safe life

I feel like I havent really seen life at all, I feel like I was in school before, now I feel like I am a graduate or a post graduate student, I know more, but I hardly am in it. I feel like I am leading this safe life and watching from the galleries and how ever much I grow up, it is going to be like this for me and for many of the people from my class, middle class Indians... we are not really into the ups and downs of life... most of the kannadiga middle class especially. We are making safe choices and leading a very safe life, our parents have given us a good education and enviromnet at home we study well and get a safe job and then we have a safe marriage and then we follow the same routine for our children, one or two misadventures do happen away from the normal path but not enough to screw up or change our life. We sometimes go and paddle our feet in life at times...- ok thats me, ( this doesnot apply to most of my class, they wont even do that much) but then retract and go back from life into our ... cages? or safely??
Why am I feeling this? I am reading this novel and I am so not relating to what is happening there... how many people get into real trouble by getting pregnant. its sucha bigggg bigg issue for people. even in revolutionary road.. its like some huge rock is put on your head at times.. and at other times people are estatic! Cant relate! Couldnt relate!

If I look back on my life... I dont feel like this... things have come and gone. When I am in the thick of things I do feel like I am involved, but at the end of it, I am kind of a detached soul amnt I? Why dont I swim in the river of life? why am I not in it ... I am not wet :D I mean I am not involved in life! I love my life now.. I love reading, I love finding out these things,, after the vacation I feel I have learnt how to live... I have found loads of things I really really love, I love my pets... but its all nice but when I see it -I mean when I see others lives I feel ( Its not about Drama!! boy !!! there is drama in my life or what!! ) I feel I am living a very protected life... who is protecting it? me? from very young age.. the people we meet.. all except one( not mentioning here :-) ) have been really nice people... why? how? are we too choosy in meeting people and going out and living...I not complaining about my life... there is this ... feeling its not really fear ... that I am living in a protected environment and not in the wild... you know.. like I am probably a zoo animal living in the comfort of a real nice zoo probably made by me... and there is wild out there which I dono of... AND I am definitely not complaining... I DONT WANT TO GO INTO THE WILD. I just want to look at the wild... read about the wild.. like I am reading now....I wonder if there is a wild and if I am in a zooo and who made the zoo. .. Actually I just hope I will be in the zoo till the end of life I am scared I dono anything about the wild I dont want to go there.. I am not sure it exists even... may be this is the wild but I know how to live in it? this is the wild that I have created and it is good? ?? :) I donoo..
Actually u know what I want to do, I totally dont want that wild to exist I want to live in the zooo and persue my hobbies.. and carry on with my life... I am just scared... its the same feeling that I wrote about in the other blog about to be or not to be.... same thing..
feeling of naivity ....I am stil naive and I am always going to be???? should I really bother to go and find out about not naive?

3/20/09 - 9:49AM

embarrassing moments part 2

When u are waiting for someone and have nothing else to do, twiddle ur thumbs, Dont roam around and push open door! cause they may be emergency exits and they will start singing like the fat lady from the Opera! :P :-$

news paper se..

Prince group - a group of laborers from Orissa, two of them have polio won a talent show India's got talent. They are just too too good, they are just wonderful. It is so unbelievable and touching :,-( You have to see it to believe it, I never even realized two of them couldn't walk untill I saw the video again on youtube. Some daily wagers from a small town have so much talent!! and they are struggling for their daily bread and still found time to dance ! wow! . God bless them!

BJP is in Chaos, They are clueless. They are lost and they have gone to dogs!! I am really saddened at the state of things. BJP was the middle class hindu party. They were our hope. Yeah they were too right wing and anti Muslim, I am leaning left. but I thought they would evolve into a progressive party. I loved their patriotism,Aggression. Good relation with Israel, Roads.. Nuclear test... I want that BJP back! the Vajpayee wali BJP :-(

Sach ka samana, Reality show where everyone is telling the truth. Dirty linen. Lot of debate on it, is it ethical, What kind of cheapness is this, This is Vulgar etc..

I think it is quite cool, All of us holier than tho ppl.. we need to know what the world is like... it is a reflection on ourselves actually. if we look a lil deeper inside us, we will find the same old much that is comin out in sach ka samana. If we only dare speak truth to ourselves.. Boss time to have a relook at this bloody hipocratical soceity and admit to ourselves.. yeah we are like this only, we are not gods we are human and we are .. exactly like the people on sach ka samana.. time to pull out all those dirty stinking veils under which we hide the baser feelings. you can get over them only once you admit them. no?

