a movie

Watched 'Ocean's eleven' the other day and found that I no longer enjoy movies which celebrate people's ingenuity in crime. To me movies that deal with what is best and brightest in the human spirit, or those that deal with the ordinary lives of men and women are much more memorable and enjoyable (not withstanding George Clooney and Brad Pitt). I wonder whether I'm going old too fast?

Bye for a bit

I have been reading all the blogs on my blog roll and catching up with all the posts that I had missed reading in between and the realisation came to me that my blog--in blogworld--was a bit like a music-loving tone-deaf person who persists in singing, but always off-key. You feel for him/her, but's grating all the same; and you wish they would know when to keep quiet.
So I have decided to go off from blog world for a while though I will be keeping up with my blog rolll. Bye friends.

Lent

It's the time of Lent again. For the Eastern churches the Lent begins 7 weeks before Easter. So Lent officially started from 22nd of February. Many people here give up meat and fish, sometimes eggs, alcohol (a big sacrifice believe me in this state) and even dairy products are eschewed by some.
This year Dr. Philipose Mar Chyrstosm, the senior most bishop of the Mar Thoma Church of Kerala has asked for the observance of 'Carbon fasting' to reduce global warming. The article is here. I wish I could have linked you to the article where all the points he enumerated were mentioned. Unfortunately that doesn't seem to work.
Anyway, I for one have been inspired and have been trying toobserve the suggestions he has put forward.

It will be two years tomorrow, since my mother passed away.  recently I have been missing her a bit--wanting to share some things with her, which I realised that I would have shared only with her.
Was remembering her death and thought once more, that although it was upsetting to me for her to go so suddenly, there was no other way she would have wanted it.  She had been so worried about being bed ridden and a burden.   I knew too, that I had to let her go, because she was so weary and wanted to rest, more so after having looked after my father with senile dementia and watching him go.
I am sure she is at peace.

A hot day!

It was a pretty hot day a couple of days back.  So everyone was at the water hole!

First was a magpie robin--

 

then a chipmunk

and then, towards dusk, crows discussing the day's happenings at the water hole. Each waited their turn to drink and some had a quick bath too.

I'm sorry the chipmunk isn't too clear.  He was way too timid to allow me any nearer

I've finished two of the books--'In Spite of the Gods' and 'Dreams from my Father'. The first one was an interesting view of modern India. ' Dreams' had me crying so many times. To some extent it spoke of the immigrant experience, of all people of colour, whether black, brown or yellow, in a white man's country. I loved it and finished it really fast. Now there are two more books to go through.
In the meantime I have also been able to get videos of a magpie robin bathing in my birdbath as also a chipmunk/squirrel raiding my dog's food :) I'll put them up soon.

I am joining a large number of bloggers who have protested about this issue, regarding the targeting of a blogger for voicing his opinions, on his own private blog! There were so many people who felt as C Kunte did, that by and large, the reporting during 26/11 was irresponsible. Many people expressed their opinons on their blogs too. But why has one individual been singled out and made to retract his post? How come our FREE Press wants to muzzle the ordinary citizen's right to free speech? This smacks of the ancient days when the educated priestly classes--here and in much of the world--opposed literacy and then dissemination of information, because they felt threatened.