First Best Chicken Curry

Simple ...easy..Chicken Curry

Technically this is my second chicken curry. The first time I made it was in Bangalore. The only witness to the taste and make of the curry was Mr.Manyam Tej and myself. So not many can vouch for it and I doubt Manyam would give favorable review. Also I wasn't that satisfied with the output. It was slightly over burnt as the pieces were too large. Of course, the recipe again was from my mom. :)

This time around , in Paris, I got the chance to put into full force my culinary skills along with the super expert guidance of my mom. The result to say the least is super duper delicious..Just goes yummmmm......

Actually we were limited by so many factors, no ginger garlic paste, no cooker, no lemon which are considered essential ingredients. But I have realized moms are the greatest when it comes to do cooking with anything at their disposal. All you need to do is, for future reference, call your mom list out the ingredients you have, the time constraints, the cutlery, and they will tell you what to do in a jiffy.

Ok, here goes the recipe as given by mom 'word to word' (with slight alteration in formatting) -

Note: Steps 11 and 12 ought to be performed in sequence after Step 5. I had forgotten it.

****************************

Hi kar,

Since you don't have the basic ginger garlic paste the curry may not taste great. If possible get some garlic and ginger,lemon,tomatoes from the mall. In my language basic ingredients are onions,garlic,ginger,lemons, you must have them for your non veg curries.

Ok do the following as soon as you reach the house.

1. First take out the chicken frm fridge and keep it outside.
2. You finely chop 2-3 onions.
3. Add oil in a frying pan-5-6 spoons,
4. Add 6-8 menthulu,avalu,jeera and if you have pepper add crushed 7-8 of them
5. After they splutter add the finely chopped onions, fry them till they bit brown. remember this forms the gravy. So you can add more or less,
6. After 7-8 min of frying add turmeric,chilly powder and then the chopped chicken pieces.
7. Fry for sometime and then add little water , not a lot . Keep it cover for 15 minutes.
8. Then once it is 3/4 cooked, taste the gravy.
9. If you feel it is little sappaga (bland) then add some red chilly powder. Now you add that briyani powder one and half spoon.
10. Then let it simmer for another 15minutes.
11. In case you get ginger and garlic then just crush 3-4 pods of garlic and a small bit of ginger crushed. You add them when onions are fried along with chilly powder. In the end squeeze lemon.
12. If you get tomatoes then you can add after frying onions and before adding red chillies, (if you don't get those don't worry).
13. You can add little bit of cobara podi (its a powder mixture of dry coconut, salt, chilli powder, heated in oil) which I have sent. It may give some good flavour, add that when chicken is 3/4 cooked

ok bye

amma

*********************

My Sweetest and most lovable mom :)

Ingredients -

Chicken - 500gms

Onions - 4 Finely Chopped

Tomatoes - 2

Avalu - 1/2 Spoon

Jilakara - 1 Spoon

Chilli Powder - 1 1/2 Spoon

Biryani Powder - 1 1/2 Spoon

Ginger Garlic Paste - 1 Spoon

Even after such nice and details explanations I screwed it up. Here are the mistakes I did. Problem is I read these instructions 1 by 1. Fact of the matter is I did have tomatoes, paste of ginger and garlic (freshly made by yours truly by crushing and grinding them hard putting them under a flat surface , smashing them with a ladle) but did not use them. I had nicely cut onions, ginger-garlic, tomatoes and had them ready. I kept doing as it was specified in the above steps only to realize that sequence had broken and somewhere I lost the track. Anyways the final output has come excellent and we finished the whole gravy in just half an hour watching the wonderful movie - 'Ala Modalaindi'.

I am now very much confident of making this curry again and much more delicious. I realized I had put too much water instead of good number of onions. The trick of the trade always is onions form the base of the gravy. It ought to be properly cooked. Until the next best curry..Ciao!

Here goes the photos -

Chicken..of course..

Cumin seeds, Jilakara

Ginger Garlic Human Made Paste...Sadly unused

Tomatoes..another unused by product

Onions..the most important ingredient of all

86 and Counting - II

No second part can be complete without the first. You are highly advisable to read the first part before dwelling into this.