I would like one experiment, Ask the same questions anonymously to 1000's of ppl with lie detector offcourse and publish the results... they will show the true face of humanity. and I dont judge that face.. It only shows the rules and the morals and the so called standards we have .. they are all fake . that s all it shows, It doesnot show anything bad about ppl/human as such... we just programed ourselves to value wrong thigns.. western ppl Money and materials and easters false values and morals.

Raw nerve

I get upset at times, I get upset on comparision. from childhood. I used to get really wild when my aunts and uncles used to compare me with my cousins. why dont u grow ur hair long!! aah, how I hated it. What is their bloody problem. what for them. why dont they just mind their business and I will do what I want to do. dress as I please.

Wear a saree!!! X@W#$@$@!! Christ! or do some make up or wear jewellery. Especilay annoyed when my mom compares me to my sis in law. Why dont u dress up a lil. see ur sis in law, she is always wearing bright clothes. not annoyed when my mom-inlaw talks about my other sis in law;s buying 10k worht saree etc. because there is no comparision there I guess.

I'd built myself into a rebel, if I conform I used to feel miserable with myself. :-)

Why is it such a sensitive issue with me? why does "why dont u be like X" create such a strong emotional response in me. it brings out the "I am me. I am like this only" complex out very strongly. I dono why I am so stuck up with " I am like this only, I come with + and - . u need to take me just as I am. if u dont like it , then u can take a hike" complex. I am really really stuck up on this. Is this what u can call Individuality or identity .

I used to be really stuck up and proud of it, but now I am begining to think, there is chink in the armour. or rather I think I have an unnecessary armour.

Why this raw nerve. why do I so strongly say I dont care... It only means I actually do care, no? a lot actually. Most of the time things that affect you most are the ones you think are wrong with you. If someone called me blind- say because I wear specs, It does not affect me. If I felt bad about wearing specs then I would have minded. Same with being fat, I dont really think i am fat and these comments are clearly jokes. If someone made fun of my job for example... I think i would mind ...

The things mentioned above short hair etc.. I definitely dont think are wrong with me! but something must be there. if I take the logic further if I thought I was better than others, all these small things wouldnt affect me. may be in my mind I dont really feel so great about myself? and feel others are better? May be I dont feel i have the right to be as I want to be. specially I think I seek approval especially from people who are close to me, and I hate to admit it and act according to it. So anything that points to this, khatak ta hai??? May be..

Sight

Today I noticed that If I focus on somethin outside the window and shake my head ( if you are wondering why I did something like this, I was looking out of the window and walking on the treadmill) the view outside seems to shakes with my head , the window grill remains still. Even if I foucs on the window grill or on anything this side of the grill, it doesnot seem to shake with my movement. but the view outside still does!!!

tried it one step further, what I see inside the mirror shakes!!!

is it the glass that is making it shake? refraction or whatever!?!!?!?! I dono the science behind this one. Anyone help?

Is this same as the view when u go by train, the trees and the fields run paast u in oppostie direction but the moon and sun, they travel with u in the same direction?? In this case there is some logic, the speed with which the view moves in the opposite direction is proportional to its closeness to the train. closest stuff moves away fastet, fields and hills seem to ravel with you for some time and then slowly fall behind and the moon..u know it.

During meditation and energy rising exercises I found lot of Qi or prana collect near my stomach. I was scared and discontinue the practice.Thanks to the communities on the internet, it was suggested that I try this to distribute the Qi more evenly. It is supposed to be a good thing to be able to feel the Qi.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Qigong

I want to try this. It is surprising that it become such a phenomenon in china and china govt actually banned it!!

Time

Theory of relativity "The faster u move, slower the time moves" seems very attractive concept at first glance. How many times have I wished for time to slow down. But when I think about it further... For example, I board enterprise the Star Trek space ship Brian Green likes so much, I take a nap for 8 hours. I come back and earth has moved on some million years!!!! :-S Thats not what I want do I?

I want the exact opposite!!!! I board my machine, I sleep for 8 hours. Make that 18. I come back and not even 10 minutes have passed here on earth. THAT! That is what I want. Would be lovely wouldn't it??

