Anuradha Sridharan

Lights everywhere, Diwali is here. Make your hair oily, Says the old granny. Bright happy faces, Wearing colourful dresses. Lip smacking sweets, Eat them with ease. Friends and cousins coming home, Don't be reading a tome. Fight them for crackers, Come out with flying colours. Zooming bomb rockets, Don't put them in your pockets. Flower pots blooming high, Conveying Naragasura bye bye. Happiness everywhere, Sadness nowhere Asking for this wish, along with a sweet dish. Wishing you all a happy, safe and bright Diwali :-) PS : am taking a short break from blogging for the next one week.

I don't know from where to start. Ok, flashback, turn your calendar pages to August 2005, to be precise, 14th August 2005. That was the first time when I visited Ananya, a school for under privileged kids as part of my first volunteering activity with Dream a Dream . I was feeling very scared. How am I going to interact with the kids? How am I going to be playful throughout the day with a new set of people? I was pondering over lots of questions on my way to Ananya. Finally we reached a place, almost like a resort in Kerala with lots of trees all around the place and small tents here and there. Needless to say, little kids like the fresh flowers in the morning were playing in that place. As soon as we got down the car, the kids swarmed around us, asking for names and other details. They were so open to newcomers like me. Holding my hands with their soft, little palms, they took me on a site visit around their school and showed all kinds of plants and trees, giving a translation of...

Watched a superb movie, Iqbal yesterday. Amazing. Good to see a Hindi movie of this caliber after a long time. Frankly speaking, I'm fed up of watching the same old "Soni kudi", "Mahi ve", "Bada-baap-bada bijiness", "karva chouth" kinda movies. I can't bear them anymore. Iqbal starts off with a beautiful village background and the introduction of the protogonist. I'm not going to put down a set of best scenes here because each and every scene is well crafted in the movie. The story is about how a deaf and dumb person goes all out to achieve his ambitions and how people around him are supporting him in his endeavours. After watching the movie, you get this feel-good feeling and also a strong fire within you to achieve something. Young directors with good scripts have to be motivated by experienced people in the industry and that's exactly what Subash Ghai had done. The Indian Film Industry always clings to the so-called brand names...

The recent controversy between Ganguly and Chapell has hit the headlines of all the newspapers across the country. The manner in which this news has reached the public is simply ridiculous. Why did Ganguly discuss about the happenings between him and the coach with the media? Doesn't it sound so immature and childish, very similar to how a kindergarden kid would complain to his mother about how his school teacher had shouted at him? If he has problems with the coach, he should have contacted the BCCI directly. Why does he have to take the coach's viewpoints personally? All these incidents doesn't auger well for the Indian cricket team. Policies similar to that of Australian cricket team have to be implemented in Indian team as well. If a player doesn't perform well for say, 10 consecutive one dayers or 5 test matches, he should be chucked out of the team, irrespective of whether he is a captain or a favourite of BCCI president or whether he belongs to selectors' ...

I'm not going to elaborate on Darwin's theory of evolution and how homosapiens had evolved from chimpanzees. I want to write about how my personal space has evolved from my childhood. Personal space - one that I always crave for. It's not just the freedom to do what I believe. It also means the actual physical space in my house, which I can say it's mine. I'm always very possessive about my little kingdom. My brother's belongings can never enter my fort. I'm not sure when this started in my life. My toys were usually the kitchen set (choppu saaman in Tamil) in different sizes and shapes - from the plastic model (the tiny blue coloured pressure cooker, cute red coloured pot - Oh, I miss them) , to the eversilver one to the wood variety to the one made of clay. Such beautiful and precious collections they were !!! When I was in class 2 or 3 (not sure!!!), during my weekends, I used to carry my books, all my toys, a cream coloured water bag and a straw ma...