Names and nicknames

The decision “to nickname or not to nickname” is certainly not something I would lose my sleep over. Yet, I decided to give it some serious thought when a wise, worldly and well-informed acquaintance of ours asked with concern, “Aren’t you going to have a nickname for Lil’ General?” That was the most natural thing to do, according to him. A name that is personal, known only to family and something creates a special bonding. Hypothetically, when LG is 50 and I’m nearing my 80s (I know, high hopes to live on until then), I wonder how calling him “chotu” would look like. Make him feel younger? Read more

What’s it like to live in Pune?

We’ve lived in Pune for over two years now; not decided to make it our home, at least not yet. I don’t love it; I don’t hate it. There’s something about the place that I can’t quite point my finger to that makes me oscillate between this love-hate thing.

Indian cities that way are quite different from the American ones, never been to Europe so I don’t know if they are stereotypical like their American counterparts. Every Indian town and city is diverse from the rest - in its culture, its people, language, cuisine, tolerance level for people from other states, festivals, real estate, mannerisms and communities. Every city will not have a Reliance Fresh or Spencer’s, though that’s changing now. Read more

The Lead India initiative is such a mockery

Lead India is a Times of India initiative. In their own words,

On August 15, we embarked on an ambitious journey — a unique talent search which has the potential to make a huge difference to India. We began a hunt to identify new leaders for a new India, men and women with the vision and ability to empower India with the kind of political leadership that is so conspicuous by its absence.

The Lead India campaign stemmed from our belief — and overwhelming reader feedback — that even as India takes giant strides towards fulfilling its undoubted potential, it is doing so despite, not because of, its political leadership. ‘‘Good people don’t want to join politics’’ is an oft-heard lament. And yet, good governance is the cornerstone if India is to overcome the many hurdles that threaten to slow its journey to developed nation status. Read more

Is The Times of India trying to be Playboy?

The Times of India - a daily Indian Newspaper in English with the largest circulation started a small colorful column on its last page a few months back. It’s called Graffiti. I have no idea why they run this column - more often than not, Posh Spice occupies the space here with cheesy news about their over-publicized lives.

Sometimes, I think it is one of the strategies of The Times to boost readership just as their city supplements do. I know of many people who read the Bangalore Times / Pune Times first and then if time permits, go on to read the main paper.

The point here is the Graffiti column I totally out of taste bordering on reporting news that can easily fit into the indecent category. Sample this one titled “Posh discloses all” if you don’t believe me. Of late, also giving Posh company is Lewis Hamilton who gets more attention in Times for his exploits than his races.

Lil General : You turn ONE today


Happy Birthday, LG. You turn ONE today.

For once, your mom is on time with her monthly milestone posts. This is a special edition - the yearly one.

First, the monthly updates; then, a recap of the year.

It’s Goodbye to fear of falling down and no signs of stranger anxiety yet.

We’ve given up on teaching him meaningful stuff like where is your nose, show me your mouth, say bye etc. I was very excited when “nose kaami” (read” show me your nose) was met with a aaaah aaaah from LG opening his mouth wide. Unlearning something is tougher than teaching kids something. It took 3 days to undo the nose-mouth connection. Read more

Another feather in the cap

Don’t ask me where I’ve been. We’ve got one piece of junk for a laptop that’s ready to be tossed into the dustbin any minute. Compounding to this problem is the now-on, now-off broadband connection from BSNL. By some stroke of good luck, if both these are functioning, then my Dear Son feels moms are meant to be playing with kids all day, so he plugs off my laptop. And, the boys have been taking turns in falling sick for the past ten days - it’s tissues, salt water gargling, sneezing and getting high with cough syrups time. That should explain my blogging absence.

Anyways, so I got back from the dark ages today and was casually checking Little India. Guess what? My article Raising Your Multilingual Child has been published. Those of you who know me, if you are wondering if it wasn’t soon enough for us to have a daughter after Lil’ General, don’t worry, it is only one for now - I have my hands full with Lil’ General. Ananya was the name I had chosen if we had a daughter, hence its usage in the article.

My experience with getting published in The Times of India

If you are here looking for information on how to get published in The Times of India, then you are in for a disappointment. I’ve spent every waking second trying to get information on how to make an edit page submission to The Times.

Alright, here’s the deal. I am very new to this writing game and I am not familiar with the unwritten rules; so I play by the book and deal in black and white. Now, you know how it works in India; until you’ve tried a zillion times for anything, success is not guaranteed.