Its been 25 days in Paris so far. The most prominent thing that I would want to point out is that I haven't been able to shed not a single gram of weight so far. I am telling this even though I haven't checked my weight. I feel so confident about it I am willing to be 100 Euros on it.

Its the conversion syndrome that ticks of for anyone who goes overseas I guess. This happened with me and the first week we were quite attentive of every detail. Everything looked darn expensive outside and so we stuck with noodles at night for all the days till we moved out from the hotel. Back at office, I relished every dish I could get hands on for lunch. We have a cafeteria downstairs at the office which specializes mostly in steak, bacon and sometimes fish (fillet). It's an absurd assortment of food - Fillings- french fries, palak paste, shoufle (some mashed vegetables), rataoutielle (yes, i had it, it wasn't as great as it sounded in the film), boiled potatoes, mixed boiled vegetables, Main dish - fried steak, fish, chicken, turkey. The actual rate of the food is around 4 to 5 euros. Since we aren't the main stay employees we are charged 4.9Euros as tax. So lunch always comes around 10 Euros. Frankly I am enjoying the food and have no qualms to continue and taste different varieties. There was this one time where the whole dish contained some fish gravy and boiled potatoes in it. My friend is having difficult time. He is a guy who doesn't eat anything other than chicken or sea food.

On the weekends we satisfied oursleves with McD or KFC. After the first week, we moved into the new apartments and have brought some groceries and have started cooking. I made upma, dal, noodles, alu fry, bendi fry, mixed vegetable curry, dal again. We have decided on the first day of our cooking that we are going to cook on the alternative days and we have been very good at maintaining it so far. Nothing much happened in the first two weeks of our stay with regard to food. Though we cut down on the intake from the office, it was only to be compensated by McD -1 Big Cantal, 1 Huge bag of French Fries, 1 500ml Coke guaranteed to fill the stomach.

I swear I have never eaten so much junk food in my life. Its scarily funny how we keep cribbing out this very fact and then went out the next day to eat the same junk as we were left with no edible choice at the office. Common, who can eat big boiled potatoes or boiled cabbage or spinach with steak, bacon or fish?

It is now the third week of our stay and finally we have managed to break the jinx and started carrying our lunch boxes. Though I am happy we are having our own ghar ka khana, the amount of rice we have been eating is just too much carbs. If I don't take some steps now my dreams of cutting down on weight would never be fulfilled and I will forever remain etched in guilt. The only other viable alternate choices that I see are fruits for the night and cereals/flakes in the morning. Of course I gotta do that damned exercises.

Apart from many other things I had dreamed of doing once I have come here, it is surya namaskaras and jogging in the morning. As temperatures here hover around 3-4 degrees, forget jogging, I couldn't even move myself out of that nice cozy warm bed. In the next few days let me see if I can do the former.

I have been promising Anu that I will jog for the last three weeks and I haven't been able to fulfil the wish though.

Toure Eiffel - A moment to remember.. forever

"Eiffel Tower is just another steel structure. The real beauty of it is only at the night" If you hear anyone tell you that or anything remotely close to that and if you know him please kick them hard in the rear. Really hard. If you don't know them, well god help these lowly creatures. No, really I mean it.Only today I was I had this very interesting discussion with a friend of mine, Mihir, from Portugal about the splendid architecture beauty that Paris has got to offer.

Travelling around metro for over a week now and also keeping in view of the 40 minute journey from Airport, I can say its nothing like I have ever seen. I mean , seeing so many hollywood movies what stays with you is these jungle of skyscrapers all racing to tower one another. Paris is completely different. All the buildings are of mediveal type having arcs on the top and they are not skyscrapers. Maybe 40 -50 stories height and all are of same height. They all have this archaic feeling exuding the rich history. Be it the metros or the the restaurants or the apartments or I don't know most of the buildings are built barring glasses. It's not to say there aren't any buildings without glasses. There are but all these must have been only in the last century compared to 16th Century buildings, these are very new.

Every building here amazes me. With this renewed interest that has started gathering within me of the last one week stay, as I got to the place where I could see the edges I was completely dumbstruck. Oh God, what was I even thinking when I typed those words parroting other people's opinion that its just a steel structure in the morning! I was being so stupid. How could I even muster such thoughts? Comparing it or even calling it a steel structure is a abominable sin, if you ask me. There I was standing, holding my breath and taking in all the beauty it had to offer. I just don't have enough words to describe that beautiful feeling within seeing such an amazing monument.

