Like everyone curious-eyed teenager, my love for Zombie movies began just around the time when hormonal growth was in the throes and daily testosterone resurgence was making a heavy impact. This meant an unending fascination with primarily white & yellow-faced bodies being slashed, and cut down to smaller pieces where the chopped-away body part often had this individual ability to move around! But somewhere down the line, not due to too much TV, the entire charm with the niche died. Not sure why but I can understand that this has got something to do with ditching the old ways of making Zombie movies, choosing the modern, more digital way of doing things. You see, the charm of Zombie mayhem lies in stupid finishing touches.
Rooting for Bringing Back the Stupidity in Zombie Movies...nothing artistic about it!
Like everyone curious-eyed teenager, my love for Zombie movies began just around the time when hormonal growth was in the throes and daily testosterone resurgence was making a heavy impact. This meant an unending fascination with primarily white & yellow-faced bodies being slashed, and cut down to smaller pieces where the chopped-away body part often had this individual ability to move around! But somewhere down the line, not due to too much TV, the entire charm with the niche died. Not sure why but I can understand that this has got something to do with ditching the old ways of making Zombie movies, choosing the modern, more digital way of doing things. You see, the charm of Zombie mayhem lies in stupid finishing touches.Blog, Share, Comment often? NO, you are not close to being a good writer
There is a hidden author in you, this could be the week when you start your globally-awaited journey towards being the novelist that God wanted you to become...thoughts like these will continue to traffic your mind but the fact remains that like most things in life, at least crafts that need every nuance of the trade to be baked with extreme effort, Writing is not that easy! ACCEPTANCE - swallow it if you want to become a better professional writer! You have to wake up and download the reality - there is a huge difference between having a great vocabulary, being bestowed with amazing creativity, and translating thoughts into words. When it comes to more professional, data-driven writing, the challenge is even harder. Here, you need to mold yourself, and many times, the subject might be outright hateful, and you will feel like dropping the ball. Some people, who can just about write a bit, assume that just because they can get paid to blog a bit or author social media snippets, they are on their way to becoming a bestselling author. There are some overnight, fluke & fate-fueled author success stories, but largely, it takes a lot more than a polished formal education or awesome college degrees to write well. There is a massive difference between penning a few paragraphs and writing consistently well, along with ensuring the writing is engaging enough.
UNINTERRUPTED: not the usual tips to become a better writer
Here, you need to understand that drafting an email at the workplace that makes the bosses ponder & smile, writing a love note, or penning an autobiography - all of these are very different forms of writing. Ask a professional writer from a digital agency, and things seem even more perplexing. However, there is one common factor, one skill that is common across all forms of writing, and I mean, writing well - you should be fluent in connecting thoughts, sentence structure, and sustaining connectivity with the subject. You have to hone your skill to the extent that this comes naturally to you, organic enough to the extent that you don't need to stop in between and remind yourself that the last few sentences might have strayed away from the subject. Most amateurs tend to use their minds for collecting thoughts, turning them into words, and then creating a supply chain from the mind to the fingers. This usually takes time and does not move in a fluid, spontaneous manner. This is not what you want!
There should be no downtime when you are writing. Everything that you want to say, express, compile, or communicate should be instantly put on the canvas, and the canvas can be an A4 sheet or a Word document. Writing well consistently needs this mechanism to function like one smooth machine, even on days when the concentration levels are not that high. Writing for the web is very different from the art of creating a script or plotting a movie idea or authoring books, but even these media, no matter how creatively superior, cannot afford someone who takes ages to mature a thought into something that can be punched on the laptop. The ability to write should be as natural an instinct as sweating - the mind, the fingers, and keyboarding efforts should become one cohesive unit, and only small gaps to refuel your mental reserves should create temporary pauses.
VERSATILITY: Usually not counted among the best methods for becoming a better writer
One of my teammates once told me that it was weird that I could write about a dot, a dot that was nowhere to be seen, but still I could story-it-up, mold it into a product description, or get all philosophical about it without taking long sips of coffee or looking bewildered. Does that make me a great writer? NO. Does it make me a good content developer? YES. Does this mean I can write better than you? Probably NOT. Does it mean I have the core skill that it takes to turn into a full-time author, a children's book developer, or a brand story-writer? YES! All forms of writing need a lot of practice before you can get anywhere close to having a style or tone that has some degree of uniqueness. This individuality in your style comes after having practiced the art across many types of media, after having exhausted all the writing tools - classical, contemporary, vintage, and emerging.
