Why don't we make him the Prime Minister of India? http://www.ibnlive.com/news/devils-advocate-buddhadeb/34441-3-7.html

Our drama troupe Indus Creations is ready with its next production (Kadavul Vandhirundhar) which is to be staged on April 1st. The sad part is Swami and I are not playing any part in this as we are leaving Seattle on April 1st...Yes...We are leaving Seattle for good :-( At the same I am so excited to go back home after four years :-)

Here is wishing all the very best to everyone involved with this play. Go Indus Go!

A Chronicle of our times?

[These were sent as a forward. I want to give all due credit to the creator of the cartoon whoever it is. If publishing the cartoons in my blog is a copyright violation, please let me know before going to the courts…I will remove them immediately. :-)]

I will probably be showing these to Sarojini and her children one day and will be telling them how great India was in the good old days!

Swami and I manage to cook pretty decently. And of course I cook better than Swami :-))
Not only do I manage to cook better than Swami, I also clean up while I am cooking. The anjala petti, leftover vegetables, salt and podi dabbas that we use for cooking are all back in the respective places in the kitchen as soon as their jobs are done. When Swami cooks, somebody (or he himself) has to clean up behind him. And I also have to plan for his menu. Decide the menu based on what is available in the refrigerator, which vegetable is about to rot and which combination of dishes would work better. There are certain things that Swami does better than I do. He cuts vegetables better than I do and he compensates for his lack of planning and management skills in the kitchen by trying out new dishes. So, we get to eat homemade Lasanga, Fettucini Alfredo, Pasta, Gobi Manchurian and Chinese fried rice at times :-) I stick to South Indian and occasionally venture into North Indian dishes. But, I consider myself to be more of an intuitive cook than Swami. Swami tries to go by the book (or the internet) and cannot manage even if one of the ingredients listed in the recipe is not available.

When I got married my mother wrote out in an old LIC diary the recipes of most of the dishes made in Tamil homes. That has been our guide since we started life in Seattle. I have added a few more recipes into the diary, recipes that I learnt from friends and relatives here. I would probably pass it on to my daughter when she sets up a home of her own :-) The LIC diary may well become a family heirloom.

I recently had some discussions with Swami and Karthik (two separate conversations bordering on the same topic). Swami happened to be reading a paper authored by two researchers, one from Harvard and another one from Institute of Advanced Study, Princeton, which had recommendations for the developing nations on how to frame their education policy. These recommendations were based on in-depth study of the systems of education prevalent in these countries. I passed a very frivolous comment saying, he (Swami) and the authors of the report should be teaching a kid in India each instead and by this way they would be doing more good. This started a big discussion between the two of us and finally we agreed that, "Decisions taken, organizations and systems created, and money invested based on these sound research will certainly do more good and in general will be more successful than all these seemingly more practical and catchy methods'.

The same topic came up again while chatting with Karthik. He spoke about how randomly politicians decide the reservation percentages for SC/STs and backward classes in India. If only there was some research or statistics on which these decisions were based, we will not have so many vacant seats and positions in colleges and Govt. organizations waiting to be filled by people from these categories. Karthik gave an example of a friend of his who as a research scholar in the U.S had to spend a few days counting the number of vehicles of different types, number of passengers etc. passing through a particular bridge at different times in a day(weekend/weekday). This was to decide the toll for that bridge. If such a small issue like deciding the toll for a bridge is taken after proper study how do our politicians think they can just randomly come up with numbers for such an important issue?

Can anybody explain to me how good the nuclear deal is for India? Will it solve India's energy needs? A pointer to a good article would even do. Thanks.

Had been to a Math workshop. Was introduced to something called Taxicab Geometry....Want to explore it further.

Here is a recommendation for Indian parents with kids in middle school and high school. Geometer Sketchpad is an excellent tool used widely and effectively in schools here...I have not used it much myself, but there are some great sketchpad activities on the internet which can be assignments for your kids during summer vacation.