I love the smell of cilantro (or coriander a.k.a kothamalli a.k.a kothambir) and the slight sweetness that it adds to the spicy heat of the rasam. But I am driven to madness by my inability to store cilantro. In India, you get coriander from the local vegetable seller much like loose change. Sometimes it gets thrown in by the “kaaigari kaaran” to sweeten a deal where he has already padded up the price.

But here, coriander is classified as a herb. My mom would have a minor heart attack when she discovers how much I pay for the herb. Obviously like any other commodity, a direct conversion of price is unrealistic. But it is a fact that I pay no loose change either. My mother would also frown on the quantity that I am forced to buy. For the dollar that I pay, I get a obscenely (considering what I need per meal) large kattu of kothamalli. (more…)

It seems it has been years since I posted on cricket, a subject that was the reason this blog was born in its previous Blogger avatar. But it was not a conscious decision to stay away from cricket and so when I this article on Cricinfo yesterday, I had so say something.

Dinesh Mongia and Ashish Nehra are two players who brought out contrasting reactions from me as I watched the drama unfold in South Africa during the last World Cup. While in Nehra’s case it was all “hip hip hurrah”, I dreaded the sight of Mongia walking in. Through the course of India’s campaign, he never looked like he deserved his place ahead of Laxman.

This was never more apparent than in the match against England at Durban, where his 38 took all of 62 balls. In a game where India scored just 250, I thought his strike rate did no good. But that was before Nehra took over and broke England’s back with a World Cup best performance for India. (more…)

Does he think? Does he read? I don’t know. But I seem to like the man’s sense of humor. He makes the G8 look like Mech “B”. Well, we did not have any women among us, but you get the drift!

I have been wanting to make this move official for quite sometime. I wanted to move with a bang, but as time went on, how I moved became less and less important by the day. I realised that I should just move and not worry about the perfect post to do so.

A “smug” blogger told me yesterday that if I were a “chick blogger”, I’d do a post solely based on my experiences in the past two days and title it – “(The one) in which I got smashed and went broke“. In fact, if I were a chick blogger, I would have added “got locked out of my apartment for two hours at midnight on a weekend” to that title. But no. I am no chick blogger. Sorry to all my “nalam virumbis” (you know who you are), for there will be no such posts on this blog.
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About a month ago, the Chennai RTI group along with a number of other organizations and individuals joined together to come up with what has been christened the Tamilnadu Right to Information Campaign. Based on discussions during the initial meeting, it was decided that a concentrated effort to raise RTI awareness in the state shall be launched on the 10^th of July which would go on for at least two weeks and end on the 25^th. As part of the exercise, it was decided to organize RTI camps in several districts (including Chennai) of Tamilnadu simultaneously during the said period.To prepare for the campaign, a training workshop for volunteers was held on June 24^th. Over 100 volunteers attended the camp which was held to train these volunteers on issues and procedures relating to RTI. These volunteers will be part of the TN RTI campaign that will begin on July 10^th and will encompass 15 districts in TN. The TNRTI campaign itself is a part of the national campaign titled “Drive against Bribe”. NGOs, unions and citizens’ movements in 25 cities in India are taking part in this campaign. (more…)