Finally the photos you've been waiting for ;-)

Did I blog 10 days ago??? Looks like the initial excitement phase is fading away. Anyways, finally got all my wedding photos scanned and uploaded them to my Yahoo.

Click on the below photo to check out Naandi and Varapooje photos:




Click on the below photo to check out the wedding photos:




And finally, click on the below photo to check out the reception photos:




Hurry!! Will be shared only for some time ;-).

Marriage Certificates and other aliens ;-)

Just thought of putting this here as a help to any poor newly-married Bangalorean couple who've been married under the Hindu Marriage Act. Dunno whether this applies to whole of India or not but here goes:

What?

A marriage certificate is a letter signifying the registration of a marriage.

Why?

This is required and asked for in many processes like applying for a passport, addition of spouse name in Passport, application of visa et cetera.

Requirements

• Date-of-birth proof for both wife and husband


• Address proof for the place both are currently residing


• Proof of marriage - Invitation card + 2-3 marriage photos (postcard size) with both husband and wife featured prominently.


• Note: all the above need to signed by both husband and wife

How?

• Firstly find out what sub-registrar office your area belongs to.


• Go there and collect an application form for marriage certificate.


• There are 2 forms which require signatures from 3 witnesses. These witnesses just have to sign and need not be present in the sub-registrar office. So they can be relatives, friends, neighbours etc, but relationship if any, needs to be mentioned in the form.


• There will be 3 copies of the marriage certificate. These should NOT be filled.


• After completing filling up of the rest of the forms, both the husband and wife need to go to the sub-registrar office and submit them.


• Rest of the formalities will be as directed by the office staff there.

The whole process took about 15 min, about Rs.300 (including official as well as non-official purposes :-D) and 2 days for the marriage certificate to be issued. I hope I haven't missed anything here.. If anybody reading this has any queries, please leave a comment so that I'll reply if I know anything about what you are asking ;-)

As you'd have guessed by now this is what I accomplished on Saturday and they've asked me to come back today evening for the certificate. Saturday evening, we had been to my parents' place and later spent the night there. Yesterday we went to Ramanagar to my Puttanna chikkappa's place. God, him and Veena aunty had prepared so many dishes for lunch - ghee rice, salad, kosambri, masala papad, anna, saaru, mosaranna, kheeru payasa. Later in the evening, mysore-pak and home-made samosas. My stomach's still reeling from the after-effects ;-)

Just read this now and felt good, so thought of putting it here..

To: YOU
Date: TODAY
From: GOD
Subject: YOURSELF
Reference: LIFE

This is God. Today I will be handling All of your problems for you. I do NOT need your help. So, have a nice day.

Love,
GOD

P.S.
And, remember.... If life happens to deliver a situation to you that you cannot handle, do Not attempt to resolve it yourself!! Kindly put it in the SFGTD(Something For God To Do) box. I will get to it in MY TIME. All situations will be resolved, but in My time, not yours.

P.S.S.
Once the matter is placed into the box, do not hold onto it by worrying about it. Instead, focus on all the wonderful things that are present in your life now.

Que Sera Sera :-"

What will be will be.. No matter whether you jump into a well, you struggle, you stomp your foot in disgust, you grin and bear it or you protest... So is it better to strain yourself about what's happening or is it better to smile, be calm and face whatever happens? Obviously the second option sounds better. But preaching and practicing it in our lives are different things altogether :-D Sad, but true.. You try to calm yourself and tell yourself that whatever has to happen will happen, but still that's not enough. What to do?

I also believe that whatever happens happens for the good! There was this instance I heard that a person working in WTC got his turn of buying doughnuts on the D-day of 9/11. He complained, cribbed and made all sorts of noises and went out of the building to buy them. That's when the planes crashed into the building. So the guy actually owes his life to the fact that he was the unfortunate person to buy doughnuts that day! Since I heard this, whenever something happened to me, I have always thought its for good. I'm not simply boasting of my good qualities, its just that I have adopted this positive line of thinking. Again I'm not a God, I still worry about things when I know they are gonnu happen. But once they do, I resign to them and think maybe its for my own good.