ODD SKILLS: usually not shared in online guides to become a good writer
I often share with my team how training myself to type faster was necessary to maintain the flow in my writing. Eventually, I had to join a shady-looking typewriting school to ensure my typing speed could keep up with what my mind was relentlessly pouring. I had to time myself for the maximum output per minute. Here, the outcome that mattered was creating a copy that looked much, much better
than a shabbily put-together first draft, grammatically good, if not
perfect, and not committing more than a couple of typos. While the mind collates visuals, creates conclusions, and provides the assurance of having understood a subject, your writing shouldn't be stalled - like I said, all of these activities or sub-processes need to gel well, blend in, not camouflage but work like a Mercedes model that might go out-of-production a decade from now but will always rev-up even after years of negligent handling. And yes, something as basic as smooth typing abilities contributes to becoming a better writer.
HANDLING THE UGLY: skills professional content developers should possess
I had to torture myself to get to a point where, unless the topic was too technically specific, I could write about it in some way with negligible guidance, and still, the copy was never horrible. When your blog or article about anything that you despise or don't connect with most remotely is cerebrally digestible and cannot be called "crap" at the editing table, you have done well. You can now write better. However, you are not anywhere near excellence! You have to pay your dues, digging your fingers into the keyboard because there is no other way around it. Even if you have the gift of glibness, even if you graduated from the best institutions on the planet, there is nothing that guarantees a delectable finesse in your writing.
DUMP PERFECTION: contradicts the usual top tips to become a better writer
PLENTY OF RAINY DAYS: stop searching for easy ways to become a better writer
Another misconception lies in believing that writing or even casually blogging will always be a creative, rewarding process. This is not always true. Sometimes, you have to get mechanical about it. These are days when the words will not come to your mind. You will feel handicapped in the simplest expressions. Leave alone metaphors or awe-inducing introductory titles, even basic sentences will seem flawed, but you have to challenge your mindset. You have to procure the best from that scanty portion of the mind that is still functioning. Even on such horrible days, you should be able to create five alternate titles for a published or soon-to-be-published write-up in less than 5 minutes! Perhaps not the best day to start your autobiographical account, such days can be used for revisiting the basics of the game and then reflecting on your most recent copies. Not keeping at it means you are breaking away from habits that can transform average expressions into a very likable piece of published work. It is about doing the grind. It will take time, and then, just
like Shifu-guided Po, you will realize that there are no secrets...you always had it in you!
THE PUBLIC PERFORMANCE TRAP — Why Visibility Masquerades as Ability
One of the quietest distortions modern writers suffer from is the belief that visibility is evidence of progress. The more one blogs, shares, comments, and reacts, the easier it becomes to confuse participation with mastery. Digital platforms reward motion, not depth. They measure presence, not penetration. As a result, many writers begin mistaking the appearance of being active for the discipline of becoming capable.
This is not arrogance so much as miscalibration. Writing online trains people to externalize unfinished thinking. Drafts are published before they are metabolized. Opinions are released before they are interrogated. The feedback loop is immediate, shallow, and addictive. A comment validates tone, not structure. A share flatters sentiment, not rigor. Over time, the writer’s internal bar erodes. The muscle that once strained toward clarity relaxes, content to be legible rather than exact.
The danger is subtle. Writers who grow inside this ecosystem often feel productive while quietly stagnating. They write often, but rarely wrestle. They publish frequently, but seldom revise deeply. Their sentences move, but they do not carry. This is why prolific output can coexist with arrested development. The craft never demands more than what is already comfortable.
Serious writing requires long stretches of invisibility—hours where nothing is shared, affirmed, or reacted to. It requires tolerating the silence where judgment is internal, not algorithmic. The writer must learn to disappoint the platform to satisfy the page. This is where many falter, because withholding output feels like regression in a culture that equates constant expression with growth.
The irony is sharp: the writers most eager to be seen often delay becoming worth reading. They are busy narrating the journey instead of undergoing it. The discipline your essay circles again and again is not merely technical or emotional—it is epistemic. Knowing when not to publish. Knowing when attention is premature. Knowing that craft matures away from applause. Until that distinction is internalized, blogging will feel like progress, but it will be like motion without accumulation—just sound without any real weight!
IMITATION BEFORE IDENTITY — Why “Finding Your Voice” Is Usually Delayed by Trying to Sound Original
Most writers who speak urgently about “finding their voice” are attempting to skip a phase that cannot be skipped. Voice is not discovered through intention; it is distilled through repetition under constraint. And imitation—often dismissed as uncreative—is the crucible where that distillation begins.
The problem is cultural embarrassment. Modern writers are taught to fear sounding derivative, as though influence were a moral failing rather than a developmental necessity. They try to sound original before they have internalized rhythm, compression, pacing, or argumentative gravity. The result is often prose that is technically legible but emotionally hollow—sentences performing novelty without carrying weight.
