Onasadhya is the meal served on the plantain leaf on Onam; sadhya refers to the meal. The sadhya is also served on other occasions like marriage, engagements, birthday. Of late slowly but steadily those get-togethers are avoiding sadhya and opting for something haute like biryani and other stuff.

The food is usually had by sitting on a mat on the floor cross-legged. But now people have it on the table itself. That's more comfortable for me atleast because my legs become numb after the first course is over :).

There is a particular method as to how the food should be served. When laid on the table, the tapering or narrow part of the leaf should always be towards the left.

The first things to be served are a banana, upperi(plain banana chips), sharkara puratty(jaggery coated banana chips and papaddam and some salt. All these are placed in the lower half of the leaf on the extreme left.
The top left of the leaf is served with mango pickle, injipuli(curry of ginger, tamarind,green chillies and jaggery, all of which gives it a sour, sweet and hot taste), thoran(a sauteed dish of vegetables, usually cabbage, with grated coconut), olan(a curry of pumpkin with coconut milk, which makes the curry white), aviyal(a thick curry of many vegetables and yogurt and coconut; has many vegetables), kaallan(made of yam and yogurt; also a thick gravy), koottu curry(gram dal, pumpkin, snake gourd, coconut).

When all these dishes are placed, then boiled rice is served in the centre in the lower half of the leaf and sambhar(a gravy dish of drum stick, ladies finger and dal as the main ingredients) is poured into the rice. Now you can eat your food relishingly.

The ones with a good apetite have the rice again with rasam and then again with butter milk. Otherwise rasam can be had when poured into cupped hands or in a glass. Rasam is a watery dish made of pepper, tamarind, tomatoes and many other spices. Its very fiery and spicy and also aids in digestion. Curd or buttermilk is also taken which also helps in digestion.

The desserts include pradhaman(made of ada(made of rice), coconut and jaggery). Actually there are many types of pradhaman - palada pradhaman(cooked rice, sugar, milk), parippu pradhaman(gram dal, jaggery) and also others. Another dessert is the pal payasam(cooked rice,milk and sugar).

After such a heavy meal, a betel nut is popularly taken.

I am already full just be describing the meal.

Posted by Anish at 2:05 AM | Permalink | Comments

This year, September 5 was Onam - a festival celebrated by Keralites in India. The festival falls in the malayalam month of Chingam, which is the start of the harvest season.

Being a Keralite myself, many people ask the story behind Onam. Like all other festivals, Onam too has many legends surrounding it. The most popular one is --

Balichakravarthi or Mahabali, the King of Asuras(demons) was the ruler of Kerala. His people were very happy to have him as King even though he was a demon. In his kingdom, there was no sorrow, poverty, dishonesty, disease or untimely death. Afraid of his rising popularity, the Gods feared that he would take over the whole of Earth and then the Heavens and they would be left with no place to go. Also Mahabali had defeated Lord Indra(the king of Gods) once. So all the Gods approached Lord Vishnu to take stock of the situation.

Mahabali was performing a ritual in which he had declared that he would anything that anyone asked for during the Yagna. Lord Vishnu disguised as Vamanan appeared at the Yagna and he asked for land covered by 3 footsteps of his. Mahabali's advisors sensed that this boy is no ordinary Brahmin at the Yagna, but a Lord in disguise. But Mahabali thought that if the Lord himself has come then its a privilege for Mahabali. So he went ahead with the request of 3 footsteps. Vamanan then came to his cosmic form and covered the first foot with the whole of Earth, the skies with the second and then asked for the third foot of land. Mahabali then offered his head for the same. Vamanan placed his foot on the head of Mahabali and sent him to netherworld.

Honouring his sacrifice and his devotion and his beneficient rule, the Lord granted him permission to visit his Kingdom once a year and that day is regarded as Keralites as Onam.

To appease the King, people of Kerala celebrate the day and be merry so that the King feels that his people are like during his rule - happy, rich and without sorrow. For this purpose, they make the Onam Sadhya(meal on the plantain leaf) which I will discuss in detail in another post. Also is the famous boat race and the pookallam(flower carpet).

