Anuradha Sridharan

Hanging in there pretty close to the window, hoping I would open and let her reach me to put forth her preciousness "I'm cool, I'm unique, I have the power to refresh and rejuvenate I bring along my best buddies - Wind so forceful, yet so gentle Lightning so powerful yet so bright Thunder so wrathful yet so still Wet soil with a fresh smell Green grass with a tiny dewdrop Cloudy sky with a peeping sun I bring magic to the monotonies I bring life to the dull I topple day-to-day routines Why don't you rejoice and dance with me? Why do you shun away from me? Why don't you feel me on your tender palms? Why don't I caress your brown hair? Why don't I be your best buddy?" Oh lovely rain! I'm moved, Such a darling you are! Now I hate my black, boring umbrella I wish you would come again today! It's time to dance and play!

Having been brought up in a traditional background, I have attended quite a number of family functions and weddings. Elders in the family usually took the responsibilities of picking up gifts before attending any such events. The kind of gifts vary with different occasions. For a wedding, if the bride or groom was a very close relative of the family, the gift typically would be a gold pendant or a ring. In case if it was for a distant relative, the gift would be a silver lamp or kumkum storage box. If the gift was for a friend, it would either be a display item or just plain cash. Now that I have grown up to be someone who can no longer outsource the gift buying responsibility, I decided to buy a gift for my cousin's wedding recently. After marriage, my cousin would fly off to US. So any bulk gift would just be lying idle in her house in India. Based on my criteria that the gift should be useful as well as usable while they are living abroad, I bought a pair of Titan watches for th...

It's been a long time since I touched my RK Narayan collection. Before I left for Vythiri, I took this book from my home library, hoping to read atleast half of this book during my vacation. Thanks to the heavy rains, I finished reading this book in the past three days. It's always refreshing to read RKN after a while. The town of Malgudi, the people and their lives, the characters and their attitudes are very similar to any other RKN novel. This story is about the lives of a printer Nataraj, his helper Sastri and his friends and how their day-to-day lives get affected by a taxidermist Vasu. Nataraj is a friendly person by nature and he doesn't have the ability to say No. Vasu comes to his life and inflicts pain to Nataraj and others in the village in many ways. How the villagers cope with the complications caused by Vasu and what happens to Vasu in the end is what this story is all about. The characterization of Nataraj and Vasu is so clearly written that you feel so sorry...

Wayanad has been part of my to-see list for the past four years. As a keen lover of God's own country, I want to explore this state so much. Though I had visited the central and southern parts of Kerala, the Northern region was something I didn't get a chance to explore. A break from my first quarter and a long pending vacation from work provided the perfect chance to visit Wayanad. After the initial rounds of browsing and gathering details on best places to stay, my hubby and I finalized on Vythiri resorts. We made the bookings and also got the travel arrangements done. The Kallada travels bus got delayed by an hour and we left Bangalore around 10:40 PM. After a six hour ride, we reached a quiet village called Vythiri around 5 AM. It was dark and spooky. The jeep that was supposed to pick us up was no where to be seen. A small tea shop owner asked us to walk a few more metres to find the jeep. We found the driver and he took us to the resort, around 4 kms from the main road, i...