Why am I talking about this today? Good question. I can't answer it right now because things are a bit hazy. Will update once they are a bit more clear cut :)

Listening to: Road To Mandalay by Robbie Williams

"Everything I touched was golden
Everything I loved got broken
On the road to Mandalay
Every mistake I've ever made
Has been rehashed and then replayed
As I got lost along the way"

Weekend update :)

Back to work after a sort-of-hectic weekend :)

Friday the 11th (not the 13th :-D), we (Sri, dad, Darsh and me) left for my cousin Manju's place in Hassan and he had a Durga Namaskaara organized on the occasion of his home's anniversary :) We reached at about 7:00 PM in the evening and the pooja went off great. Dinner was excellent too and basically Manju and Devika bhaabhi were happy that Sri and I could make it :). On Saturday, we stayed in Hassan till lunch and then left for Bangalore. We were here by evening 7:00 PM. Sri's cousin, Srikanth was leaving for US and we went to the airport to see him off. Sunday i.e yesterday, we were actually supposed to go to KGF to Triveni maasi's place to attend a Sathyanarayana pooja. But Sri was somehow not feeling that well, so we decided to skip it. But we did go to Vani's (Srivani - another of Sri's cousins) new house to meet Hari (Srihari - Vani's brother) and we spent some time there. Evening we attended Sindhu's (Our family friend Trivikrama Rao's daughter and she's a friend to me too) engagement and enjoyed dinner there. Phew! So went the weekend!!

So what's my crib of the day? :-D Previously, when I was still not married, if there was an invitation to a function, I could always have told my parents to go and I myself need not have attended. Even while attending a wedding reception, I tend to avoid the video cameras. So I would ask my parents to go up the stage and wish, whereas Darsh and me would remain seated neeche ;-) But now since Sri and me are the only ones, we have to attend each and every function we've been invited to. We have to be the ones to go up on stage too. Does that mean I am complaining about the people who are inviting us? Definitely not!! If they don't invite us, I'd probably get offended :-D I'm just cribbing for cribbing sakes ;-)

Been there jumped that :-D

Yup I am sorta crazy about some adventure sports as you can see in the photo. Though I started only about 2 years back, I guess the saying "Better late than never" really holds good in my case. I have done trekking, river-crossing and rappelling. Recently during my honeymoon in South Africa, I did Bungee jumping (some people also spell it Bungy) and man, I loved it. I always used to say "I'll do Bungee jumping atleast once in my life and if I'm alive at the end of it, I'm gonnu do it again and again and again :-D". Now that I'm alive (no, if you thought I was a ghost till now, mein bhagwad gita ki kasam khaake kehti hu ke me zinda huun :-D), I really wanna do it a million times. The feeling is really amazing (like almost death). Right now the photos haven't yet been developed. Once they are done, I am gonnu dedicate a whole day's blog to only bungee ;-).

BTW if you are really interested in knowing where I did it, check out Bloukrans bungy jump here at Face Adrenalin. Yep, its a cool 216m jump, supposedly world's highest and I did it!! I did it!! I did it!!! My next plan is sky diving and Sri already seems scared at the prospect ;-)

So why are people crazy about adventure sports? I mean, why do people take risks and do something that actually can take away their lives, while they could have been couch potatoes (I was one sometime back...) and watched TV aaramse from their couch? Why the need for the adrenalin rush? I don't really know about others, but to me adventure sports give a sense of purpose and once I'm done, a feeling of accomplishment. They take me away from my drab existence. They make me feel I have actually done something in the short life of mine. Maybe I haven't done what millions of people haven't already done, maybe I haven't done anything great, but still I feel that I have achieved something. Does it mean I haven't achieved anything till now? Nope, that's not true at all. My engineering degree with a distinction is an achievement, so is my job in one of the top international S/W companies. In fact, my marriage to Sri is also an achievement (after all I successfully trapped him :-D). So then why do I need these extra activities for a sense of achievement? There is a huge thrill, yes and it feels great having friends and relatives admire your bravery (even though the truth is that you were scared to death while you were actually doing it). But is that all? Or is it the thought of cheating death that's so very exciting? Or is it that after such a stunt you feel "Its great to be alive"? Honestly I feel its a heady combination of all these and more. If you ask me what more, maybe I can't tell you. The more is felt only by a person who has gone through it. So wanna try ;-)?

Inner peace...

Click on the picture above to read the beautiful poem.. I really don't know who wrote it, it was sent as a forward a long time ago by one of my friends. I uploaded it today thinking it suited my mood completely..

Humans are creatures who just cannot sit quiet. If they are not doing anything, they'll definitely be thinking something or the other. These thoughts are usually worries or turmoils. The thoughts need not be put in by any external person/thing. The human mind is very capable of generating these turmoils itself. This is probably a way to keep itself occupied :-! The saying "Idle mind is devil's workshop" feels absolutely true sometimes. Take a look at the following story:

A lecturer was giving a lecture to his students on stress management. He raised a glass of water and asked the audience, "How heavy do you think this glass of water is?"