All hail the French government who have taken extraordinary care to give the utmost benefit to every person to enjoy this wondrous structure. Of the four views it has got to offer, one side is completely left for the public, almost half a kilometer stretch. You see hundreds of people with innumerable varieties of cameras - slr's, compact, videographers trying hundreds of ways to be captured along with it. We even saw a newly married couple dressed in their suit and wedding gown come along with a professional photographer with this huge camera, tripod stand, some pads to enhance the lightening. They were there for almost 30 -45 minutes getting the right pose, moment. That has got to be the most romantic site I have ever seen.

With one end devoted to this, enough care has also been taken to make sure there are no other tall buildings in sight around it for about half a mile radius. What is left is this huge gargantuan structure that gets its glory in full attention. It feels as if someone from above has just cleared some space in the middle of a colony and erected the tower. It is just plain intimidating to look at.

Once the tower lit up, its view altogether is changed. But I would like to say now that the true and absolute beauty is when we can see it without any glitz and glamour. One needs to see it in all its naked glory without any embellishments.

I am truly blessed to have witnessed this Wonder of the world and this has been one of the most unforgettable experiences of my life.

My Adventurous Start to Paris - I

If blogging has taught me anything, it is that memories are best captured when they are still fresh. There are so many wonderful things happening around me that I want to remember but often gets washed away in days that pass by.

Anyways my last days before starting off to Paris have been one such set of days which I want to recall. At the outset I would like to say no packing is ever complete without mom's hands. This is a statement everyone ought to remember. After vacating my room in December, I spent the whole month of January at my avva's place. It had been one of my best days at Hyderabad with Anu too being there. Though we never got to shop together for my trip, we had fun in just talking stuff, going out (It was kinda wierd being with so many girls on the day before Anu had to depart and when all their friends had come). On the first week of Jan, mom too had come just to see me. The kind of lashing I had got on that day after they saw the state of the room I had been in still rings in my ears. Since it was only a week or so I had been there, I didn't bother much moving things around and just kept them lying.

Again, the weekend being the only time I had got to do shopping and stuff, whatever I bought I just dumped it near the table. Just to be clear on what exactly the room contents were, I had 2 suitcases, 2 bags, 3 carry bags nicely kept at one corner of the room. I know I could have dumped the contents, removed the unnecessary stuff, arranged the neat ones. But the way they were at that moment, I didn't think it was nearly as ghastly as my says it was. Neither my mom or dad shared the same view though. For them, I had done something so terribly bad that I have shamed their upbringing. Damn, what on earth are girls genes made of anyway in handling such stuff? Why are their rooms always kept so darn well? I am pretty much sure, mote would have made a much bigger mess of the whole thing. As usual I didn't argue much and anyway they took upon the tasks themselves to clean it up. Well, why bother with the whole shouting anyway? Parents, I tell ya!

So a week after that mom had come again, this time with mission in mind. The task was simple but something I had been postponing just waiting for the confirmation date. The date of travel wasn't sorted out by then. With mom, no such thing happens, she wanted the things right away. It was one of THE best things we did - that is sorting out what is needed, what else to buy and removing the unwanted stuff nicely in one of the bags. She made me pack all the things in different bags. This relieved my mind completely and gave me so much clarity in all the coming days. I exactly knew what was needed - a adapter, one pair of jeans, one cap, one jacket.

These simple items turned out to be much more complicated than I had imagined. I had spent one whole day going around 3 malls in search of one pair of perfect jeans. I have become very bad at choosing things and I lost the ability to chose nice dresses - be it a pant, shirt, or jeans. Nothing I see seem good or fit. It was one of the most dazed shopping experiences in all times. This is something I have started seeing in myself of late and its not a pleasent experience. Without anybody accompanying me, I feel I chose one of the worst dresses and I go into depression. My mind then goes blank. Anyways with such feeling, I put this on hold for the last day.

