Prabha Manda’s Blog

My curiosity: For all the meat eaters- here is my question, how do you find a dead animal on your meal plate appetizing? Its killed, drained of all blood, whatever bodily juices it has and then chopped up and then cooked? Even writing all that has gotten me  nauseous.

Get civilized.

Just got sent this:

http://www.colbertnation.com/the-colbert-report-videos/264043/february-08-2010/jonathan-safran-foer

Yesterday there was this news about a god-man trampling infants to cure them. Everyone thinks, what are the parents of these infants doing? Then think back and look back, most of them might be quite uneducated. What do individuals who are educated do ? In our small city for eg. there was a decision recently made by well known and “very educated” because most of these are doctors and professors, the decision to build a “temple” which would also house a community center. I so wished they would come up with the idea of just a community center, where cultural activities could take place [to me culture need not necessarily be related to religion or need not be related at all to religion]. But no, that wasn’t. This is a huge disappointment to me. There is another aspect that everyone has in general. Be proud of where they are from blah blah. You should not be proud of where you are from, you need to be proud of what you are, what you are made up of, what you think, not where you are from, what religion you belong to, what country you belong to, what culture you belong to, what language you speak . As long as people have, this aspect, people of the world cannot be one. There will always be this separation. On the one hand we are promoting everything to separate people by building “temples” obviously one way of separating people with religion, on the other hand, doing community sings to show everyone is one, people are same. That is so contradictory and what is defined as hypocrisy. In a world without religion, we can let current places of worship be museums for the next generation to see what it was in the past.But that is a world that is far far away.

I continually hear people very unconsciously refer to ‘God’, in a very normal conversation even without realizing it. For eg: “God, I had so much work. “Oh God”, when am I going to get xyz done, when they see something nice”God”, that beautiful, “God”, I didn’t mean that. Why do people refer to “God” for each and every silly thing that exists? Are those references like a boxing bag or whatever they call it? It is obvious that the so called “God”is not going to respond to any of those references, why cannot people remark with more meaningful words? I have never heard people use sane expressions while showing ecstatic emotions, or joy or sorrow. Do you ever hear people say “O thank big bang”, its such a beautiful morning! or Oh Sun, its such a nice present or something like that?. People really don’t change much at all, no one makes resolutions like I will use sane expressions, use sensible words in every conversation. My daughter is 8 and she comes back from school with such words or when I hear her talk to her friends I realize that in this country [US] at least [since I am here], there is no conscious effort by people to talk correctly or use correct English. I see it more and more, people use all kinds of words , but somehow another accent is totally confusing to them. Wish they would encourage good English and correct use of words in school. I do not think such changes will ever happen, because no one ever thinks that the way things are going might be wrong. I only hope when my daughters are older and they’ll realize that. A chance of that is quite less of course, because they would have been brought up in this kind of environment.

This morning I was unusually watching the morning show on NBC because my plantar fasciitis was bothering me and I needed to sit down and do nothing for a while. So I see this woman come up on TV and I won’t go into details about her story but the crux of the matter is that she is saying “it was a wake up call for me and I started believing in “Jesus Christ”. I find that such programming shows that this country needs to wake up and stop being dumb. Religion if at all followed should be a private affair. Overdoing a celebration is one thing but why propagate religion on a national news channel? Thumbs down NBC, disappointing.

Not the best blog to write on a Monday morning, but it might get better! Was watching Mr William O’Reilly Jr interview Richard Dawkins, he just knows how to talk louder than who he calls in to interview, he just throws questions and gives hardly a second to let them answer, he doesn’t seem to have the basic etiquette even to interview. I don’t understand how his show is popular, perhaps people watch it to get laughs or see a grown up man acting idiotic.

Just started watching “Aadhavan”, seems a rather stupid movie so far. Don’t know how Surya fans can be so blind and get impressed by him that movie. Nayantara fans, oh my she looks horrid in this, think she looked good only in her first movie, she actually doesn’t have many pretty features, she is just a made up lady and the said part is all that make up fails to make her look good.

Weather: has been so cold, but when it chose to rain, the temperature rose just above freezing, thereby taking away the pleasure of watching some snow. My poor 8 year old, she has to delight in little bits of drifted snow? or frozen rain on the [roofs] rooves!

Another week before we have holidays. Looking forward to doing nothing.

Meanwhile wondering how people think. We have many houses here in our subdivision decorated for the holidays, BUT mind you ‘which’ holidays – that they are very choosy about, most of the misers take the lights out , first thing after christmas, they don’t even keep it for the new years. New year is something that can be celebrated because that is what counts in our day to day lives, but oh-well its upto them to breed in more stupidity!

Question that comes to my mind seeing shoppers flock malls [mind you, I am in the mall atleast once in 2 weeks, cos I like to stroll through irrespective of the season], do they even know why they are doing all this? How come all the ‘goodwill ‘ is stuffed into this one month of December? Looking forward to the time when December will be the beginning of winter fun rather than only an unreasonable holiday called christmas.