Or would it? In this scenario- I age faster than everyone else!!!!!! Damn! If I take a break of 2 years and I come back Ill be sporting wrinkles while my frineds and everyone else will have fresh tomato cheeks! Hmm!! would I trade wrinkles for 8 hour extra sleep? hmmm....Damn!

That apart, How exactly do I make this happen? How can I speed up time for me alone???

There is one place tho, where time moves faster for me - Dreams! If I take a 10 minute nap and dream that I slept for 8 hours :-D and remember that dream. That would be the solution to my problem?

ps: No, I am not sleep deprived. I just hate that the 2 day weekend has slipped away like mercury and I am stuck with Monday morning. feeling like I have loads of backlog :(

food

How much food do u actually need to survive? Sometimes I wonder if anything at all we believe in is true. I learnt that I need like quarter of the food I eat normally,not just survive but to be much much healthy and energetic. JNI Diet was 6 glasses of juices , 4 bowls of soup and after this u need very little else - 2 chapatis for the afternoon and papaya and watermelon at night. First 2 days u fall sick get a headache feel cravings and then u get used to it. and feel much more active than before.

I tried ramzan last year, no water and food from dawn to dusk. It was not as hard as it seems. It was not the hunger that was most difficult to deal with, but the habit. the routine. Coffee time, Lunch time, I was so restless, confused about what to do.

I realise food means so much more to me, much more than fillign stomach and satisfying hunger. its not just about taste buds either . It provides comfort, feeling of safely? especially our staple food. we are so much emotionally in touch with food, many of emotional needs are met with food. Curd rice makes you feel at home? feeling lonely - how about a big bar of dark chocolate. and bhajji with rain? u want to be hungry for that?. Curd rice or moolangi dal is not the tastiest stuff I ve eaten. but if I go for 15 days without south indian food start feeling cranky. childhood food does it connect u with ur mum?!? thats why no chapati but rice for me?

They say there is a built in mechanism in our body which prompts us to stock up on fat and carbs, especially true for Indians as our ancestors went through lot of drought and rough weather. my ancestors seem to have been particularly badly hit :P

All this I think this is true only for foodies tho, skinny ppl are skinny cause they are not emotionally connected to the food eh?

Mystic babe 's back...

Reading about String theory and stuff. Cant help but double check the cover of the book, Is it science or philosophy! it is exactly like reading one of those mystic books. hidden dimensions, vibrations, dense particles and mass less particles ( subtle particles in mysticism) . Ours is but just another universe among millions. Cyclic notion of creation and destruction. time is an illusion.! past present future exists now.. notion of Bramha's year being equal to trillions of earth years.

Come on! If u cant see the similarities then u are being a Dogmatic scientist. Dog-sci is one who gives vague pseudo scientistific may be explanations to things which science cant exlpain today. for eg Prana: I can feel it, you can feel it. But if you are Dog sci u will say it may be static charge, say it may be pyscological. you jsut deny anything to accept or see anything beyong the narrow domain of today's science. This can happen to anyone, Einstein didnt accept Quantum Theory! Till his death.... hmm may be we humans are conditioned this way. Openess doesnot come easy for most. I am in this category most of the time too, I am all too ready to paint everything with a broad brush of superstition. If not for the pranic healing experience I was one of the worst dog sci's in the world I think.

Coming back to string theory - I think, Mysticism is the theory of the universe told by ancient people which has gotten lost in myth and lore now.

I am waiting for day when scientst will discover the prana particle which is more subtle than the gravity particle and the consciousness particle which can control the prana particle. I will go ahead even with my limited knowledge and say these particles are closed string particles as they can travel across dimension! just like gravitrons.?.

We dont need machines to feel these particles, Our body and brain are the machines to control these particles. only tuning is required :)?!

I have this book Tao of physics, written by a scientist who was into Buddhism. Seems like an interesting read. If only I can get a bigger break from the Samsara :-D Ill finish that one..

That sachin no...

It's what we call "that Sachin no" syndrome. when I trip my shoe is stupid, when I go late to the bill counter, the counter ladies are the idiots... too slow.

We were at Chandan's place one weekend. Joy boy comes home all flustered, one look at him. He starts shouting, "its Sachins fault, he only told me. I didnt do anything"

"ok what did u do"

"I didnt do anything, that Sachin no! he only did everything.. "

After a few exchanges of WHAT DID U DO!!!!, and SACHIN'S FAULT. SACHIN ONLY TOLD ME TO DO. SACHIN IS BAD GUY. I was really curious to know what he did do this time around :-)

Shubha was so worried by this time, She ran down only to find the security fellow at the door complaining about broken tube-light and naughty boys throwing stones at all the tube lights in the society and joy was already in his guilty corner by now :-D :-D

Some lesson in life that was, Now... No matter what happens , we know whom to blame... that ubiquitous Sachin :)

Ondonde..