As the days went by and the date was set, the frenetic activities increased. With only few days to go I bought the suitcase of my choice. Fight broke out between my parents and me, details of which can be found in another blog. Cutting the story short and coming to the last day. This is how things stood.

The tasks pending from my end were -

1. Getting the universal adapter
2. Getting one pair of paint
3. Buying one extra pair of glasses
4. Buying torchlight
5. Get the Office laptop

There were much more. It turned out the weight wasn't enough. I still had the capacity to load 7 Kgs! Mom made sure every kg was properly utilized. With everything running so peacefully, it all went downhill once I reached office around 4:30. Everyone's eye literally was on my eye. Pranav, my manager, then dropped the bombshell by telling me to make sure I carry a medical certificate declaring that eye's stye was not contagious. I hadn't still procured the goddamn office laptop. It was 6:30 in the evening. My backup was not yet done. All these was just creating havoc in my brain. ...

To Be continued...

P.S. I am so tired right now. I have the much more important task of documenting my Eiffel Tower Trip. Will come to this again sometime soon..

Performance, Pressure and Appraisal

It's been a great year at Accenture and looking ahead the next 5 months at Paris promises to enrich my experience further. The real worry though is what kind of life I am looking ahead. Having 4+ years of experience I am reaching the dangerous zone of "5+" where people have larger expectations of your work and personal life. While some insist "just B.E. is not enough" there are many countless voices that continuously haunt you to be career focused, smart and highly intelligent making enough moola to become a marriage material. These are mainly influenced by your peers or friends.

It is a very challenging path ahead and am eagerly looking forward to it. I have always believed goal setting, career focused, excelling in skill-building were the norms for some deranged front benchers for whom life is all about studying and getting good marks. The only mantra that I have carry forwarded so far in my career has been to be put my best efforts to accomplish my task and get it before the deadline.I have more or less succeeded in this goal. I am fortunate to work under Great managers (Mahidher, Julie, Mohit) who have helped me shape my decisions and have given critical but constructive feedback whenever I was at fault.

The last year at Satyam if there was one constant that constantly pushed me to excel and relearn has been e-Pulse. It pushed my thinking and writing abilities. Every edition has been challenging right from getting the articles, writing editorials, tea interviews, editing and finally publishing them. It did come to a stage where I severely let down my manager. Though the message of my under performance and lack of dedication to the project came from other source and not directly from him, I felt truly guilty and vowed to respect the project rules. I continued to deliver things on time and fine quality.

Times have changed. It no longer feels satisfied to be content with the work delivered. The rate at which people are moving ahead with careers be it moving up the ladder (Chitti), winning accolades (Sindu, Ananya) , publishing papers (Joyda, hats off man, George) or jumping to make the most of themselves (Srinu, Hari) has shook me out of my stupor. There is a constant need to excel and one needs to do it whole heartedly. We cannot afford to be stable and satiated. Seeing my dad or my aunt who have this tremendous zeal and outlook towards life, its high time I sincerely acknowledge my lackadaisical attitude whiling away all the precious time in office. I wish people at Accenture would add google reader to its blocked sites, or nytimes, or imdb. The whole first half of the day gets wasted in non-stop surfing around bloggers, tech websites and news. What is more wasteful is I am not able to remember most of what I felt awed about or read. The satisfaction, the joy and the knowledge that I gain by reading so much is just wasted for nothing.

To top that the time to perform is literally ticking. It is that time of the year where anxious and frenetic movements by other peers need to be doubly analyzed and kept guard. It's no bloody coincidence such heartfelt post is being written by me. Folks, its appraisal time. Back at Satyam, it was easy to fill those 6 P's and 5 R's and keep your fingers crossed on the outcome. Promotion was as hazy a term as say 'malnutrition'. It's a thing nobody gives a second thought. At least I didn't. You see its an unwritten rule that says 'No matter what you do, how you do, how fast you do, your fate is pre-determined'. Thankfully things here are different at least in terms of things that need to be showcased. Let me start off by saying in minds of people the unwritten rule persists and I am neither denying or accepting it. But the way it is showcased differs and you know exactly where you lack and where you stand in comparison.