Imitation, done honestly, is not mimicry. It is an apprenticeship. It trains the nervous system to recognize cadence, restraint, and proportion. Writers who resist it remain stylistically thin because they have never allowed another intelligence to temporarily inhabit their sentences. They speak too early in their own accent, unaware that an accent without muscle collapses under pressure.
Voice emerges only after the borrowed scaffolding has been exhausted. It arrives not as invention, but as residue—the parts that remain once influence has been metabolized. Writers who rush originality delay this process indefinitely, mistaking self-conscious distinctiveness for identity. What they produce sounds personal, but not inevitable. And inevitably, not novelty is the mark of voice.
THE COMPETENCE PLATEAU — Why Most Writers Never Cross into Authority
There is a point in every writer’s development where improvement stops feeling urgent. The sentences work. The feedback is positive. The output is reliable. This is competence—and it is where most writers stay. Authority requires something competence does not: the willingness to be constrained by accuracy rather than expression. Competent writers optimize for clarity, fluency, and engagement. Authoritative writers subordinate all three to precision. They will sacrifice readability for truth. They will abandon attractive phrasing if it distorts the argument. They understand that authority is earned not through confidence but through disciplined refusal.
What traps writers at competence is reward. The system pays them there. Editors stop pushing. Clients stop questioning. The friction that once forced refinement disappears. Without resistance, sentences no longer sharpen; they merely repeat themselves with polish. Authority demands entering territory where approval thins out. Where fewer people nod along. Where claims must survive scrutiny rather than applause. Many writers avoid this transition not because they cannot make it, but because competence already feels like success. Authority feels lonelier—and riskier—by comparison.
THE EDITING AVERSION — Why Revising Your Own Work Is Psychologically Harder Than Writing It
Writing generates momentum. Editing dismantles it. This asymmetry explains why so many writers overproduce and under-revise. Drafting feels like creation; editing feels like negation. The resistance is not technical. It is psychological. Editing forces the writer to confront the difference between intention and execution. It exposes where the sentence did not do what it promised. It reveals habits masquerading as style. Writing allows the ego to expand; editing contracts it.
More uncomfortably, editing collapses time. The writer must become both creator and judge, holding yesterday’s enthusiasm to today’s standards. Many avoid this by outsourcing judgment—to editors, to audiences, to metrics. The work moves forward without ever being fully interrogated by its author.
Serious writers eventually learn that editing is where authorship actually begins. Drafting assembles material; editing assigns responsibility. The inability to edit oneself honestly is not a flaw of discipline but of identity. To revise deeply is to admit that the earlier version of you was wrong—and that admission is more threatening than any blank page.
REVISED CLOSING REFLECTION — Writing Without the Applause
If this essay sounds severe, it is because writing is not as forgiving as the internet pretends. Visibility does not equal progress. Output does not equal growth. Confidence does not equal authority. And originality, pursued too early, often becomes a delay tactic disguised as ambition.
Most people who write will write forever without becoming writers in the deeper sense. They will stay busy, expressive, and technically capable. They will publish often. They will be liked. And yet their sentences will never harden into something that carries independent weight.
The difference is not talent. It is tolerance—for invisibility, for imitation, for discomfort, for revision, for the long quiet where nothing affirms you except the page itself. Writing does not reward urgency. It rewards submission to the process. The hidden author your essay speaks of does not emerge because you blogged more, shared more, or commented better. It emerges when you accept that writing is not self-expression but self-erasure—slowly stripping away what is convenient, impressive, or immediately rewarding until only what withstands pressure remains.
That is not a glamorous journey. It is not publicly visible. And most people abandon it long before it becomes recognizable as theirs. Which is why good writers are rare, and why being busy with words has never been the same thing as earning them.
When Family Time sounds like your Psychologist's Favorite Phrase about what you Should be Doing!
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| The tail-end of 80s and 90s played host to my growing-up memories |
It was during the morning hours of getting ready for work, and the usual music channels were upbeat with new tunes and songs. My mind just popped some images of audio cassettes of yonder that once used to find ample space in my schoolbag, drawers, cupboards, and always seemed like trending without the hashtags or Instagram stories. We didn't need social media channels to tell us what was cool - we could pretty much handle this on our own. We didn't need Likes on our images to realize that what we had was of some value and liked by others. These were really plasticky times and still they now seem a lot more real, less commercialized, more restrained without getting suffocating. This was during the late 80s and early 90s.
Do Abnormally Creative Mixing Skills Mean a Good Career?
