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Happiest Birthday Swetha!

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Oh Swe, where do I even start? It’s only fair to start from the very beginning. The first time I ever met you was back in 2015, when you were part of Uma’s wider team. We didn’t get to interact a lot, but I remember your smile, the very-genuine-reaching-up-to-your-eyes kinda smile. There were the occasional hi-byes when we crossed paths during the day but don’t quite remember a lot of conversation happening. Cut to June 2022, I join back Barclays, but this time into your team. I didn’t know this until I started, and honestly you were the first best thing that happened to me at that time. I used to tell a lot of people that rejoining Barclays felt a lot like Homecoming, because of all the people, and you are definitely in the top of that list. Somehow the conversations right from the beginning felt very natural, as if some old friends reconnecting after a long gap. What with having a lot of things in common, like, sharing birth years, mat leaves (lol), kiddos sharing same birthday month...
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CMBT & My bus journeys

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Living in Neyveli, and having most of your extended family settled in Chennai, meant you’d be frequently travelling between Neyveli and Chennai. Since Neyveli didn’t have a proper railway station and the closest one was 2 hours away, our travel to Chennai has always been in buses. The buses usually took about 4.5-5hours to cover the 200km distance. Because we had one of our relatives in Tambaram, we usually got down there. Those were the days when the Mofussil buses used to go through the city, and I believe the bus stand was in Broadway, Parrys.  It was in 2002 (though I had stared at the granite containing the date of opening a zillion times, I couldn’t quite recollect this year and had to google it) that the bus terminus was shifted to Koyambedu, and named as CMBT - Chennai Mofussil Bus Terminus. It was humungous to say the least. The local MTC buses were given a good sizeable space in the front, with multiple shelters and behind them was the actual bus terminus with 6 broad pla...
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People - Food - Places

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Do you associate food with people and places? Not asking about eating in restaurants, but rather about food that’s served with love at home.  I’m an ardent lover of food, and appreciate deeply when someone cooks food for me. I have a notable few foods that always remind me of the place and the person who’d served it to me for the first time. Invariably, every time anyone talks about that food item, instantly that person and the memory springs up in my mind.  The first ever item on that list is Akki Roti. A Karnataka delicacy where they make rotis out of rice flour instead of wheat. Well, the first ever time I’d a bite of this was at my Mami’s (A) Amma’s house in Bangalore, probably when I was 10 or 12 years, maybe? We’d gone for a visit early noon, and in 10 minutes she cooks it up and serves it with some amazing home-made Nandini ghee. Gosh, the smell of the ghee, the crispness and the taste of the roti, even after all these years, still makes my mouth water. I still remember...
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Athi’s Alapparais

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Incident no.:1  I think invariably each one of us would have atleast on distinct memory of something we did / something that happened to us in our childhood, which we wouldn’t have forgotten even till now. It might be of bravery, forgery, happiness or sadness or anything. I think this incident, that happened to Athi, would probably go down into his memory as one for his bravery and calm!  So, this is what happened. My amma and Athi were playing with the bedroom door lock. Well, you can never guess the kind of things that’d excite a 5-year-old. It can be very random. This was one such thing. Apparently, he had just found out that the room can be locked from the outside using a key and can still be opened easily through the knob on the inside. No points for guessing who was inside and who was outside. Of course, Athi was in, and amma was out. As the boy was trying to understand this wow of an invention, he gets carried away and pushes another lock in the room, which is strictly ...
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🚂magaluru (Chikmagaluru)

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I have always gone on trips with friends from school / articleship / Ctc, but never with people from work. It started quite on a whim between me and a couple of colleagues, and before we knew it we had a group of 14 people readily agree to join. And thus went the first office trip, to Varkala in 2023. Like every other gang, after a couple of months since that trip we’ve been going around in circles trying to plan something similar once again - in an attempt to make it a yearly ritual. But as it always happens, the trip kept eluding us - time, budget, choice of places - each one of us wanted to do a different destination. The conversations kept happening now and then, but nothing materialised for 1.5 years. Finally, by the end of February 2025, about 6 of us sat together and finalised the dates and destination for the trip - the Good Friday long weekend - Chikmagaluru. As we opened up the option to rest of folks at work, we arrived at a total of 9 confirmed interests (8 of us from Chenn...
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How much does Happiness weigh?

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On an otherwise dull Friday evening, this impromptu question by a friend got me thinking for a while. Can happiness be measured? My mind immediately, without a second thought, came back with a "YES" and started making quick notes on what all makes me happy? How much of something makes me happy? So here goes the list - 1 medium French Fries (Because its always food first :D) An evening spent in Beach. An hour long phone call with a dear friend after ages. An all-nighter at home with my Girls Gumbal (Remember the night before R's Wedding) Solving (read, trying to solve) the Crossword Puzzle in Vaaramalar (its a weekly supplement of a Tamil Daily) First sprouts of the seeds sown Late night movie watching at home, during weekends Meeting up someone I know all of a sudden in a random place. Gosh! Every time I met someone like this, I would be beaming the whole day for no reason. A run along the 200ft road stretch! One night's peaceful sleep Sunrise! Cresce...
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My Stint with Baking

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Ever since Covid, and the whole baking saga all over the internet, I have been itching to try my hands at them. I have always been a fan of any sort of pastries / baked goods and seeing all the baking videos and pictures of cakes and biscuits, and what not, had me drooling. So, when our good old microwave oven broke down, I convinced the husband man that to get a convection oven to satisfy my baking thirst. Poor fellow fell for my words and tada, a convection oven comes home. Well, this was in 2020. But the moment the oven came, my interest waned off and I kept procrastinating baking. Had tried a banana cake and some sweet-bread once, both of which turned out very okay-ish , causing my interest vanishing off into thin air - poof! I decided that baking wasn’t going to be my cup of tea and stopped dreaming about baking my own cake.  Fast forward to 2025. As it always happens (is it only me?), I taste some biscuits baked my cousin, and suddenly all my interest (the one that I consider...
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