..muchita maatu. Sakkat hot maga only, I am crazy about Sandalwood songs now. Jangli shivlingu and haale patre and everything. Blew me away. Thanks to Hindi FM, which sucks. I was forced to check whats on Kannada channels and surprise! surprise! Ondondee... Nadedaduva kamanabillu.... kaddalu mansaanna....Super!! it was top 8 at 8 dance numbers!! Awesome or what! :-)

Jinke mari na and ninidale - yella kelidde but hucchu hidirililla , Yelladdakku time barbekittu ansatte! :-) Mother tongue songs andre vanthara special ansatte alva, yeshte hadu kelidru hale kannada hadashtu romatic yavudu ansodilla. Uk nalli naavu 2-3 dina full one after other kannada songs hadkonde idvi. naanu parvagilla, sumaaru haale hadu gottu nangu. Nan ammage gotilla! For that matter, nan mother tongue konkani alva but still kannada language keldire onthara preeti, delhi li yeladru kannada kelsidre yeshut khushi agatte, but Konkani kelidre ashtakaste. actually maneyorna bittu bere yar hatranu konkani matadakke aagode illa. anyway Ee kannada craze is not very good news for marital life I must say :-) pateince runs thin at my home and bombardment of kannada numbers not helping, but Annavaru heliddare- yaare kugadali Hure horadali.. ;-)

Chintu died :-( Poor soul. Having pets is such a heart break. :-( In all his short life of 2 months, hes lived just one fun week, With coco. He was coco's tail,follower, chamcha :-) and then he even started learning things from the cat, climbing out of the house through the window! Clever lil fellow observed everything keenly and learnt. Id thought he had made it when he was with coco. :-( Guess he was damaged more than we cud guess or even the doctor cud guess. He never got over the dysentery, I think his liver was gone. He smelt like it towards the end. God bless him, Hope he gets a better life next time around :(

Pranic Healing

I did pranic healing for dear Chintu, my mums pup. and it worked. I am happy I was able to give at-least some comfort to that troubled soul. I am sad that I couldn't do pranic healing again. It is very strenuous, I couldn't muster up enough will power to do it twice a day. requires a lot of concentration and so strained me , I am a bit guilty about that.

Lot of -ve energy in that poor thing, my left hand tingled for almost half hour after trying to heal him, Hes been suffering all 3 months since he is born. :( Its really sad. He was really happy and active when he was hear, he'd learnt to get out of the house through the window by observing the cat! Sneaky lil thing :D . Sweaty pie, hope he gets well soon.

I am encouraged to take up Pranic healing further, next month Ill take up the advanced healing course. I can provide relief to people, I should. It is really handy with pets and children. It is effective, minor grouse is that they have courses one course which has $$ in the name! SO NOT SPRITUAL :) but Ive these things are helpful , so Im keeping all these misgivings aside and joinin that course :)

Death

Death!! how we fear death! the all time fav boon of all demons is "I want to conquer death!" BTW demons etc came into picture cause of this nice blog "http://ammastales.com/", Mythological stories, just like how Dr Bappa would have told us. Talking of Dr Bappa, His death I think affected me most on the whole, I took upon myself some kind of guilt that I didnt do anything for him, more specifically I didnt get anything for him from my first salary and he just died. :-( . Burden of that is heavy :( Anyway, thats not what I had in mind when i wanted to talk about death.

If u look at the world objectively, from a scientific perspective, like I do all the time :-> :->...

Why do we die? What all can die? What does it mean when u say something died?

There are two types of death - Death by breaking- this happens to non living things as well as living ones. when something in machine goes so wrong that it can no longer function. This can happen by accident.

Another death is death by Aging or by wear and tear. You can say that this also happens to living as well as non living. but there is a difference. Animals( and all living things) have an inbuilt mechanism to fix wear and tear. We are self repairing machines. We have the capability to fix ourselves, to regenerate ourselves but in-spite of that.. we still age. There is a clock going on inside of living beings which makes people age and die. ( Simply called as "Life cycle" :D )

Dont u see? the Wear and Tear and Aging is by design!!!! Sneaky creator of ours, has installed tiny little time bombs in us meant to go off after certain time so that we inevitably die. :-(

I went about thinking why? why would he ( ;-) god is man, if he was a woman the world would have been a nicer place) want us to die? Couldn't he stop at childhood, youth - stop.?

