Friday, September 30, 2005

Stuck in my mouth

Do you sometimes feel that you utter some word or sentence unconciously even when the occasion doesnt call for the use. "Kya baat hain!" I dont know how and when I picked up this phrase. I just cant stop myself from using this phrase million times a day. Its become so common for me to use this phrase that I am surely gonna get killed one day. The other day my roommate was describing his day's schedule, he was like "I had a class at 8:00am, followed by another class at 10:00am, and a lab at 12:00pm, I didnt get time to have my lunch and then I had another class at 2:00pm. My day totally sucked" and instead of saying anything comforting, I go ahead and uttered the three words stuck in my mouth "kya baat hain!". The look on my roommate's face was enough for me to run from there and save myself from getting punched in my face. Do you have such phrases stuck in your mouth?

Saturday, September 24, 2005

Family Tree

Sometimes Cyber space can throw up surprises as hitchhiking through the galaxy would. On a boring Sunday afternoon I lazily typed Kalghatgi in Google just to see how many people in this world share the same difficult to pronounce surname. I was pleasantly surprised to see that Kalghatgi's have made a lot of progress with many of them actually having their own webpages. This spurred me on to track my Family tree. I tried hundreds and thousands of sites, searched on google, asked my mom and dad, but I could only track as far back as my grandfather, dad's dad. Finally I gave up, given the time and motivation I would build my family tree on my own. One fine day somebody sent me an orkut invitation and I created my own profile and added all known people to the list of my friends. Out of curiosity I searched for people having surnames Kalghatgi. The search came up with 6 people. One of them being me, the second being my cousin Nikhil Kalghati here in USA. Items # 2 and #4 were interesting, Suparna Kalghatgi and Pallavi Kalghatgi. I thought they would be some light years far off cousins or something. I added suparna to my friends list and there began the saga of two kalghatgi's each of us as surprised as a monkey in front of a mirror. One coincidence after came to light. Her granpa stayed with my granpa when he first came to mumbai. Her father graduated from VJTI in 1970 and my father graduated in 1972. Finally the most important question, were we related, turns out we arent and there I was back to square one and I have start to start rebuilding the family tree. Well I think Kalghatgi's are a minuscule part of the gargantuan Indian population. Any kalghatgi's reading this post?

Friday, September 16, 2005

Ganapati Pujan

Far away from home, four roommates, one amatuer priest with lots of devotion, on the eve of Ganesh Chaturthi decided to conduct aarti at home to invoke lord Ganesha's blessings. What follows is a narration of the sequence of events. Read it just for fun and it is not meant to hurt anybody's sensibilities.
Two of us, me and sriraj got busy in making prasad. Saurabh, the priest was busy learning the shlokas and the fourth guy, Shubham, started downloading Anuradha Paudwal's ganapati aarti. Just then we realised we did not have semolina to make the prasad, after frantically rummaging in a never opened cabinet, we found some idli making semolina, big difference and so we decided to test our skills at making prasad. Sometimes you just go by instincts. After struggling with the semolina and adding sugar countless times the prasad finally was made and looked yummy. It was time for the aarti and all of us were really hungry.
We lighted camphor and asked shubham to wrap it up fast. Anuradha Paudwal's melodious aarti soothed our senses and we were lost in the aarti until a loud alarm shrieked and made us jump out of our skins. We suddenly realized the holy smoke from the burning camphor was too much for the fire alarm to handle. All of us attacked one fire alarm each and managed to stop it from screaming. Whew! guess lord ganesh saved us and we did not have to evacuate the entire building.
Before we could partake the painstakingly prepared prasad, Saurabh stopped us and asked us to chant Lord Ganesha's names after him. He ttok out a tattered piece of paper with all the names scribbled on it in a hardly legible writing. Here he goes "om ganpatay namah", "om gauriputraya namah", "om vinayakaya namah", "om gajananaaya namah", till this point our amatuer priest managed to pronounce all names and we obediently chanted after him,"om skanda...om skaandaraj....yeh kya likha hain?"...om skandaraajay namaha,"om sarva...om sarvasidhh....yeh kya likha hain? "om sarvasiddhantaya namah"....after stuttering through another 5 names we all burst out laughing...we just couldnt take it anymore....Saurabh's stuttering recitation of Lord Ganesha's names was drowned in our laughter. Finally good sense prevailed and we asked him to recite the names in his mind and we would wait till he finished. Within five minutes he was done. I am sure he was stuttering even when he was saying the names silently and I bet he did not go through the entire list. Till today we tease him for his miserable take at reciting Lord Ganesha's names. He is never gonna ever ask anybody to chant after him.
The day ended on a sweet note with all them simply loving the prasad and then we enjoyed shudh shakahari bhojan prepared by shubham to the strains of Lata Mangeshkars' melodious aarti. I am sure Lord Ganesha's would never forget such a memorable aarti. I believe the Lord Ganesha just loved the aarti and helped me in clearing my qualifiers. Ganapati Bappa Morya!

Monday, September 05, 2005

Y2k5, one year down

Philadelphia International Airport, Sunday, September 5th, 2004, 2:30 PM EST, the moment I landed in Philadelphia. What a moment it was. I would never forget this day, most definitely a red letter day in the calender of my life. Sometimes I wonder time flies away so fast, It almost seems like yesterday, but to think of it, today, its exacly one year since I came here. What a year it has been with many memorable moments and equally disheartening events.' The travails of FOB indian student', would make a nice book, probably land me a Booker. To share the events of the past one year, would take me another year. With me taking my PhD candidacy exam within one year has left me very little time to pen down all my experiences. But immediately after my exams, I vow to write down all the bitter sweet events. Till then keep a lookout. Will be back soon