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Today is Kabir’s 13th birthday. He believes it to be an important milestone as now he starts his tryst with teenage years. I’m more concerned than ever because already for 2 years he’s been exerting his right to keep long hair, walk with a swagger, speak with a heavier voice and more. All that tells me that parenting him over the teenage years is going to get more engaging than ever!

In the last couple of years, Kabir has made us greeting cards with simple drawings but with special, topical poems. I plan to type them up one of these days so I don’t lose any of them… Meanwhile, here is a quick attempt by Kishore at presenting one of our typical scenarios poetically and a customised virtual cake from me in celebration of this important day.

Kabir a young lad of thirteen
Wanted all day to watch a screen
The TV, the PS, the gameboy to fill his head
Till Mom’n Dad said, now off you go to bed
But he stayed back and made a scene

Enjoy your 13th Birthday, Dearest Kabir, and have a super year ahead…love, Mamma & Papa

There is much being said about how as an employee, you could add value to your job by doing some more and making your inputs more tangible. In a way, I’m glad that the economic slowdown is reducing complacency among people, encouraging them to appreciate what they have and pushing them to frequently assess their output. I used to come across many high earners who’d it easy just by the virtue of their long tenure. On the other hand, I’ve always met many for whom striking a work-life balance has remained a concept discussed in office retreats as they have always put in 12+ hours of work per day, worked 6 days a week and in the present times are returning home only when exhaustion doesn’t allow them any more wakefulness.

So, is it justified to ‘live it up’ at work because one is mostly at work? Is it alright to make one’s social phone calls from work or, these days, complete one’s social obligations by constantly checking and responding to the goings on in their friends’ lives on Facebook or IM? Or, for that matter, intersperse one’s work day with regular reads of RSS feeds?

I don’t think so.

I believe that a work place is for making your contribution towards your organisation’s business and productivity, and reading for self-development or relaxation is best kept for hours when you ought to be relaxing. With myriad avenues for social networking through the Net, there is a higher need for us to exercise self-regulation rather than have the HR and IT devote their resources into analysing employee usage of IM or entertainment sites from work. I also believe that regular self-development is essential and employees must be encouraged to leave their work place early enough to read, blog, tweet and generally do what they must to refuel for the next day. And, if employees find their supervisor’s watching over (MBWA) demeaning, they must exercise self-regulation and, while at work, use social networking to advance their company’s interests.

Here’s some more from Steve Tobak and his commenters on the subject.

My first post on Goa from Goa…

I’ve been here a week and despite the heat and humidity, it hasn’t been as bad as Gurgaon. Only one of the last 7 days, a storm took away electricity one night and returned it only around 10 in the morning. It’s otherwise gone for just 10-15 minutes in a day. Airconditioning has been effective day or night, and sitting by the sea in the evenings has been heavenly. Even under the fan with doors and windows open, and music flowing in the background, it’s been peaceful. Have to say that Rod Stewart or Shankar Mahadevan in the background has helped more than the sea breeze in accepting other irritants with openness. So, it’s great that Kishore thought of arranging speakers as soon as we got here!

Another contributory factor to an elevated mood has been my Chotu’s keyboard under my fingers. There is a regular scuffle with Kishore for the only Netcard he is carrying as Airtel’s GPRS has been helpful only in checking IPL scores or our location on the roads using Googlemaps. Browsing has been ineffective using the Netcard but emailing has been possible. Not too bad if I can keep in touch with my mailing list feeds and manage some reading. Smoothens out some rough experiences.

On each of our visits since last July, Kishore and I’ve attempted to make our place here some more habitable. This time’s efforts have included arranging a set of speakers, some more small Kitchen implements, some colour to cover the bare walls and a cupboard+dining table. The last two came from our earlier tested and proven sources – CMM and Fabindia respectively. Both have been such efficient setups to interact with.

Then, I must record my confusion on figuring the locals and other temporary residents of Goa — if I’ve admired the interest and time given by Max (@ Ferriera Leathers) in helping know the lanes of Goa or Kishore’s LUG friends in meeting up over beer, I’ve been so disappointed to encounter the stoic attitude of many other locals. They connect briefly and superficially. They oblige with directions and some leads with guarded smiles and hasten to disconnect. I wonder if they’ve had an overdose of outsiders. But then I find them gushing reverence to foreigners. And suspiciously sizing up fellow brown skinners. I’d wondered if this was only with the Christian population of Goa as they found the Indian Hindu ways alien or beneath them. I find though that even the local Hindus aren’t happy seeing other Indians partaking Goa’s beauty. Interestingly, even long-standing foreigner residents have a smug demeanour about them where I’d thought that they’d willingly mix up, having been through travails of life away from home. But No. It’s a kind of take it or leave it aloofness among ranges of residents. Service providers too connect over assignments and then switch off. I find a little more connectedness among people in Gurgaon or Delhi. And, this is surprising because most non-Delhites lament an unfriendly Delhite.