This death by design is more apparent in some species- The annual plants used to annoy me most, I plant them in June, they flower in august, they dry up and die in December!!! Next June the seeds grow back again, I am happy, but there are 1000;s of plantlings. Out of the thousand plantlings, how many survive? 10? 20?

Creator is using Death as integral part of his design at every stage of life -

To select out the best of the lot, that death is not by aging BTW, but it is still by design. The number of offspring in any species is always much much more than required. designed for very high infant mortality. survival of the fittest.

He uses death to weed out things which have stayed for long enough also, even if you are good, u survived, u still have a dead line, u have to go and make way for new.

"Change" is the key word looks like, Death( and Birth by corollary ) is designed to promote evolution, if all species only died accidentally, they would reproduce far far less. So? They would be less capable to adapt to changes in the environment no? now u have animal life cycles ranging from 2 years to say 150 ( tortoise) So if the environment gradually changed over a period of thousand years, enough variety is produced in the offspring in mean time and natural selection has scope in the 10-12 generations which have gone by, to build a species which is more adapted to the new changes.

With out death, Life on earth would probably have been wiped out by now?

Death and birth is more adaptive model for a volatile ecosystem. In a planet where nothing changes, life probably lives for ever and reproduces by choice.

If one day we device a way to not die, we replace all parts of our selves , what do u think will be the consequence? one for sure we wont reproduce anymore. How long do u think one would like to continue living if we could live for ever? initially people would get tired and bored pretty soon say 200 years or so, then once people get used to the idea.. they would live for ever. No death. Evolution and adaptation would happen then at the higher level and not at the genetic level.

Now genes live for ever, the organism dies, the species morphs.

if we( humans) became immortal, organism would live forever, organism itself would morph, in effect evolution would still happen. species may also evolve, different people may choose different ways of living for ever. and Genes? Organism would control the genes rather than vice versa.

we would have so much control on the whole process that we could then do away with the time bombs and life cycles..

There are different ways of looking at death too, the individual cells in our body are dieing all the time, we dont consider ourselves dead until the whole unit stops working right? similarly may be we can consider the whole species as the organism and the individual plant for ex as a cell. so unless the plant species gets extinct, you can say the organism lives?

if you consider earth as an organism and we - each species as a cell? then until life is there on earth, earth is living. the different species are like different cells in the body, the extinction of a species does not matter as long as earth works..

Hmmm, God has designed death, he has also designed the fear of death, It is inevitable, but u fight it all your life. .. Its a game for him. God - Definitely male! ;-)

Note: I donot believe in a creator per say, but it is very convenient concept to use to understand how the world developed. Mind accepts and understands things easily when I say creator made it like that, than if I say, it happened like this out of chance.

cribbing

BTW I am upset today, Ive got a bad cold and the usual JNI techniques dont seem to cure it. thats why i am sitting up at 3 in the morning writing this darn blog. I am feelin a bit low too, so the pouring nose may very well turn into pouring eyes anytime soon. Why? Its the same old grouse - i haven't learned to live in this world, I haven't learnt to deal with people, If I look back on my life how many close friends have I? Its all my fault type of thing. My fault being I firmly believe I shouldnt "try", trying is somehow wrong. Thinking - yeah thinking is wrong too. I shouldnt think and act. Whole load of nonsense in my head. All friends I have had till now have become my frineds, I didnt "try" to make friends with anyone. I didnt "try" to get close to anyone. I dont "try" to impress my boss, I dont "think" about how to impress my boss, I dont even "think" about how to go about my life. I really have a thing against thinking :( yeah I get the word now MENTAL BLOCK . Its really silly. I hvent thought and decided about one darn thing in my life, when it comes to thinking I just go with what I feel or with the flow. Somewhere along the line Ive made up my mind that if I think and decide I wont be happy with it. That is not allowing me to sit and think about myself. I mean yeah i can think about how monkeys evolved into man and what role genetics play in ones behaviour and all that crap, but when it comes to thinking about what I need to do, I refuse. god save me!