I am looking for a job profile titled Mixologist. Your expectations should be:
- can mix all forms known to man - air, water, fire, earth, pornographically permeated ideas
- suffers from severe mixing tendencies that were once evaluated as the result of God-mixed, genetically-conjured split personalities
- has no shame in admitting that most mixing experiments lead to severe accidents
- Someone who cannot be trusted with a kitchen that is reasonably stocked
- expects you to be ready party to anything and everything that is mixed and whipped beyond recognition
- seems to look at everyday food choices as a challenge and wants to defeat them
- has the distinction of not suffering from acidity despite multiple, same-day food experiments
- was once listed as a wanted offender for challenging the stability of our food chain
- has won accolades for mixing three types of shaving foams and four types of deodorants
- suffers from borderline disassociation syndrome when mixing possibilities dry up
- cannot be trusted with small kids as his creations might make the kids choke or allergy-up
- envies mixer-grinding machines that seem to mix better than him [seem...they actually don't]
- is crazy about textures in food
Almost Ancient Moral Science Classroom Chapters that Make More Sense Now!
Our moral science classes were usually held in the first period of the day. In a catholic school, as a fraternity, we were big on manners and learning the good things to do. At that time, it seemed a bit too vague, often about things that we really didn’t practice, but yes, it helped to draw some sort of line between the good, the bad, and the reasonably acceptable middle, grey zone. These lessons were usually forgotten and often the classroom aura was more of winding down for the day to follow with many mates catching up on quick bites and pending homework copies. Things that were transmitted to us were usually never received or processed. Now, after nearly two decades, it seems that many of the lessons that we didn’t bother to learn during that period are waiting for their share of the spotlight. We were told not to lie, and yes, I learned this lesson rather well before giving it away when handling the type of projects that were too big for the teams I managed. The lesson of one lie opens a box of more dicey stories, tales sprinkled with misleading creativity. Soon I realized that no matter what the Management or the workplace buddies say, don’t lie to your client – this will blow up in your face in the most hurtful manner. The smallest lessons about refreshingly starting the day, always taking the time to tidy up make more sense now, in my mid-30s, when there are a million tasks to manage and not starting the day on a positive note means daylong anxiety and unwanted stress!
If only, at that time, someone could have been schooled in the wisdom of teaching these lessons as life-essential skills and not just another round of classroom learning.
When Life Gives You Lemons, Ask for Martini...Demand One!
This is not some Instagram-worthy post with hash-tags like #lifemotivation - this is just me, sharing something that I have learned along the way when repeatedly trying to undertake a journey towards an utterly believable state of happiness. I have this firm belief that as an individual, I never exploited and fully utilized the gifts that God granted. I did not encash the opportunities that Destiny presented. For a long time, Life has been about committing many mistakes and then finding the energy to try redemption. The result is this constant battle where I have to fight off bouts of unhappiness that stem from this reconfirmation. However, I have also found a way of dealing with such days. This short blog post is about such life management...
Did you just mark that wall with your imprints? Don't dumb it up!
What is it about fingerprints on the walls that make people gush about its authenticity? Just recently, I read an article about how to decorate a room using your handprints. My reaction was a blend of confusion and amazement. I felt confused because the idea of having an entire wall covered in handprints as the accent walls trending did not appeal to me, and more so, I could not understand what is so organically creative about it. I was a bit amazed because some people call it artistic! I can never understand this. Prints of human hands, with the fingerprints, clearly showing, in a color of the paint or pigment, does not create great visuals. There is nothing so progressive about them. I am not complaining about how some people have abused heritage sites with this irresistible urge to leave their imprints all over these places of cultural or religious greatness - instead, I am talking about my failure to really interpret what makes this such a lovable thing to do. No one has majestically different hands whose imprints will create a Picasso-niche imprint. Most of these will be scratched away or painted out someday. As long as they are there, plastered on the surface, they look plain ugly. Some vacationers tend to think of these hand imprinting exercises as a very anthropological way of marking their territory or adding that family aura to something that only society or community actually owns. However, nothing of the sort is the reality. Imprinting your hand over anything, often creating smudges, is no art! I see people do it in the kid's room, and for once, a couple of handprints on a call can look cute. I say so being the father to a 1.8 years old girl whose feet and handprints have never been properly captured. As a couple, we have always planned to do it but just never got around to doing so. Here, the visual appeal of it is somewhat understandable but that too in the form of a few prints only, and not doing the entire wall in a maze of handprints. However, handprinted walls in the kitchen, living room, or bedroom are not macabre or eclectic.