First, in every weekly meetings, our TL never fails to mention what lies ahead and what we need to achieve to raise above the bar. Terms like 'action items', 'asset creation', 'knowledge sharing' are grilled and suddenly you have the feeling you have done absolutely nothing at all. Such discussions around the very folks against whom you are to be judged brings sweat down the spine. To top that the appraisal system forces you to label your own targets under three categories, People Developer, Value Creation and Business Operator. If you are good at what you do, namely anything with respect to the project, you have done your BO right. The problem is everyone gets this part right with full marks. It's what we achieve in other two metrics that creates a differentiating factor. People then become more secretive, more recluse and more competing. Though I dislike such atmosphere, there is nothing I can do but become one like them. The heat is on big time. I see all of them doing something or the other like white paper, test automation, submission of tech articles on kx. Just to satiate myself and partly because it's the truth I would like to say they got lucky. Lucky because some of the things they wrote came about because they faced troublesome issues in solving their bugs for performance. This inturn led to some knowledge enhancement which then became asset. Not groundbreaking asset but an asset nonetheless. I am not trying to berate them but it is just that some of the issues we faced had more to do with getting the product right and not much on performance front. So, I don't have any to showcase.

Coming to researching on various aspects of SSIS, it is still in the making. I am not finding noteworthy things to write about. Time is running out. Pressure is mounting. It's no coincidence that I am writing this at a time like this just to set the ball rolling. I completely agree with Deepak, when he says now is the time when we need to spend more time , day and night to up the ante and prove to others that there is more to us than just the job.

And yes CAMS, how in the world can I forget that. Unlike Satyam , here you get paid quite substantially a bonus for the unique skill set collectively called 'Hot Skill'. Every year an interview is taken by someone at highest level of skill (called P4 or SME). They guage you at various aspects of it and assign a grade. It is incumbent on one's part to better it lest you find yourself poorer by almost 6k every month. I was completely bowled over the first time I heard about it. I respect the company more for such endeavorer which is a win-win situation for both company and the employee.

I think I should be looking at the whole thing in different perspective. Putting aside the appraisal, the HSB, the peer pressure, isn't it high time, as I stated somewhere above, that I realize I need to better my career? Why do I not have the same zeal of a tireless programmer constantly looking to learn new things and become a expert? In the long run, aren't these what sets you apart from million others? Knowledge is divine and the day one doesn't reinvent and prepare for the future, is the day when one should accept you are no longer fit to fight for the top place. One should definitely possess a passion and goal. I pray I don't fall the victim and become a worthy individual.

Last Day at Madhapur

Last Day at Madhapur. So many memories of the past one year are flashing by - late night walks just for the heck of it, dining at MRCB, hangouts with Nikmo or Murali at KVKD, binge weekends mixed with philosophical discussions overseen by special guests Niks, Raja Vardhan, late night movie/marathons with Nikmo. The first half of the year has been even more memorable where every week whisked by filled with so many activities - a compulsory movie followed by running around malls eating at new places trying different outlets, every morning breakfast meetings like the hit squad from 'Thank You For Smoking', partial gymming. I will miss all of these.

Though my dad feels I have been spending exorbitant amount staying at 3rd floor, I feel I have had one of the best times of my life with best people around. I loved keeping the music on everyday before I finish my bath, cooking late and most importantly it was big enough to hold at least 7 people when it matters especially during binging. Given a chance I would like to come back again and stay at this place.

The last few months though with everyone having parted ways to explore their avenues, the fun and fizzle hasn't been the same. I never thought I would be going to watch movies at theaters all alone but it happened.

Before it gets too senty, let me just say the bottomline is - Life is not same with friends around. Though there are comforts, if there are no people to share or hangout life is a like camping in a deserted island. That's how its been for the last few months.

Let's see how it turns out say 6 or 8 months from now.

Au Revoir - Madhapur

86 and Counting!

It's official now - I am full blown 86 Kilo weight dumb headed, fat and obstinate pig. Having checked my weight at the Office gym showing the needle dangerously oscillating between 85 and 87, I felt very depressed to say the least.