I’ve had success in getting my work published to wherever I’ve sent so far. So, why The Times now, you might ask? Every evening when my husband returns from work, he looks at my distraught face knowing what I’ve been up to and asks, “Again? today, too? Why? Why just The Times? There is Mint, DNA, Hindustan Times, The Hindu, Deccan Chronicle and rattles the list.” I sigh; if you have to ask you wouldn’t understand. Call it my obsession or whatever you want. My morning starts with this paper everyday; it has been that way for the past 7 years of my life which makes it difficult to just turn away and give up in a day. Getting a work published in the edit section of Times of India is my dream, even if it’s just for once. I know what you’re thinking - very ambitious indeed for a person who started writing just a few months back. So what, I’ve had no rejections so far. I have a piece ready to be submitted to Times and my gut says, it wouldn’t get rejected. I’ve closely observed and analysed every single column submitted in the past five months and I feel I am ready to try it. Read more

Why ICICI Direct is not a good idea for Intra-day or Margin Trading?


In the life of a trader, there are only two types of days - great and worse; there’s nothing in between that can qualify for being a mediocre one. I just experienced something worse than a worse day - totally down in the dumps; thanks to ICICI Direct for making my life so miserable. Interestingly, ICICI Direct was awarded the Most Preferred Financial Advisory Service in the CNBC Awaaz Consumer Awards 2007; this going to a brokerage firm that sucks in margin calls.

Anyways, the latest episode with ICICI Direct is that during peak trading hours, the site is exceptionally slow which means you have to go through the process of placing an order to confirming the same a number of times before getting it done by when the price has changed and it makes no sense at all. This is still OK. But what happened today cannot just be forgiven. The damn site was down for a good 9 hours starting from 14:00 hrs. Just when I placed a margin order and before I could convert it to delivery the site went down. Calls to their customer service resulted in an automated message - “Due to an unexceptionally high number of calls queued, we’ll not be able to connect you. Please try again later.” It was obvious; there were hundred others trying to square off their positions profitably.

I was relaxed later that evening to know that my position would have got squared off automatically at a higher price, but that was not meant to be. The jokers at ICICI took the least price when the stock was falling momentarily and squared off resulting in a huge loss. The stock in question was MRPL. Their customer care representatives were kind enough to tell me that they were working hard on improving the site and that I should have read the Terms and Conditions carefully while signing up for the demat account which apparently states that they are not liable for damages caused by technical fault. What a nice way of covering your asses!

So, my advice is if you are contemplating of opening a e-brokerage account, then go in for something else.

LG is one month shy of turning into a 1 year old


The Seniol proudly says Lil’ General is growing like a weed; I prefer to say he is growing every day, every minute in to a handsome lil’ one just the way babies are supposed to. Gosh! Can you believe in a month he will be a one year old. And then, I wouldn’t have to count his age in terms of weeks and months..I can just say in terms of years like we grown up adults, and make him feel like one too. Seems like yesterday when I started writing about all the weird stuff that was happening inside me; those temper tantrums in the first trimester; an indulging second trimester with all the announcement “we-are-pregnant” and a nausea accentuating the weight factor in the third semester. It is all over and the product is right in front of our eyes growing everyday with the growth actually visible; it is not like those unreal moments when our parents meet us after a few months gap when we are 30 and still comment, “Oh! you have lost so much weight; the face is not shining, are you not taking good care?” while the weight machine says another story. Read more

Adsense : My first check from Google

It was an anxious moment where every cent was counted and every click contributed to breach that first milestone. My first check from Google gets dispatched next month; it happened faster than I thought ..I first signed up for Google Adsense three years back and then deactivated it within three months, for no apparent reason. Just didn’t see money coming in ever and it was such a waste of time to log in and see if there were any clicks at all. And, then it all changed this May with traffic increasing on both mt sites - this one and LG Rules. So, I decided to activate it again and see if it meant anything. It did; it took close to five months to reach that first milestone.
The last few dollars took for ever, some days going by without any click despite the reasonable traffic and I was on an edge wondering if it had something to do with the design of my template. Most of my visitors come through Search Engines, very few being regular readers. If you are wondering if any of those tips to make quick bucks and increase adsense revenue helped, then the answer is not really. All of them say the same thing; write everyday - choose your words right, pay attention to SEO; blend your template; just worded differently. You just got to experiment until you figure out what works best and give it time.

To my regular readers : Thank You!

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