Coffee

The cafe that i saw from my bus window gave me something to write a post on. Thanks to all the cafe s on planet earth.

Coffee. Its the first tick box in the morning routine of many a person all over the globe.

Of course it has culturally been adapted in different ways as well. Black , white , brown , filter kaapi , hazelnut coffee , latte , cappuccino  etc etc 

My children take milk but my daughter loves dipping her biscuit in my beverage and taking a bite into it. I am not sure if its the taste or the activity that fascinates her . 

We Tamilians love indulging in what we call "tiffin plus coffee " . Some salty and spicy and of course tasty savoury items like idly , vada , dosa , puri etc make its way down our digestive system. While the tongue is soaking in the myriad of tastes each of these items provide , the highlight of the experience comes when a sip of hot filter coffee hits the taste buds .  Its akin to splashing some chill water on your face after a good workout . Or doing a strenuous activity and taking a gulp of sweet cold water . Or going out into the sun and entering a room chilled by an air conditioner . 

We use the "dabara tumbler" for coffee. For some hard core fans the same coffee served in a porcelain mug can never give the satisfaction these two utensils provide.

If you ask my mother or mother in law or aunts or the other reigning queens of Tamil kitchens they could write a big book on the ways to get that one cup of coffee perfect . In fact its the drink thats offered to guests and the only breakfast item on some days when we decide to advance the lunch time by a couple of hours . 

I first came across Hazelnut coffee when i went to the US . I loved it so much that every time i taste it i kind of get transported to the cool winter mornings there and my creamy cup of the beverage . 

I am not a big fan of cold coffee. With or without icecream . But recently i had coffee flavored cake and it seemed ok . 

When i went to Coorg a couple of years ago we got to see coffee plants. Its a fun thing exploring the origins of things we use everyday . 

By the way do u know what luwak coffee is ?  ( hi hi hi hi ) 

Family Game - The Relationship Game

There is a game I have been playing with my kids of late. A family game sorts.

Does not need any equipment. Its called "The relationship game"

I really don't remember who taught me this or where I came across this for the first time. But i taught it to my kids and they love it.

• The first person begins by saying a word ...any word....its his choice.

• The next person needs to say whatever he can think of in relation to that.
• This goes on in circles for a few rounds.

For example

Player1	Player2	Player 3
car	road	black
night	moon	white
milk	butter	cake
birthday	presents	games
olympics	athletics	running
track	lines	geometry
maths	school	classroom
charts	colors	rainbow
sky	cloud	rain
water	sea	waves
beach	sand	castle
princess	tiara	jewellery
gold	mine	tunnel
dark	torch	switch

• After say 7 to 8 rounds the fun starts...We need to go in reverse. The last person will start recollecting what the person before him had said.

• For instance after torch in the above example, the last person finishes with switch. Then he starts the reverse process. He has to say what the person before him had said, i.e torch,.

• The person before him has to recollect what the one before him had said before that a.k.a dark.

• We try recollecting till we reach where we started.

Player3	Player2	Player 1
torch	dark	tunnel
mine	gold	jewellery
tiara	princess	waves
sea	water	rain
cloud	sky	rainbow
colors	charts	classroom
school	maths	geometry
lines	track	running
athletics	olympics	games
presents	birthday	cake
butter	milk	white
moon	night	black
road	car!

Try it....It keeps you hooked.

Its also a nice exercise to improve focus and memory.

Happy Independence Day

There was a poem that I quoted often during my school days at Oratorical competitions .

It's from a poem by Rabindranath Tagore a beautiful one and a powerful one .


Today India celebrates her 72nd Independance day . Happy independance day to all . Quoting Tagore

Where the mind is without fear and the head is held high
Where knowledge is free
Where the world has not been broken up into fragments
By narrow domestic walls
Where words come out from the depth of truth
Where tireless striving stretches its arms towards perfection
Where the clear stream of reason has not lost its way
Into the dreary desert sand of dead habit
Where the mind is led forward by thee
Into ever-widening thought and action
Into that heaven of freedom, my Father, let my country awake.

Jai Hind.

Z for zebra lines

Thanks to SG for the encouragement :)

I am completing the AtoZ series with a poem!

Zebra lines - All black and white!
Clear demarcation!
Are they black lines on a white sheet?
Or white ones on a black base? I wonder!
On the road they silently stay!
There is no gray!
But life! Is it so simple?
For an eagle's eye, it all looks black or white!
At closer glance they blend!
Nobody is so good that he is pure and white!
Nobody is so bad that he is all evil and black!
We are all walking talking statues in gray!

Y for Yellow

Its June, and its way past April. Yet I want to finish what I started. The A to Z April Challenge stopped at X. I want to persevere and complete though the other bloggers have moved on to other things.

I feel like those last racers in a marathon who decide to complete it no matter what....

I remember a childhood play song that we had that went "Red and Yellow, dirty fellow". 

The word yellow reminds me of the gentle rays of the morning sun, that seep in through the windows and embrace us in the warmth from Mother Nature.

Its the color of gold, pure and precious.

A lot of my favorite food items are yellow too - potato chips, butterscotch ice cream, mangoes, laddoos to name a few!

Yellow reminds me of lemons that add a feeling of freshness and cleanliness to wherever they are.

As a small kid it was my second favorite color after pink.

Its the color of turmeric thats an auspicious ingredient in Indian rituals...Invitations for different occasions are printed in yellow and have turmeric at the corners.

Tweety bird my favorite animated character is yellow too!

What does yellow remind you of?

My morning walk

A morning walk ... sometimes it's nice to just let go, stroll , look , observe and smile....
The man in the wheelchair gently pushed by his wife ...there is not much talk between them ... he is at peace and she is in hope ....sometimes silence can speak a thousand times more ...
An elderly couple dressed up in the  best of the cycling gear and circling the park ....except for the wrinkles here and there on their face they are on par with the teenagers around .... talking about old times and laughing .... Above that , they have this mature majestic aura around them built by years of just living !
A woman is vigorously exercising on the equipment ...she is wearing a simple cotton Salwar Kameez intact with dupatta in place ... the only reflection of her intention are her canvas shoes .... she is brave to walk like that amongst all the humans in apparel from Nike and Adidas and she is totally unperturbed ...
A lady is getting her son to exercise... the slightly overweight fellow is making the best use of his acting skills.... he presses all the equipment as if doing a quality check and then pants like he has just done a marathon ...
Two friends on a bench , sharing a pack of chips ...yes that's calories instead of exercise in the early hours of the day. They have a whole week of each other's to catch up with and they simply don't care ...
Life is beautiful.....

X for Xray - short fiction

The month of April is over . Yet I missed out on X Y and Z posts like last year s A to Z blogathon

Anyways planning to complete. Better late than never .

The laboratory technicians at the city hospital were busy . They were preparing the X-ray reports of three patients who had just arrived at the ER.
They had been in a car accident but luckily nobody was in a critically injured state .

They stacked up the three files. The first was a that of a white male , 50 years old and a lawyer by profession. The second was a black man in his twenties , a technician who worked on electric wiring and fixtures . The driver of their shared cab drive was the third to be admitted , a wheat skinned Asian. 

The three files were stacked one upon the other waiting to be sent to the doctors in charge .

Inside were the X rays and they all looked the same . Different shades of gray.