I suppose I’ll just have to adapt to this confusion because of Goa’s inherent loveliness–its greenery, flowers, birds, waves, laterite architecture, white churches, field-hugging roads, food and more…

I’d dreaded this time’s election not only thinking of its mismanagement in Gurgaon but also because in the weeks leading up to it, suddenly we had electricity almost all our days and nights. As a result, we acquired the bad habit of being in a cool house and seeing our appliances work at all times.

Now that the election is over, electricity outages are experienced every day but admittedly, for now they have not been too long. Last night, the power returned in just 30 min and during the day, each time it’s returned within 2 hours. Having been a New Gurgaon resident for some years, I’ve seen much worse.

I’m all for conserving power by willingly observing Earth Hours and organising my life around a known outage schedule — after all, I’m an Indian and used to a tough life! My complaint is really about a missing government office to announce an outage schedule and answer enquiries about long breakdowns.

May just happen when there is a clearer division of authority and accountability between HUDA, GMC and DHBVN…

The hour I spent at the Chiranjiv Bharti School in Sushant Lok, Gurgaon earlier today washed away any feelings of patriotism or civic sense that I’d summoned to cast my vote. The 3 stalls outside the school building were full of anxious people crowding around 2 officials posted at each stall. It took me some harried enquiries and jostling to find out that despite my Election Card, I needed to ensure that my name was indeed present on one of the 4 printed lists for Gurgaon residents. That list was also going to indicate the room number I’d have to wait outside to exercise my candidate choice.

After some pleas and grovelling, I was able to scan 2 lists full of b/w thumbnails of voter photos but didn’t find the 2 faces that mattered to me. To add to the frustration, they were randomly arranged so I was supposed to spot my entry from a poor print of Kishore or my face on one of the several pages – well, I didn’t find any photos resembling us.

Having been enthused by Tata Tea’s Jago Re campaigns, I wasn’t going to give up easily. I decided to merge in the crowd pleading 2 RWA volunteers in one of the 3 stalls to scan all 4 lists on a CD with voter ids. It seemed thoughtful of the volunteers to have arranged a cd with a laptop to do this good deed for their fellow Indians. But they seemed troubled, tired, dehydrated and at the end of their tether of patience. People were screaming out their names and addresses for checking, brandishing their Election cards and trying to pull off any print-outs they found in each other’s hand. In a way, it was amazing to see their determination to cast their vote. But this confusion only added to the woes of the volunteers who were grappling with multiple lists even on the CD to look for a single name! They’d keep telling people to go back home or go inside the school building and complain to officials rather than waste their time.

After exercising a mix of cajoling and patient waiting, when my card finally appeared in the volunteer’s hand, in my mind, I re-visited the problem of who to vote for. None of the election candidates had carried out any noticeable campaigns in New Gurgaon and, judging from the state of the city’s infrastructure, the performance of the elected candidate in the previous years had been appalling. Well, I thought that I should still do my bit to ensure that at least the roads getting paved don’t languish and the Metro actually arrives here in 2010. It seemed though that destiny had other plans and neither Kishore’s nor my name could be found by the volunteers. This is when we’d cast our vote in the previous elections from the same location, using the same Election cards!

We decided to try our luck at the last point of checking – inside the school building where 2 officers were armed with 4 lists of alphabetically arranged names. Here, we could only get to 3 lists but not our names. Then, coming back home to share this experience and scanning the Net for officers to register our protest with, seemed to be the only recourse…

It was so clear that the contestants had not only no interest in our vote, they had put in ’systems’ in place to ensure that they got minimum votes so their comfortable positions weren’t affected.

Ever since we’ve owned a small patch of green and been gardening, we’ve acquired some scattered knowledge of the varieties of flowers and grass that can grow in the trying soil and weather conditions of Gurgaon. Most of that knowledge has been initiated by the local maalis (gardeners) or nursaries (plant shops) and we’ve accepted all of it with gratitude. On researching at leisure, we’ve learnt some more and found really amusing parallels between the actual English names of flowers and those adopted by maalis.

To let you in on these funny revelations: A popular creeper that grows well in this region and referred to as Floro dom dom is actually a variety of Rhododendron; a hardy low height flowering plant that brings a huge respite from the summer heat is known among maalis as Photo Ilaaka and we figured its name as Portulaca; a winter flower labelled as Sukh Belium is actually Sweet William and a fragarant white cluster of Gaindi Taup is intended to be Candy Tuft !

Aren’t the invented names really innovative and funny?

An excellent online resource that has unravelled these mystery flowers to us is Flowers of India. Its interface may seem uninspiring but its database and search options are aweinspiring.

And, here’s our list of maalispeak that I’d love to have your contributions to:

Maalispeak – Common Names

Burbeena – Verbena
Gaindi Taup – Candy Tuft
Floro dom dom – Rhododendron
Photo Ilaaka – Portulaca
Punchutia – Poinsettia
Sukhbelium – Sweet William

Despite being a Net user for over a decade, my experience with Net shopping is still at its nascency. I’m glad to report though that I’m slowly and steadily warming up to the idea.