Some Food Cooking, Serving, Ordering Habits that Need a Change
Approach to Restarting Life Inspired by Falling Leaves
Nature has this weird knack of teaching us a lesson all the time. It is just that we never take the time to stop, observe and learn it. However, with time, when Life has jerked you around a bit too much, with too much regularity, you tend to take notice. I took notice nearly five years back and since then, the entire perspective has changed. One such visual that I remember from my transition days is that of falling leaves. For a moment, believe that the leaves are days, hours or moments during which we realize that we need to overhaul our lifestyle choices to enable better outcomes, for a life more aligned along the lines of achieving fulfillment.
Don't Preach about Micro-scoping Everything We Eat
There is a wealth of online wisdom available about how to choose and how to be very careful about what we eat; however, some of this advice seems too preachy and, at times, irritating. There is something very simple and unsaid about food that is good - you have to close your eyes to the obvious things that will not agree with a nutritionist's advice. Soulful food is invariably high in calories. Perhaps this is why it is so happy and big, and yes, it contains a lot of fat too, which you cannot enjoy if your conscience keeps asking you questions about the calorie count. However, what irritates me is that the people who have infused this habit of counting and measuring everything we are about to eat seem to have comfortably forgotten that we don't have that many choices. So many kitchen and grocery essentials are no longer in the safety zone. The simplest of herbs and spices, too, are now adulterated. We are trying to make the most educated decisions, buying what has been packaged better and procured more sensibly, at a premium rate.
Now, whatever little is left is, whatever scanty food options have managed to survive the commercialization holocaust, don’t need to be put under the lens in such a magnified way.
There is a limit to how much we need to read into each food label. Why is this not the state government’s responsibility to handle? There are blogs about how some of the most common sweeteners are now cancerous or irritate the gastrointestinal lining. We shouldn’t need to check out the details across so many ingredients, many of which are highly industrial in nature and are not even in public ambit. As a consumer, you want to be aware and make educated choices, but when you are biting into a juicy-looking steak, you shouldn’t be thinking about whether the marbling pattern indicates plasticized meats – yes, this is actually happening, now at a neighborhood food chain, near you!It’s the kind of absurdity that reveals how deeply modern food anxiety has burrowed into daily life. People aren’t eating anymore; they’re performing vigilance. Every bite is an interrogation. Every craving becomes a moral test. The act of feeding oneself—once instinctive, joyful, inherited—now resembles an exam no one remembers signing up for. And beneath this constant scanning lies a quieter fatigue: the sense that ordinary people have been tasked with policing a system far bigger, murkier, and more industrial than any individual conscience can realistically manage. No one at the dinner table volunteered to become an amateur toxicologist, yet here we are, squinting at ingredient lists that read like chemical inventories and pretending that this scrutiny will somehow repair what was broken upstream.
The tragedy is that the joy of food has been displaced by the performance of “purity.” This cultural obsession with micro-scoping every grain of salt, every trace of oil, every unfamiliar word on a label has created an atmosphere where flavor is secondary to fear. Food has become a site of moral signaling—proof of discipline, of restraint, of belonging to the tribe that supposedly “knows better.” But wisdom has little to do with it. What people call mindful eating often resembles a defensive maneuver against a world that keeps asking individuals to compensate for failures they did not cause. And in that sense, perhaps the real indulgence is not the butter, the ghee, the fried crust, or the sugary bite—it’s the momentary refusal to let industrial chaos dictate one’s emotional relationship with hunger.
What gets lost in this nutritional surveillance culture is the simple, almost ancient truth that appetite is one of the last remaining instincts that hasn’t been fully colonized by modern systems—though not for lack of trying. People forget that flavor was once a language: a way families expressed affection, a way communities formed bonds, a way memory anchored itself in the body. Now that language is constantly interrupted by warnings, advisories, and the low-grade panic that accompanies every headline about some newly discovered threat lurking in what used to be considered food. It is difficult to savor anything when the mind has been conditioned to parse each bite into risk categories, running silent calculations that drain pleasure long before the stomach has a chance to register fullness.
The irony is sharp: never have people had more access to information, and never have they been more confused about what is safe to eat. The excess of nutritional data hasn’t clarified anything; it has only deepened the sense that one could always be making a “better” decision. This constant self-surveillance becomes its own form of hunger—a hunger for certainty in a world where certainty no longer exists. And so, instead of trusting their own senses, people end up negotiating their meals with an endless stream of external authorities, each claiming to hold the definitive truth about what the body should or shouldn’t endure. The body itself, meanwhile, waits patiently, still knowing what it likes, though few remember how to listen.
