozy sofa for a cup of coffee.An instant hit with the kid.

Instant Pizza

I have been making my own version of an instant pizza often in the recent months.I was skeptical when I first made it but since then I have fallen for this pizza for good. The main pluses are that it takes very little time to make them and tastes just awesome.

There is only the assembly effort that is required to make this instant pizza and the idea for it dawned on me one day when I was really craving for pizza and finding a way to bypass making the pizza base from scratch.

There are many alternatives available in the market for making the pizza base - ready made pizza base, instant pizza base dough and so on - but I dislike the taste of many of them.There are also other recipes available online that include the use of  a bread slice as the base (toast pizzas) or stuffing the toppings in between burger bun and baking the pizzas. I liked the burger bun version but disliked the stuffing part.

So instead I decided to buy a burger bun, cut it into two halves and use each one as a base.

Lightly toast the bun for a minute. Then add a generous helping of tomato sauce, followed by mozzarella cheese, topped with sweet corn kernels and a sprinkle of herb mix.
Bake in the oven for 10 minus at 200 deg C and pizza ready.

Once ready the pizza base ie the burger bun will be crispy on the outside and very soft and toasty on the inside and together with the toppings it is an absolute delight to eat and the taste is on par with any authentic pizza.

I have tried many other topping choices too (mushroom,paneer,bell peppers) and all of them go well with the base.Dare not I forget to say, very inexpensive too :) .. Do try them if possible..

Lets talk about books - part 1

This year I had the privilege to attend not one but two book festivals in two different cities. The first one I attended was in early January when I had the opportunity to attend the Chennai book festival with my kin. It looked a mega event with hundred of stalls and thousand of people thronging around but we had very little time in our hands due to some other commitments. We spent just over 30 minutes but still I was able to buy a few good books.

The first stop was at a comic book stall and to my surprise there were so many comic books for a very nominal price. I bought two english comics - one for me and one for my new-to-the-book-reader's-club nephew. I snatched this tamil comic book randomly but later found out I had read the exact same book during my school days ( in my fourth standard summer vacation days to be exact).

This is one of the first few books I have ever read in my life and I was stunned to see I recalled this particular page after all these years.I had something similar to a Anton Ego's surprise moment when I saw this page..

I remembered this page so well because that was the exact moment I understood the story of the book and was surprised with myself on my book reading improvement.Wow, what were the chances I would be picking the exact same book after all these years!!! When I read the book again this time, I found it to be a dud but during those early days it looked like a mega adventure to me.

The next book stall I stopped at was a used book store that sold English novels for a flat rate of hundred rupees each. I was surprised to find a Le Carre there(A man most wanted) and picked it and also bought the Sacred hearts novel as I knew I had seen postive reviews of that book somewhere before. I read it shortly after.Interesting premise and good story telling made for a quick reading.

I asked my bro to pay for the books with a promise I will pay back later but I still haven't and he hasn't asked and now I am happily going to consider them gifts :)..

Apart from the above, I also had a surprise gift offer from my sister. She offered a New year gift of my choice and asked me to pick anything I liked from Amazon. I picked this Le Carre novel (The Spy who came in from the cold) which I had been wishing to own for a long long time now. It was on a moderate discount and arrived in the first week of Jan but still waiting to be read..I must sure read it before atleast the next new year.

A masterpiece

Last Saturday saw us getting up at 3.30 in the morning and going to the Srirangam temple. These days this is the norm to be followed if you wish to get a good darshan of the Lord even with an entrance fee. You can still try the expensive line anytime during the day (Rs 250) but I am willing to do the early morning darshan that gives a calm and serene and a divine experience for a modest entrance fee of 50 rupees with no hassles and rushing.

A few months back I was able to see the Lord this way with just above two hours waiting period. Last Saturday even though we were at the main inner shrine door at  around 5'o clock in the morning, we still could not go in further as the doors were closed and a board display said darshan was cancelled  for the entire day,with no prior announcements and any reasons mentioned.

We felt a little bad but we reminded ourselves of the popular saying in tamil 'You can see the Lord only when he calls you' . There is a consolation price though--the early day's start gave us an opportunity to roam around the vast premise of the temple freely.Almost half way around the thayar sannithi, we saw the west side door left opened and a sign directing towards the thousand pillars hall.Often we have visited the temple in the past and almost all those times we had never seen this door open. Instantly we decided to go in.

This is where the title of this post comes in. The moment we entered the lane through the west door and turned left we saw this big elephant statue in a distance.We were the only ones in that area and the sun had not yet risen.The light was dim and I had only my mobile phone which did not have a good flash effect but I still took a decent photo or two.

I have vague memories from a long long time ago,of sighting an elephant statue in a big temple but was not sure of exactly which temple. Recently I read an article in a well known magazine about the elephant statue present in Srirangam temple and showed it to my folks that that was the statue I had been talking about occasionally. I had seen it during a visit in my school days and recalled that it was quite big.

After reading the article I thought it would be impossible to locate the statue again in the vast temple premise after all these years and I was happy to spot it all by co-incidence in my second visit after reading about it.


Its astonishing to note that the elephant,the trainer and the patron are all of  life size. The sheer size of the elephant itself floored us.

Here is my father serving as a scale to show the statue size

The statue is atleast a thousand years old.It was made in the 10th century AD.The craftsmanship shown even in the minute designs is just so marvellous. The statue is present at the rear end of the thousand pillar hall and is part of a twin set. The other identical elephant statue is present within ten feet of the first one along with a trainer and a patron.

The elephant on the other side of the wall

There are notable damages visible in parts of this monument viz the broken trunks and the elephant rider's head missing in both the statues. What a stunning view it would have been had it been complete!! It was paining to see the damages on such a masterpiece.

We were there for atleast twenty minutes looking at it and a dozen or so people passed us in the meantime but many did not even turn in the direction of the elephants. A couple of people stopped to take a selfie and thats that.Not their mistake..This is how the society is these days and there is no action being taken by the authorites to protect or spread knowledge about our ancient architectural wealth.The often seen headlines that our statues of deities are being sold for hundreds of crores in the international market by thugs are the best example of how the temple authorities work.

At this point of time, those things are beyond my say.. but I am very happy I was able to view this masterpiece and make some happy memories that too at that Godly hour in the morning.This post is my two cents to spread awareness about this extraordinary masterpiece. Do try to see the statue when ever you get to visit Srirangam temple. I assure it will be worth your time and effort.