It all started in the evening going to have tea with Anup walking beside and casually telling me "kya dude, bahut fat ban rahe ho". Now, had it been say a month back I would have just replied back with a "Chal na yaar..". This wasn't so. It's been only a week since I heard the same comment from none less than Kishor, the guy whom I interact with at least three times a day. I had just laughed it off and made up silly excuse like "Naa..its because of the shirt man". Just to reassure myself I had secretly confided it to Joe and sought a second but firm opinion. He shook his head, smiled a little and said "No dude. Frankly I don't see much change. You are just like before. In fact I don't think you are fat at all, you are just perfect".

Okay, the last sentence I made up. But the point is he totally convinced me and rested my fears of not validating my weight on measuring scale. I also left it at that, until now. Anup told the exact same thing today and Deja Vu. It stuck on me and in full ferociousness I made up my mind to find the truth. It was the most painful thing ever to witness. I am both glad, sad and mad about myself for succumbing to such a gallantly stupid act of seeing the weight.

Oh God! What have I done. Is this what they called 'End Of the Days'? Is the sky really falling on my head? Is 2012 a reality? Am I destined to die Obese? So many thoughts are clinging on my mind. Having been with two roomies who adored daru and dum like their second skin, who gave a rat's ass about their being fat, the determination to limit food or contain health was yanked out of my feet leading to acts of obsessive eating disorder. This is without doubt one of the worst days of my life. Period.

Compounding the problem is my pea sized brain thoughts like "As I am going to Paris, As I am not going to get anything to eat, As I am not going to eat Biryani, Chicken Noodles, Rice, Sambar, As I am not going to have burgers as and when I wish" etc. I have binged non-stop the last week and a half starting from Rajhmundry Biryani, Chicken Curries with full plate rice, Vada, Masala Dosa glistening with Oil, Curd with Sugar - all these and much more are happily settled at both sides of my bulged tummy.

A small confession -

I knew I was 86 much before this day when I had checked my weight at Nikhil's place on December the 10th - Sindu's Wedding day! That's like 17 days ago. Thanks to the morons Hari and Nikhil, who both agreed and reassured me with false statements yet again after checking their individual weights that the machine indeed was showing 2Kg's more. I was actually content being 84, you see.

I vow now to stop eating rice, oily foods and anything that got to do with fat inducing crap. And to Nikhil - "Dude, I definitely am going to keep track of number of days starting this vrath/fast". Watch out!

Chrome Gets a App store!

Woah...I come to office, logon to Reader and what do I see? Google Chrome store is up and running. Yeah! This is just so freaking awesome. This might be just a teaser to the real thing that Google have been up to since this February's announcement of Chrome OS.

My first impressions -

• Not many apps
• Can't browse through apps on first page of the sections like 'Featured', 'Popular' without using 'All'. Again this probably is due to not many apps being there
• No Categories under the Themes! That's ridiculous and absolutely unacceptable. I mean, at least they should be bear minimum - Most downloaded, Top Rated, Editor's pick etc should be there under each one.

That's about it for now. What I fail to understand is why is it that Google never seem to reach the level of sophistication and the richness of look and feel that Apple does. Be it the Android marketplace or this one, it feels as if this is akin to comparison of Linux vs Windows (or again Apple :)). With such great capabilities of utilising Adobe Flash/Flex Google should be going great but instead what we see are sub-standard apps and not much variety as Apple does.

Android, the so-called greatest competitor to Apple, sadly hasn't caught on any great feelings as I have for apple. Neither do I see any major websites poublishing the best apps for Android week on week or Day to Day. Every major company I look either in books, mags, or newspaper proudly claim to be part of Apple. Only few are on Android.

I really hope days from now this scenario would change and let this competetion benefit all rather than one community.

Again coming back to Chrome apps, New York Times has just blown me away with their app..Here is the look and feel of it - Just mind blowing!

How many of these have you Read?