About four years ago, when I managed to successfully pay for a set of Tintin comics on Indiatimes, and saw them getting delivered well wrapped, my faith in man-created mechanisms increased manifold. I made a few more book purchases through the site but after several unsuccessful searches, I felt compelled to revert to my trusted Oxford bookstore in Qutab Plaza or Midland in the Shopping Mall in Gurgaon.

Then, about a year ago, I got conned into paying India Today for a set of Britannica cds that was supposedly bundled with a free kit-bag. More than a year and several reminders later, I haven’t got either. What I did get in abundance were their colourful paper catalogues that attempted to entice me to lose more and more of my money to them, but the company didn’t realise that they had lost a kind-hearted customer for good! Now they spam my mobile relentlessly and earn my wrath even more, and I’m so upset with the brand itself that I don’t consider it deserving of any more business from me.

More recently though my trust in online shopping skyrocketed when I managed to procure a good brand of 4GB MP3 player from Ebay. At a little over Rs2400, the gadget was priced very competitively, and using a discount coupon from one of their mailers, I couldn’t believe my luck for getting it for some Rs1800 or thereabouts. This well-packed hardware arrived a few days later and worked smoothly. Since then, Ebay’s regular mailers have uplifted my spirits further and I’m sure glad they’re around despite several online businesses having disappeared. They will continue to find me as their faithful customer provided the same service continues.

And yesterday, while browsing one of the blogs at MINT, I was happy to know of more options for buying books. The one that appears to top that list is flipkart. On a test of their collection, searching for books by a photographer author that Kishore thinks highly of — Bryan Peterson, I saw at least 10 titles whereas other sites showed only a couple. Shipping was said to be free for orders above Rs100 and the time required for most books was 18-20 days — but also 2-3 months in some cases. I know that’s long but at least one can now sit tight and get these books delivered at home instead of making a trip to Singapore or the U.S to buy them.

Aren’t we glad to be living in times when we can experience the technology (and trade) affecting our lives so positively?

Last evening Anjuli-Sandy introduced Kishore and me to the newly opened Tibetan Kitchen in Gurgaon – a small eatery that goes way beyond momos and includes many impressive words on its menu such as Lowa Khatsa, Gyuma, Lamain, Phingsha, Thenthuk and more. For now, even though these are just exotic words to me, I hope to make many more visits there to translate them into great tasting food.

Currently, the eatery serves various kinds of momos – Rhe-chotse being those served in soup and Khothey are steamed and only slightly seared on an oil-smeared pan on one side for that extra bit of crunchy taste, and there are the regular steamed or fried sorts. I’ve listed out some of their other items above but two that I got to taste were Sha Phaley — a large gujia shaped, fried pastry with a stuffing of mince meat (or chopped onions in Anjuli’s case), and Sha Shingbee – a stir-fry of mutton slices teamed up with crisp green beans. We ate this second dish with the steamed Tibetan bread Tingmo – which was quite impressive in its shape and size – shaped like a cinnamon roll and higher in height, one of these breads would be enough for two people with my kind of appetite.

Tibetan Kitchen is owned by Namgyal Wangchuk and managed by Tanveer Azam, and together they plan to add several Ladakhi dishes and a couple more special Tibetan dishes to their menu in another month. Already, there are many Chinese items on the menu too. The kitchen area is run by a band of boys from the hills so the food churned out is pretty authentic – none of that red tomato puree in their dishes but great smelling ground spices and crunchy vegetables. They have priced the items reasonably making it possible to check out their food every other week.

The eatery is located on the main Sector Road ahead of Gold Souk, appearing on the left side of the road and placed next to a dhaba labelled as Zaffran. During our late evening visit, the restaurant was quiet, clean and with ample parking space in front of it. For once, we found the place willing to deliver food in our area but as Tanveer said, food delivered home tastes different. Kishore, Kabir and I will therefore head there frequently to check out their other dishes with Tingmo.

Their numbers for other foodies in Gurgaon :  09213021900 and 09810626649.

Over the years, I’ve found that I like the sound of some Urdu words and even without working too hard, I understand many because they are used in Sindhi—my mother tongue. Some common ones that quickly come to mind are lafz, khabar, vaqt, tang, haalaat etc. However, there are many words used in gazals that elude me altogether and some feel way too critical to ignore. This is when I’m not a great gazal lover, and have even less patience for those sung as odes to alcohol or drinking. But there are some with such beautiful lyrics and sung so sensitively that they demand a salaam.

After listening to one such gazal today on Worldspace, I felt like a couple more rounds of it so found it on Youtube. On the right of the video was reference to a site called Ek fankaar that I decided to check out and found to be quite a nice place.

It encourages learning of Urdu through gazals and hindi songs by including videos followed by lyrics of those songs and then their explanation in English.

Thanks to those translations, now I understand some of my favourite gazals better.

As a treat, I’d like you to listen to two of those :

http://ekfankaar.wordpress.com/2007/07/03/ranjish-hi-sahi/

http://ekfankaar.wordpress.com/2007/07/22/aaj-jaane-ki-zid-na-karo/