The students' answers ranged from 20g to 500gm.

"It does not matter on the absolute weight. It depends on how long you hold it. If I hold it for a minute, it is Ok. If I hold it for an hour, I will have an ache in my right arm. If I hold it for a day, you will have to call an ambulance. It is the exact same weight, but the longer I hold it, the heavier it becomes."

"If we carry our worries all the time, sooner or later, we will not be able to carry on, the worry becoming increasingly heavier."

"What you have to do is to put the glass down, rest for a while before holding it up again. We have to put down the worry periodically, so that we can be refreshed and are able to carry on."

This story was first told to me by my dad. I have known it for quite sometime now. But do I follow the advice? Uunhuun. I preach it to anybody and everybody I find worrying. But when it comes to my worries, I never put them down and rest. They are always on my mind eating away at my inner peace even though I remember the story and tell myself to stop worrying. I know they won't decrease if I keep gnawing at them. So why don't I leave them alone? The answer is that I just can't. I have to think about them, analyze them and come up with a solution. Somehow....

So how do people find inner peace when they have so much to worry about? Some resort to exercises, some others to meditation. To each his/her own. I usually feel peaceful in the devaru kone (God's room at home) or at a temple. The temple maybe really noisy yet its so easy to feel peaceful. I am not preaching spirituality here. Since most of us have grown up thinking there's a God who takes care of us, sitting in the devaru kone and gazing at any idol/picture of God makes me feel as if there's somebody watching me and taking care of what's happening to me. Its as if I am transferring my tale bhaara to God :-D. Bechaara God, imagine how many people will be doing that ;-).

You might be thinking aaj ye ladki kyu itna philosophy jhaad rahi he? Just felt like it. After all thats what blogs are for ;-)

Parents' place?????

Now that I have started blogging, I seem to have lots of matter to write about. I only hope the enthu is not just a beginner's excitement and will continue to remain throughout my life :).

Yesterday Sri (My dearest hubby - Sriram) and me had been to my parents' place (note the usage - have a paragraph about this later) to have dinner with them and to say bye to my cousin Rohith who came down from Melbourne just for the wedding. Darsh (Darshan - My bro) and Rohi were busy burning CDs - videos and stuff that Rohi wanted to take with him. Darsh plays guitar (has a band of his own called Black Earth - I dunno why these bands have these sad names) and Sri listened to him play for the first time and was suitably impressed :-D Later we had dinner - assorted items from cakes (which I had taken) and biscuit ambode (a Mangalorean dish) to mosaru vade (again a special item) were eaten with comments from "Oh wow" to "I'm full, no thanks" :) We didn't go to the airport to drop Rohi. Mom, Dad and Darsh did. I packed up some of the clothes (haven't yet shifted them all to my new home) and we left. That's it.

Now coming to the concept of "Parents' place" - This concept/usage is still strange and bewildering to me. I guess all Indian girls getting married will go through the same thing but I can't help but rant about it. The major change that a girl goes through once she is married is that her previous "home" now becomes her "Parents' place" and the house that she lives in with her hubby becomes her current "home". I still don't get why a daughter is married and sent away, while the son can happily live in his "home" for his lifetime :-p Not that they actually do ;-) My parents have never treated me or my brother any different, there was never any gender-bias at home. Yet they have to follow the so-called society traditions and send the beloved daughter away. Everyone has to follow the culture and those who don't automatically are deemed "misfit". Well, who am I to talk about such things? I am not too much of a rebel either ;-) I have married and come to my hubby's place, haven't I? I am just a simple gal (yeah right :-p) writing about the changes I'm going through. Both my home and my parents' place are still "home" to me. But sometimes, just sometimes, I really wish I could go back to where I was....

Today being Wednesday, beligge beligge (beligge is morning in Kannada) I had a conference call to attend. I honestly hate these calls and I don't care who's reading this :-p The calls, according to me are "Much ado about nothing"!!! Anyways now I'm at office typing away at my blog and checking mails (a S/W engineer's usual job :-D). Hopefully the day will go well.

8th March 2005 - The First Blog :)

Finally!!! I started my blogging today. It feels totally strange to put your thoughts on a space where any Tom, Dick or Harry and Tina, Sally or Mary (why leave out the women?) can see it... I guess that means I can't put my really private thoughts here :-D.

Actually I thought I'll start blogging on my 25th birthday, but still 5 months to go for that and I just couldn't wait :))).

For a start, thought I'll put my picture here...this one was taken about 2 years ago in Ooty :).