Something about colored, bright ice-creams that create the goodness aura
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| The Naturalness Index of a Food Item Can be Pure Visuals...Just Don't Dig Further! |
You might have come across my recent blog about how all ice-creams that vouch for being fruity and being ultra-natural tend to fail on many counts. I am still sticking to my stand. All ice-creams infused with some type of fruit mix or extract are not that high on the goodness part as they claim to be. Most of them have decent amounts of processed sugars and fats despite all the claims. But there is one thing about ice-creams that wear a color emanating from their fruity formulation. These fruits are invariably some shade of red and their extract can create different hues of maroon, pink, and reds. The visual effect is sometimes extraordinary. I was Googling images for ice-creams made with natural stuff and came across the graphic shared here. Just one look at this concoction of traditional ice-creams with fruits and you get this feeling that there is something very pure about it. This is not about feeling relieved because the fruit content would have removed some of the high-density calories but the colors that create this interplay of a textured surface.
Neck Aesthetics - not that common, doesn't happen to everyone & it is a big deal!
Highly Raised Stools with Leg Support >better> than Regular Chairs?
You might have people exchange a lot of notes about the type of back support they prefer, what makes it easier for them to relax their legs and how some modern seating options seem to be agonizing their spinal column. Taking cues from the web and my own experiences, I can promise one thing - there is very little people are doing in terms of really exploring the playing field here. Just think of this: most people assume that they need highly padded chairs with elongated back support for maximum comfort. If you have visited some recently done bistros or cafes, you might have seen these high-rise stools that are awfully bigger than your regular, bedside stools.
More vertically blessed and without any dedicated back arch supporting fixtures, these stools can be shockingly comfortable. Most of them have iron legs and this means very high weight-bearing capacity. A simple, no-nonsense seat replaces the snug fitted sofa chairs, car seats or Ottomans. You get a humbled-down, agrarian like approach to furniture choices. There is almost no design here and the lack of it makes this seating option unique and effective.
More vertically blessed and without any dedicated back arch supporting fixtures, these stools can be shockingly comfortable. Most of them have iron legs and this means very high weight-bearing capacity. A simple, no-nonsense seat replaces the snug fitted sofa chairs, car seats or Ottomans. You get a humbled-down, agrarian like approach to furniture choices. There is almost no design here and the lack of it makes this seating option unique and effective.
A Note to My Dear Phus-Phus...[Love Sign!]
You call it a water sprayer. I call it Phus-Phus. You think it is elementary and mechanical. I think it is the smartest invention. While you think spraying the plants is no big deal, I claim it is an art, an acquired taste that evolves with time...[Image Awaited]
Before you, there was no love in watching the plants grow!
Watering the planters had become dreary, a daily activity that had to be done. With you, I have so many angles to explore. I understand the effects of wind on water stream or spray patterns better. I understand how to control the thumb pressure to control the intensity of spraying. While some people call this misting the plants, it feels like I am nurturing something, and you are the medium through which I express my caring for things that otherwise have nothing to say, nothing to complain about, and will never answer back. You help me connect with the most innocuous things despite being undemanding and unpretentious yourself. In a way, you exude the type of wisdom that must keep monks grounded and humble.
Until you came around, there were no hand & arm warm-ups!
I use you every day, just before the morning tea. Your loaded spring does wonders for my otherwise genetically weak wrists and arms. You give them tendons and musculature a good stretch. Until you were there, I would rarely know how to warm up my arms that are always bandaged when trying to lift heavy. Nobody knew that you could be my distant gym buddy. Now that I employ you daily, I cannot imagine working out without having spent some minutes with you.
Your Performance is Unconditional, without excuses. You Always Deliver!
In times when I am surrounded by people who are not ready to grind it out, where people exercise their hands to do only the unmentionables and smartphone jerking, you set the example with a dutiful aura about it. I have woken you up from long nights and days of slumber, but you were never lazy like me in the mornings. I have forgotten you on the balcony, but you never complained about the sunburns. You don't need a heads-up for a double round of misting. You don't find reasons to fail. There are so many forms to you, but in design, every bit of you is essentially driven to work hard.
You Don't Fret about Emerging Challenges!
The Phus-Phus knows it has a short life. I tend to trigger in a harsh way, repeatedly misting the plants. No matter for how many weeks, the Phus-Phus will stay true to its promise. It does not choke upon seeing the workflow. IT does not quit. It realizes the replacement is always there in my spare cupboard; younger contenders with stronger springs, better plastics, and improved nozzles will keep arriving. Yet, the Phus-Phus works without any complaints - a perpetual performer, it has the outdoor stamina of worker bees doing their rounds to keep up the beehive alive and humming with activity.
Psychologists should recommend you more than Gardening!