wondering if playing strategy games like chess and othello will help? they will force me to think about what the next move from the other person will be, Will it loosen up these blocks?

tintin

what I want to write about has changed. I No longer have these burning ideas which I want to put down some place. I am inclined to write more like a diary of sorts, I am upset today, I am happy today kind of posts. So here I go... I have stopped reading interesting books these days, I am hooked on to tin tin tho since a few weeks. I love it. The Tintin companion book its just amazing so is Herge. I felt sad tho, that Tintin brought on his nervous breakdown. Tintin is such wonderful peace of work, I like to think, Herge loved to work on Tintin and that he enjoyed everybit of it.The fact is writing Tintin was very hard work. It put a lot of pressure on Herge.He had to comeout with something regularly. Sometimes he even broke into rashes due to all the stress :(. And twice in his life, he abandoned tintin to go off into country side and take a break. Tintin really exhausted him. Now I understand why Bill Waterson stopped writing Calvin and Hobbes. So its not just IT folks, even when the work is creative, even tho you do really love ur work - like Herge It can still get to you.

embarrassing moment..s

Listening to loud music with ur head phones on in office. except that u have connected the headphone to mic jack instead of the head phone jack.

Luckily for me the embarrassment was limited as I sit in a cube/cave alone with just another guy . who BTW laughed his heart out

Avinash was not all that lucky, he sits with the whole integration team. He borrowed kingfisher headphone and was so eager to listen to music, started playing it even before he connected them.

Ravi comments, let him fly the good times :P

walking into glass walls, I did it in Music world, I didn't break anything neither the glass not my head. except for my shape :P shape hoytu ashte

we have frosted glass doors in out pantry thanks to my super boss, :D he walked into a glass door one of those days, with in a week all glass doors got frosted. He broke his nose I heard.

Pulling on a door which opens by pushing!! grrr. In my old building u push the door and get in and u pull the door and get out and here.... ! cant they even maintain protocol?

haha one day I was tryin to be anti chauvinistic and wanted to open the door for people and yeah u guessed it I am pulling hard at a door which opens by pushing! :D

and typos.. when typing... sec.. pantry.. grrr...

Flutter

just read the blog flutter by M about how thoughts link to each other... the world flutter reminded me of that bird, ( more like the picture of the bird came to my head) My cat is a sweetie cutest little thing, but its a killing machine allright. I heard a bird tweet and stop suddenly, I knew. :-( Its a really sick feeling. I got sonu to leave the bird in time before it died. It flew around in the house for a while and then I opened the window to let it out. I saw it sit under the window and pant. I saw its heart flutter. It was one sad sight. having pets is a real heart break. I felt bad that i d take away sonu;s prized catch, it kept meowing for a while. now I felt bad seeing that tiny little birds heart flutter like crazy. hope it lives after all this feeling bad. thinking of feeling bad I read about this joint suicide today parents have committed suicide, their son who;s 7 came back from school, he saw both his parents dead, he didnt know what to do he went to his friends house, didnt tell them anything. itseems stayed there till evening. evening he had no where else to go, he went home and called his grandpa and told him his parents are not talking to him :( That was the saddest thing I have read for a while. poor poor kid :(.

Karela cousin

I found this new veggie in MK Ahmed, I asked him for the name. I never could catch it. It looked like a cross between a rat and a karela and a jackgruit. It had the texture of karela, size and tail of a rat and shape of a really tiny jackfruit :-) I cooked it today and ... it was yummy!! or what! but what is it? enquiries with a few mallu friends( MK ahmed is a mallu store) turned out nothing. Then i tell my mum that I am eating this wonderful yummy sweet version of karela, she say yeahhhhhhhh ur granpa used to get it from our fields when we were young! ok! it turns out it is more of a Konkani veggie than a mallu one. but still no name.. so I go to google and type in "karela cousin" and there it is :-) ITs called KANTOLA!!!

photo by Sivahari.
. Its also called spicky gourd, some are callin it Indian gourd, aakakrakaya it telgu itseems. It's called ghee korola in Bengali... dono what it Konkani or Kannada..

nice to find someone who faced the same questions about life as me....http://forums.egullet.org/index.php?showtopic=79369...

Just fry it with salt and chilli powder and a lil bit of oil. Its really yummy stuff that! wonder why its not more popular that it is !!!

if a fly dies does it become flu? :-P

and if u have flu, can u say u are flying? :D