I have come across this snippet from browsing some of my favorite blogs and couldn't resist making a post of it. BBC apparently has believes most people have read at least 6 out of these 100 books. Let me see how I score up -

Taking a cue from other sites, here is what I think can be done if you are going to post it and move it along -

Instructions:

1. Look at the list and bold the ones you love.
2. Add a '+' to the ones you LOVE.
3. Star (*) those you plan on reading

1 Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen *

2 The Lord of the Rings - JRR Tolkien

3 Jane Eyre - Charlotte Bronte

4 Harry Potter series - JK Rowling

5 To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee

6 The Bible

7 Wuthering Heights - Emily Bronte*

8 Nineteen Eighty Four - George Orwell*

9 His Dark Materials - Philip Pullman

10 Great Expectations - Charles Dickens*

11 Little Women - Louisa M Alcott

12 Tess of the D’Urbervilles - Thomas Hardy

13 Catch 22 - Joseph Heller

14 Complete Works of Shakespeare - read some, but not others...

15 Rebecca - Daphne Du Maurier

16 The Hobbit - JRR Tolkien

17 Birdsong - Sebastian Faulk

18 Catcher in the Rye - JD Salinger

19 The Time Traveller’s Wife - Audrey Niffenegger

20 Middlemarch - George Eliot

21 Gone With The Wind - Margaret Mitchell

22 The Great Gatsby - F Scott Fitzgerald

23 Bleak House - Charles Dickens

24 War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy

25 The Hitch Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy - Douglas Adams

26 Brideshead Revisited - Evelyn Waugh

27 Crime and Punishment - Fyodor Dostoyevsky

28 Grapes of Wrath - John Steinbeck

29 Alice in Wonderland - Lewis Carroll

30 The Wind in the Willows - Kenneth Grahame

31 Anna Karenina - Leo Tolstoy

32 David Copperfield - Charles Dickens

33 Chronicles of Narnia - CS Lewis

34 Emma - Jane Austen

35 Persuasion - Jane Austen

36 The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe

37 The Kite Runner - Khaled Hosseini

38 Captain Corelli’s Mandolin - Louis De Bernieres

39 Memoirs of a Geisha - Arthur Golden

40 Winnie the Pooh - AA Milne

41 Animal Farm - George Orwell *

42 The Da Vinci Code - Dan Brown

43 One Hundred Years of Solitude - Gabriel Garcia Marquez

44 A Prayer for Owen Meaney - John Irving

45 The Woman in White - Wilkie Collins

46 Anne of Green Gables - LM Montgomery

47 Far From The Madding Crowd - Thomas Hardy.

48 The Handmaid’s Tale - Margaret Atwood

49 Lord of the Flies - William Golding*

50 Atonement - Ian McEwan

51 Life of Pi - Yann Martel

52 Dune - Frank Herbert

53 Cold Comfort Farm - Stella Gibbons

54 Sense and Sensibility - Jane Austen

55 A Suitable Boy - Vikram Seth.*

56 The Shadow of the Wind - Carlos Ruiz Zafon

57 A Tale Of Two Cities - Charles Dickens

58 Brave New World - Aldous Huxley

59 The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time - Mark Haddon

60 Love In The Time Of Cholera - Gabriel Garcia Marquez*

61 Of Mice and Men - John Steinbeck*

62 Lolita - Vladimir Nabokov

63 The Secret History - Donna Tartt

64 The Lovely Bones - Alice Sebold

65 Count of Monte Cristo - Alexandre Dumas

66 On The Road - Jack Kerouac

67 Jude the Obscure - Thomas Hardy

68 Bridget Jones’s Diary - Helen Fielding

69 Midnight’s Children - Salman Rushdie*

70 Moby Dick - Herman Melville

71 Oliver Twist - Charles Dickens

72 Dracula - Bram Stoker

73 The Secret Garden - Frances Hodgson Burnett

74 Notes From A Small Island - Bill Bryson

75 Ulysses - James Joyce

76 The Bell Jar - Sylvia Plath

77 Swallows and Amazons - Arthur Ransome

78 Germinal - Emile Zola

79 Vanity Fair - William Makepeace Thackeray

80 Possession - AS Byatt.

81 A Christmas Carol - Charles Dickens

82 Cloud Atlas - David Mitchell

83 The Color Purple - Alice Walker

84 The Remains of the Day - Kazuo Ishiguro

85 Madame Bovary - Gustave Flaubert

86 A Fine Balance - Rohinton Mistry

87 Charlotte’s Web - EB White

88 The Five People You Meet In Heaven - Mitch Albom*

89 Adventures of Sherlock Holmes - Sir Arthur Conan Doyle

90 The Faraway Tree Collection - Enid Blyton

91 Heart of Darkness - Joseph Conrad

92 The Little Prince - Antoine De Saint-Exupery

93 The Wasp Factory - Iain Banks

94 Watership Down - Richard Adams

95 A Confederacy of Dunces - John Kennedy Toole

