Aiyyo Shraddha - comedy show

I had seen her reels on YouTube, mostly of her funny takes on tech industry, on Indian middle class family and had seen some of her challenge posts only to have doubts about her stand up comedy ability. I was proved wrong by her on the Friday evening when she stood on the stage here in Austin and performed comedy for a good 2 hours without even taking a sip of water.

When Sandhya told me that Shraddha (Aiyyo Shraddha) is coming and I will book the tickets, I first said yes and expected the whole event not to last more than an hour and on the day of the event we got lined up with 3 other things for our about to graduate middle schooler. But as though it was divine intervention, one after another things fell apart and we were able to go as a family and enjoy one of the best 2 hours of our lives.

Her comedy was so clean and she intertwined all the way past to almost today present with such ease that it was remarkable and for someone like me who grew up in similar background it was totally relatable. More importantly our middle schooler had the best time too, I could hear her burst to laughter almost the whole time.

Listening to her, it was like time and space travel back to my hometown, her ability to intertwine multiple languages from Kannada, Hindi, Tamil, Marathi and possibly Tulu was mind boggling. As they say, for those 2 hours she owned the stage. The show started sharp on time, I was completely expecting the opposite and had to stand corrected again.

Only grief is that we should have had given her a better welcome meaning a bigger auditorium and may be one more show. I believe she is still touring and if you do get a chance, take my word and go see her in action live on stage. https://www.sominithings.com/

An Engineer by profession and that too E and C (same branch as me) only to blossom out as a world renowned comedian made me question my own view points, I used to hold the view that people should stick with the fields they studied in, maybe they can switch to management. I guess that view point came from the lack mindset coming from India in the 80s and 90s. Anyways that is a discussion for another day.

ps: Daughter had attended another comedy show with Zarna Garg and when asked her opinion, she chose Shraddha hands down.

Dynast in politics

 When I came to America, George W Bush as about to contest against the clinate man and people were calling it as Dynasty in politics. Coming from India (at that time it was the era of Sonia and our man Raga was still not in limelight), I was thinking how can it be a dynasty when son succeeds father, or wife wants to compete in same slot as husband (Clintons). For a dynasty to be called one it has to be multiple generations and not just 1.

Anyways, this post is not about that but about the fact that people in India are equating the same for Indian political landscape and suggesting the Congress control of the party is no different from regional parties where son or daughter tend to run for the office along or after their parents.

I used to share that view point and agree with the same but now that I think about it, our kids learn from what we do on a day to day basis. Example: talking with a friends son, he wanted to do work similar to his dad on some sort of hardware, doctors kids tend to become doctors and Lawyers become one and actors kids try their hand in acting and we all try our best to help our kids in their respective interests. Again example: actors working to launch their kids and Engineers trying to find internship for their kids in the company they are working in and so on.

I had written this draft a while ago and now concluding it, I think with other aspects of life like Engineering or Medicine or any such professional places the number of opportunities are technically unlimited unlike the political landscape where the expansion is almost impossible. 

Sometimes solutions are simple

 The other day I was the vet clinic to drop off our pup for a surgery and it was an early morning (by my standards) drop off and while I was in the line, behind me came a gigantic late model ford truck and since it was a rainy day everybody had headlights on.

This truck the lights were so powerful (maybe they had in high beam) and it was reflecting on the rear view mirror and hurting my eyes. I was almost tempted couple of times to walk out and ask them to turn light off but resisted as it was veterinary clinic and people show up for umpteen different reasons. Besides, I was supposed to leave from there in a couple of minutes.

After a few minutes of this "torture" to my eyes, I realized I could simply fold the mirror towards me and avoid the torture and that's what I did. Easy fix and I did stay there for a few minutes longer than I expected :). 

Democracy India and US

For the first time in my life I got to participate in the democratic process, aka voting. Yes I do regret I never got to vote in my home country. That said, now lets focus on some interesting aspects of democratic process, more importantly difference between the 2 great democracies USA (my adopted country) and India (home country). 

The big difference between the 2 countries that every one knows is that in one we vote for the president and the other we vote for the president directly and in other we vote for the member of parliaments, who then elect the prime minister. 

This much is known to all but the thing that caught me by surprise was the fact that in India, the elected PM and his party has the choice of cabinet members to work with but in USA the president gets to select his cabinet members but almost all other than his chief of staff has to go through senate hearing and need to be confirmed by the senate, albeit simple majority is probably sufficient. Another key difference is the number of cabinet positions are fixed from president to president unlike India where we expand and contract (mostly always expand) based on how many parties are huddled in the coalition.  

In short, the elected leader cannot appoint his own people to work with unless both the senate and house are in control of the president's party. 

If anyone had asked me about the elections in USA before 2020, I would have said 2 things. USA votes for president directly and it is determined by electoral votes and not popular votes, vote in 1 election cycle and I know all the nooks and crannies including what the term Gerrymandering mean :).   

Trace the river

Above pictures, taken from top of a peak in Garner State Park(GSP). Look closely and you can almost trace the path the river is taking flowing through Texas. Want a clue, look for the non green (more like reddish brown) trail in the pics. 

What amazed was that barring a few tens of yards around the river where there are Maples and Oaks tress rest of the area is mostly covered with pointy cedar trees or their relatives. 

The river is Frio river but some reason my old memory has it recorded as Dry Frio river. 

Symbolism in Hindu god depictions

If you are like me, you believe that all the representations of gods in Hinduism have deeper meanings than the mere image or idol they "represent". One such things that came over in the last few days are the images of goddess Lakshmi and Goddess Saraswathi. 

Lakshmi is the goddess of wealth and prosperity and Saraswathi is the goddess of knowledge and wisdom.  Observing the 2 images above carefully one can observe that goddess Lakshmi is standing

(balancing) on a lotus while goddess Saraswathi is happily seated on a rock in a forest.  

As they say everything is subjective to ones own interpretation, my interpretation is that our ancestors believed in non permanence of wealth while on the other hand believed knowledge is permanent. If I can take a step further, considering lotus (a flower) can barely carry any weight, it is easy to see that our ancestors also thought wealth is a fleeting imagination while knowledge can give rise to new life and is more permanent. 

Conclusion, as my dear Dad always said, "knowledge is power". 

ps: all of this was triggered from Navaratri 2020 :), yes a very auspicious time. 

 

Future Etsy shop owner

Other day it was about 10:00PM and Sandhya informed Avni that tomorrow morning there is a biking adventure planned for it is B's birthday and since it is biking it has to be fairly early in the morning. While Sandhya and me were thinking of what can we gift the birthday person and found an almost new unopened/unread book from our book shelf. Avni had a different idea of her own. 

She asked for an empty glass jar and got down some color papers and glue and within about 20-25 minutes she made this colorful pencil stand as a birthday gift.