Posted by Anish at 8:14 AM | Permalink | Comments

Of late, I had been to the great wall of china. It was a pretty good experience. Although, it's not that awesome as I had guessed, because it's just a wall and nothing else. The panorama around is good, but actually the grand thing about the great wall is its length which can be experienced probably if there is some chopper ride over the whole length of the wall just to show the grandiose wall. I could'nt get a clean view of the wall because of too many tourists. Probably I should have selected a more secluded section of the wall to get a clear shot.
This gives a lateral view of the wall. In winters, with all the snow around it, it looks really magnificient.
This gives a view with all the mountains surrounding the wall which adds to the magnificient view.

Can You See The Great Wall of China from The Moon?
When leaving the earth's orbit and acquiring an altitude of more than a few thousand miles, no man-made objects are visible at all. NASA says, "The Great Wall can barely be seen from the Shuttle, so it would not be possible to see it from the Moon with the naked eye." Thus, it'd be tough to spot the Great Wall of China or any other object from the moon. Furthermore, from the moon, even the continents are barely visible. So "Great wall is the only object which can be distinguished with the naked eye from the moon" is a myth.

Posted by Anish at 4:29 AM | Permalink | Comments

We had gone to Walmart in China. As you know, Wal-mart is so big sometimes it's a bit difficult to find out things. We were searching for butter.

Almost 99% of chinese population doesn't know english but still we did the stupid thing of explaining the guy there. Our dumb charades skills were coming to the fore. Still he didn't have any clue what we were referring to. Then something struck him, he said something to us in Chinese and went of as if searching for something. Firstly, we thought it was a miracle that we had conveyed a message to a Chinese guy without any use of verbal language. But to our disappointment, he came back with another guy. That guy came to us said that he knew English. So finally we had someone to whom we could talk to and we said that we wanted a pack of butter. But things were not going to be easy for us because this guy had an even blank expression on his face like we were some aliens from Mars and speaking some really alien language. After many trials, he asked us one question "Can you please speak in English?" - after this we had no choice but to find the item ourselves.

Posted by Anish at 7:04 AM | Permalink | Comments

A very happy Holi to everybody out there. I saw some pictures of Holi so just wanted to put a link to that.
For pictures, click here.

Posted by Anish at 9:22 PM | Permalink | Comments

Sun's founders - Scott McNealy, Bill Joy, Andy Bechtolsheim, and Vinod Khosla reunite to re-collect history. It really makes us proud to find an Indian among a really great company.
Check here to check out the details and pics.

Posted by Anish at 5:20 AM | Permalink | Comments

I form a part of this ubiquitous task force of the Indian IT industry. I have been in this industry for just one year. But I have fallen victim to mundane job routine which most of the IT professinals have and are experiencing. Most of the jobs are of maintenance nature. Maintenance implies the product has already been in production and the so called geeky professionals have to maintain the product. The main job is fixing the defects that crop up and also some enhancements, if at all the clients require it.

Whenever a defect is raised and is assigned to a particular module, the first thing to be done is to blame it onto some other module. Then follows a series of mails called Mail Ping-Pong in which you send a mail, forcefully putting the burden on someone else. Then he does the same thing and it goes on until it gets a bit personal. Then there is a meeting among the top brass to discuss whom the defect should be put on. It's just survival of the fittest. One who doesn't survive wins the defect as a consolation prize.

I had to do some serious introspection to come out of this rut. Did I make a mistake entering into this arena? Did I have a lucrative equivalent which I should have considered before entering this domain? One of the better options would have been to study medicine. But they aren't in a better position as I am.

They also work on a product which is already into production(the human body). There are existing defects or defects are created by the system itself. They were not involved when the original product was being made; they just have a "maintenance" job. Some defects are critical and have to be solved at the earliest. Some defects are reopened once solved. Some times you need to provide a workaround.

There are striking similarities between what I do and what the Docs do.

But one thing because of which I am sticking to where I am right now is I can take measures for system crashes but what can they do ;-)).

This reminds me of the line from the latest Hindi movie "Salaam Namaste" -- "frustrated yet smiling".

Posted by Anish at 7:26 AM | Permalink | Comments

I am in need of a toy "Newton's Cradle" also known as the "Newton's Pendulum" or "Newton's Balls ;-)". But the trouble is I have not found it in shopping sites in India. Also checked out many stores in Mumbai and Pune. Couldn't find one. If at all, you have bought such a thing or you have seen it one of the stores in your neighbourhood then plzz inform.

Posted by Anish at 12:10 AM | Permalink | Comments