The Phus-Phus has played a role in conditioning my morning hours better, to help me start the day in a more relaxed manner. Almost like a daily ritual, spraying the plants, the young & old, creates a sense of getting the job done, and when you are getting backlash at the workplace for projects not that well-executed, this is almost like a sense of achievement. Yes, doing it/that longer with your wife is more akin to that feeling of victory, but this counts too. Anything is better than medicating yourself and this is like Prozac with an eager, easy-to-personalize trigger action but without the chemical overload.
Pizza in the City: Paneer Tikka Pizza? that is Blasphemy, not gastronomic artistry you fool!
Tomato puree has been replaced with over-sweetened ketchup. Stringy, real cheese has been substituted with dry and less flavorful cottage cheese or paneer, and now, we have pizzas that look like a bouquet of vegetables you were supposed to eat as a child!
If pizza were styled as a place to linger, it wouldn't score big, i.e., if the place were located in Delhi.
The cookie-cutter lifestyle has somewhat narrowed the options we have for eating out. Saying that it has helped expand our gastronomic horizon would be lying blatantly. Urbanity is closely related to easy foods, and pizza is the king of all things easy to assemble and deliver at short notice. However, something very wrong is happening in the world of pizza-making in the city. The non-European vibe has been replaced with utter stupidity. Even the most culturally well-endowed urban centers are now guilty of molesting the cultural fabric that constitutes a pizza. Today, the slice has lost its appeal.
The cookie-cutter lifestyle has somewhat narrowed the options we have for eating out. Saying that it has helped expand our gastronomic horizon would be lying blatantly. Urbanity is closely related to easy foods, and pizza is the king of all things easy to assemble and deliver at short notice. However, something very wrong is happening in the world of pizza-making in the city. The non-European vibe has been replaced with utter stupidity. Even the most culturally well-endowed urban centers are now guilty of molesting the cultural fabric that constitutes a pizza. Today, the slice has lost its appeal.
Stopping a contagion means identifying the infection first
Any discussion about the pizza being too desi is speculative or vague or both!
Pizza community advocates talk about the type of crust, the amount of cheese, and the generosity of the toppings. But what about the toppings that were never meant to be taken to pizza-land? It is as if the pizza people in the city have hit some sort of ideation barrier. I am a big believer in making gastronomic journeys, each exploration more likely to take you closer to something that has not been defined or uncovered yet. Still, people find the time and the audacity to absolutely kill the entire idea. Pizza making is an innocent enterprise. It's just lots of toppings and a simple sauce on a base of dough. Where is the room to screw it up this bad?Another kicker to the story: not all types of cheeses are meant for a Pizza
My opinion does suffer from the patchiness of data. After all, I have not tasted pizzas from every eatery of repute that is redoing this otherwise fantastic food. In culturally parched parts of Delhi, the pizza is suffering from localization to the extent of losing its identity. Real sauces and gravies are being replaced by stupid replacements that have nothing to add in terms of real flavors but do the job of filling your mouth rather well. Cottage cheese or paneer is nothing like the many types of cheese that are found overseas. Paneer is too granular and bland. The milkiness is replaced by a totally offsetting type of dairy-ness. I say this without a haze of grumpiness that a food blogger might own.Pizza should be like whiskey, sharp in the first bite & then induce warmth as it moves further
Pizzas in the city have been constantly sparring for their share of fair treatment. During the tail-end 2000s first decade, the real assembly line of pizza was realized. It was now here to stay, and you must agree that it has survived the onslaught of many other imported snacking and food items that competed fiercely. Ultimately, the cheesy warrior won. However, just like a new dynasty that tends to border between two extremes of being either too suppressive or all-inclusive, the pizza dynasty made the horrible mistake of allowing itself to be too malleable. It did not need to change so drastically.
Localization might be a Need, but the Stupidity of it was NOT!
Localization experts got the opportunity to trample it, and they have done a great job out of it. The good-old pizza had a fantastic groove, smartly blending excesses of some ingredients with the restraint of others. The result was a wonderful creation that was crunchy, soggy, saucy, bite-ful, tongue-coating, and fatty without any aspect being blown out of proportion. Well-thought-out plans about using more local produce is how other countries are making the pizza more native-friendly. Indians seem to have lost the plot. They are making it either too desi or borderline hipster without realizing the bready goodness cannot afford too much innovation. Its essence has to be captured and preserved at all costs.Waiting for city pizzas to finally mature? That is how hope works!
Bungled efforts at making the pizza more community-friendly includes serving it with dollops of some chutney besides it. The result? An absolute disaster. Downgrading the value of fresh ingredients in a Pizza, more of refrigerated stock is now becoming the common way in this trade. The pizza walks a tough line between being somewhat health-friendly and utterly indulgent. The latter is where the maximum happiness lies, and this has been substituted without any success. A culturally well-endowed pizza should borrow the local ingredients rather than making them the taste-defining elements.Is relative affordability killing the pizza essentials?
