Tid Bit from My Diary

The Banerjees are a happy family of four. The parents and the brothers and sisters, all busy with their daily chores. While the younger ones are in their teens and full of excitement, the parents are having are going through what everybody calls, a midlife crisis. Nothing seems to excite them any longer. Mrs. Banerjee has decided to start her own consultancy. She has chosen a though challenge of reviving faltering businesses by giving their trademark products a new lease of life. Mr. Banerjee on the other hand wants to come out of his plum finance job and dive into fashion consultancy and photography. Scene 1: Date: 20 July 2015 Time: 9:00 AM Place: The living room, Banerjee Residence, Kolkata, India. Son : I am fed up with this Ipad. I have been trying to upload the bike trick from this morning and all that I can see is circles. Daughter : Mama, He had promised that he will give me the pad after 15 minutes and now it’s more than an hour and still not giving me. I...

Given a choice, I would like to dig my four fingers into one of those delicious meals with curries, rice and other side dishes. But life doesn’t always provide choices as most of my lunch ends being sandwiches while the car being the dining room. After today’s lunch, I thought of digging a bit into the history of this food keeping many like me up and running. There lived a recklessly extravagant British statesman called Jon Montagu (1718 – 1792) in south east of England in the eighteenth century. He was the fourth Earl of Sandwich, a historic town and civil parish on the river Stour and notorious as a gambler. Montagu had invented this bread-enclosed convenience food known as the "sandwich", so that he would not have to leave his gaming table to take supper. The concept is this food is wonderfully simple: a delicate finger food served between two slices of bread. People of the Mediterranean and Greece are known to have this culinary concept in practice since...

I always dreamt of a home, just like in the film President (1937) “ Ek bangala bane nayara, ati sundar pyara pyara, Vishwakarma ke dwara .”  Yes, dreamt and not really own a home as in my dream, but I am hopeful of fulfilling my dream pretty soon.  I always have dreamt big as they say “ when you dream, dream big .” I would like to own my dream home in a skyscaper and would like to buy myself a duplex on the 20th and 21st floor of a high rise. Just as K. L. Saigal would have sung “ Itana uncha bangala ho yeh mano gagan ka tara, jis pe chadh ke indradhanush par jhulaa jhule chand humara ”. The property would have the guest room, lounge, dining, and kitchen on the first level and the 3 bedrooms on the second level and a terrace.  Each of the bedrooms would have balconies, a small dressing room, and the master bedroom would have a small study attached to it.The maid's room, however, will be semi detached. As for the interiors, the flooring would be wooden and th...

  My “dream home” has fascinated me and my mind since I was a kid. As the mini me then, I would think of a home by a river miles away from the hustle bustle of the city where the only sounds would be from the flowing water and an occasional bird chirping.  As I grew up, I started loving the mountains and my dream of a dream house gradually veered towards the mountain and I started dreaming of a small house atop a huge mountain from where the only things my eyes could see was the cliffs covered with white ice. I would dream of myself seating on the window with a cup of steaming coffee and watching the mountains while drifting away to the dreamland.  Time passed fast and soon, I started to dream about living by the sea in a secluded island and watching the sea roar, cool breeze blowing over my shoulder and me sitting on the rooftop with a can of beer in my hand and wondering what made the ancient travelers take to the sea or if mermaids were a reality. Now at this...

We were in Bangalore for 3 days towards the end of July, 2015. It’s a lovely city but seemed to have everything in excess and that includes people, cars and bikes.   One evening we dropped down at the Orion Mall. It was a bit crowded but if you discount that, it was a great experience. The parking was available in the adjacent multi-storied parking garage which was well staffed helping to find the right parking spot. Security screening at the entrance made us pause for a few moment but I am not allergic to such checks and incidentally this is the norm in India these days. Once inside the mall, we were amazed by the display of flowers. The sheer size and complexity of these installations were simply breathtaking. The mall is lined up with variety of stores and should satisfy everybody's need. The prices were competitive and more so for the branded stores. We did manage to identify and cash on a few great deals. The place provided a level of comfort to all a...

NANOBOT. It is a new word that I have learnt the other day while listening to a talk show on the FM radio. The intent of this post, however is not to bore everyone raving about how enlightened I now feel, having expanded my vocabulary of the complicated English language. I was actually amazed by what this small word is all about. It stands for a new technology, which many like us was not aware of. Well as the name suggests, it is formed by combining the words “nano” and “robots”. Till this time, no one has used the words “nano” and “robot” in the same breath for me. I learnt that these are tiny microscopic robots which can be of immense use to the mankind and particularly to the medical field. A little bit of prodding into the internet revealed that nano-robotics is an emerging field of research and technology. More specifically, I was enlightened that nanorobotics refers to the nanotechnology engineering discipline of designing and building nano-robots, wit...

I will not claim this blog post as mine. To be precise, this is not even a blog post, it is a Vlog post and I did not have to sweat as my enthusiastic second grader took charge. She said, "I never won a competition in my entire life.” That’s quite a strong statement for someone who just celebrated her 7th birthday. “I am going to record it very nicely so that I will win!" she declared.   I did the editing to fit it within the allowable 90 seconds, sacrificing some important aspects of her creativity. The storyline after editing can be summarized as below: “Elsa lives in a castle. This time she has magical power to bring in rains. Her sister Ana is trapped by a dragon in a tower and the knight fails to rescue her. Elsa uses her special powers to free her sister. There is a twist to the story in the form of them getting a baby brother. … and they happily live ever after.” The video can be watched here: Elsa and the Dragon One lesson learnt during this exercise...