96 A Town Like Alice - Nevil Shute

97 The Three Musketeers - Alexandre Dumas

98 Hamlet - William Shakespeare

99 Charlie and the Chocolate Factory - Roald Dahl

100 Les Miserables - Victor Hugo

That makes my count as 17. Great, I passed the test. Now, let's see the ones I want to read -

• Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen *
• Nineteen Eighty Four - George Orwell*
• Great Expectations - Charles Dickens*
• Animal Farm - George Orwell *
• Lord of the Flies - William Golding*
• A Suitable Boy - Vikram Seth.*
• Love In The Time Of Cholera - Gabriel Garcia Marquez*
• Of Mice and Men - John Steinbeck*
• Midnight’s Children - Salman Rushdie*
• The Five People You Meet In Heaven - Mitch Albom*

Total books planning to read - 10.

To be honest, there are good number of books among the list for which I have seen the film versions but I guess it doesn't count. Going back to the list again, though there are so many I have missed out, there are some I definitely would not want to read for sheer abstractness of the contents in the novel. Here it goes -

• Anna Karanina - Leo Tolstoy
• Gone with the Wind - Margaret Mitchell (I couldn't sit through the movie and I am not sure how long I will stand with the book)
• War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy ( Have read it 3 times, haven't gone past 10 pages)
• Crime and Punishment - Fyodor Dostoyevsky (Have read it 5 times. Maximum pages reached -35 pages. Have also been challenged by Adi that he would give anything if I can complete the book. I certainly bow down to his word.)
• Then there are Children's books like - Narnia, Winnie the Pooh, Alice in Wonderland,Charlie and the Chocolate Factory etc. (These books are past my age and I know I won't enjoy them. As simple as that.)

Writing this post has rekindled the spirit in me to pick up the reading habit again. It's such a great feeling just thinking about it.

Let me know your score folks either here or in FB. :)

Reminiscing the movies and the task ahead

This month seems to be one hellava month for movies this year. Here goes the list ( in order of my preference of watching them, high to low) -

• Aakrosh
• Rakta Charitra
• Khaleja
• Jhoota hi Sahi
• Alla Ke Bandein (for Naseerudhin Shah)
• Anjaana Anjaani
• Robot

Unfortunately I get to see Robot tomorrow, the least preferred one. That's quite a sizable list of movies to cover. Then there is matter of backlog that I need to cover - Aisha, Udaan, Peepli Live, Phiraaq. That's not all. I have this constant nagging in back of my mind to cover all the unseen movies of my movie database. I am pretty much sure every movie collector must be going through this. You see , it quite happens we download movies based on all the good talk, reviews, critical acclaim etc etc. and then we rest it. It's as if the task of downloading is seen as watching the movie itself. It wasn't always like this.

I remember the initial times, when speeds were of the range 30Kbps, I used to wait anxiously for the movie to complete and immediately watch it. With greater speeds the onus is more on making effective utilisation of the money spent and doing justice. Anyways, now with Mote gone and Sindu out of circulation, the movie watching interest isn't the same anymore.

At such times I really miss him and the gang quite a bit. Sundays and Saturday's have definitely dried up. I now see movies mostly by myself and each has been a disastrous one - Gaayam 2, Dabaang, Subhapradam. Almost all my time is taken up by selecting some random movie from HD and watching it thereby severely affecting my book reading habit, blogging, pursuing other interests like watching plays etc. Putting my heart out in post like this does help me time to time to realize that change should be within and that no one is responsible for how we go ahead from now on.

I need to pull my socks up and plan my weekends from now on before I go completely crazy. First and foremost change is to get out of my wrecking home. Anyways I have 5 more days to find out how it goes.

Coming back to movies, hopefully the ones I await, especially Rakta Charitra and Aakrosh would live upto my expectations. Its been quite a while since I have seen real hardcore action movies in Hindi/Telugu.