The city pizza is being made with increasing impunity towards being judged. There are not many food bloggers who are raising a noise where we need a blast to be heard. The impassioned pizza is overloaded with poor selection, and the base is still too thick, too chewy, and too flipped on being more bready rather than a humble base that bites well. The inducement for a better pizza has to be criticism right before something gets viral and starts setting the wrong examples!
Love Nature but wearing it is entirely different | Ridiculous Fashion
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| All Floral Prints are Not Flattering |
I call them flora & fauna prints - seen on apparels that seem to have been invented by a gardener with a clinical love for anything that takes root, springs like a stem, fruits or flowers and needs sunlight. There is something visually offsetting when the palm trees on your tee seem to complement the sandy spread of beaches in the background. Yes, even in a typical vacation along the beach, wearing floral clothes does not make sense to me. I am talking about vacation-wear that takes the concept of wearing what you love to a new level - you really don't need to declare your love for the flora & fauna - most people love plants and there is very little room to present your case as someone with a superior sense of being connected with the outdoors. For some reason, I just cannot get a sense of these fashion choices. Yes, there is something classic and lovable about floral prints but when you overboard, its gets highly distracting and is far from looking refreshing or graceful. I don't expect fashion to run a botany class on me. I shouldn't be separating the stems from the branches, leaves and flowers - yes, this is how discomforting floral prints can be!
WhatsApp Invitations aren't that un-personal unless you choose to be upset...
This is about wedding invitations sent via WhatsApp and other lifetime moments that are communicated via a messenger that some people interpret as being rude or impersonal. I find this rather useful. When everything around us is getting digital, the sanctity of the wedding invitation, too, has to be transformed. WhatsApp invitations are just an extension of the way we function. It is a soft copy, contains easy-to-share data, and can be accessed from anywhere in the world. Calling WhatsApp wedding invitations cheap or impolite would be making a statement about our entire lifestyles.
While some people stick to WhatsApp invitations only when the entire event is a bit of a last-minute arrangement, or when they don't want to spend lavishly on wedding cards. However, wedding invitations were never that expensive. They get printed rather easily, and these days, the postal system or your logistics service provider can mail them instantly. The problem lies in the entire effort associated with it, more about the time you can devote to designing and creating the card's layout, rather than the spending or the slowness of the procedure. In comparison, WhatsApp wedding cards are easy to create. You have the leverage of laptops, phablets, tablets, smartphones, etc., all around with cables plugged into their energy source. You can get overtly creative here. There are no inhibitions as compared to the more intimate and lovable physical wedding invitation. This is why some couples have used different variations of their WhatsApp wedding card - a standard and a naughty version. These are shared or WhatsApp-ed depending upon the type of bonding with the guest in question. I guess the printed card does not provide this degree of flexibility.
While some people stick to WhatsApp invitations only when the entire event is a bit of a last-minute arrangement, or when they don't want to spend lavishly on wedding cards. However, wedding invitations were never that expensive. They get printed rather easily, and these days, the postal system or your logistics service provider can mail them instantly. The problem lies in the entire effort associated with it, more about the time you can devote to designing and creating the card's layout, rather than the spending or the slowness of the procedure. In comparison, WhatsApp wedding cards are easy to create. You have the leverage of laptops, phablets, tablets, smartphones, etc., all around with cables plugged into their energy source. You can get overtly creative here. There are no inhibitions as compared to the more intimate and lovable physical wedding invitation. This is why some couples have used different variations of their WhatsApp wedding card - a standard and a naughty version. These are shared or WhatsApp-ed depending upon the type of bonding with the guest in question. I guess the printed card does not provide this degree of flexibility.
But the romance of it all?
This aspect stands compromised. You cannot make me agree on a digital invitation as compared to the beauty of ink on paper, even if the ink was channeled through a digital system. The mechanical assembly of a printing press notwithstanding, a real, old-world wedding invitation has this charm. You can feel the texture, the choice of paper makes a difference, you carry it for some days or stack it in the drawer, you compare it with your own wedding card, or if it is from someone you hardly know, you use it as an investigation tool, trying to fathom what type of financial integrity you are dealing with! In comparison, even if someone creates an entire website dedicated to the pre- & post-nuptial phase, including the invitation web page, the impact cannot be the same. You might not have noticed, but the printed ink on wedding cards tends to age in a rather unique manner. This varies across all types of cards. Dark maroons can turn slightly purplish. The glitter on paper can turn bronze-like, somewhat vintage. Would you actually revisit a wedding invitation URL after a few weeks or months?...would it have anything different to show?
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