To me tradition and religion are separate and , following traditions just for fun and omitting religion is what the future should be.

I hear my 22 mth old, so tata!

My husband and I like to try out new meatless food that usually has a lot of tofu in it. Yesterday we chanced upon something called ‘Vegetarian chicken Drumsticks’ with curry sauce. Our local food co-op carries it. It was very tasty. We might replace our yearly tofurkey with this for Thanksgiving. So much so that I immediately made some tofu with the same kind of sauce for today’s lunch. Its by a company called Vegetarian Plus. Another new thing that we tried out recently was bbq pulled shreds  by a company called Gardein- garden protein. It was good too but a bit sweet for my taste. The same company has other products which might be tasted at our residence during Thanksgiving, giving our treadmill some more weight to balance! Sounds like we seem to like meat but it is quite the contrary cos we’ve been vegetarians our entire life with no plans to change. Opinion on meat will be other blogs to follow.

I don’t have much to say about the whole program, might add something later but wanted to say what I thought about his movie “Dashavataram”. Though everyone spoke well about that movie, saying he did such a good job in all the ten roles , acted like an American, old lady, etc., I must say that was his worst movie in all the ones I have seen. Just because you want to speak well about someone doesn’t mean you go ahead and praise something that wasn’t done well. He might have gone to lengths to get the movie done, but as a viewer what is seen is what matters and I am sure Kamal Hassan must himself know that all those different roles except for the telugu guy and the first one, were no good. It just is a joke, how could he think that people would buy in to that? Must be some crazy fans of his that like that movie. The first few scenes until he drowns are very good and then the movie drowns too in my opinion. Those who think that the movie was good can come back and argue with me in their spare time, even though its been a while since that movie released. In his whole 50 years in the movie industry I am sure that is the one movie that will stand out as a very silly one. His american accent was a joke, his playing Bush was a joke.

In general, the movie can be rated silly, bad and not put together well at all, the plot didn’t seem too solid as well.

Forgot to write a blog about what I thought, after I had seen the movie. I liked the general idea of the movie, even though it is so unrealistic. Makes you think in other ways about life. The scene where Benjamin dies is touching and the one where the clock maker makes a clock that goes backward in time was good. It is a a sad scene too, that perhaps only those who have someone dear can understand better, even though those more fortunate feel they do too. I wondered how they showed Brad Pitt, in the scenes where he is old and gradually gets younger. Wonder what kinds of special effects were used.

In short I can say it was g ood movie, the plot keeps you engrossed in the movie, throughout.

Why is it that people turn to ‘God’ for things not under their control? Is it a psychological thing that people have for centuries done to overcome their lack of control over some or every thing in their lives? If so why hasn’t that changed for many? I find references to ‘God’ for such little , stupid or silly things like, o god save my child he is doing so and so- when that so and so is something that can be controlled by the mom itself! Is is a lazy approach to solve any problem? I always wonder, why it is that in this modern world why people haven’t adapted to the concept of the absence of a superpower. It is perhaps to avoid facing reality it is always comfortable to be in your own world, making up your own rules, disregarding the reality.If everyone, took a moment to look out for and look at their loved ones and lived for them, felt for them there wouldn’t be some priest somewhere, some holy man somewhere doing that job for them in the name of God. Goodness in yourself need not be sparked by a belief in a non existent force, it is within yourself that you have the power, it in your mind that everything is. All you have to do is take control and make some one person in your life happy . Just a look up at the clear sky sprouts so many thoughts in the mind- of how little we know, how big a job scientists are trying to do, of how we get bogged down by a seemingly meaningless reason, of how our worries are silly. Will we ever know some answers fully? I hope experiments to re enact the Big Bang and such go on and are successful.

Having said that, Good Morning!

Warning: This blog has too many references to the words ‘temporary’ and ‘permanent’

Nothing new, but I’ve been dreading going to the dentist since last year because I had a root canal done and the temporary cap fit well, but when the permanent one was put, there was a gap between the gum and the cap and the temporary dentist who had done the permanent cap, said  I’d have to get “crown lengthening” done, and it didn’t sound a very pleasant process and meant I’d have to spend another $800 for something I’d already spent about $500. I felt that the whole “crown lengthening” idea wasn’t too good. So I even went to the periodontist to confirm and he too recommended it. But it wasn’t needed to be done immediately so I conveniently avoided it, also , my tooth wasn’t bothering me anyway, its just that I could see the gap, they said food could get into the gap and cause decay. So I let it go and it was only today that I went – more than a year after that to get a regular cleaning done, and also to see how the new dentist who had replaced my original dentist [who had passed away ] was. I hadn’t like the temporary replacement dentist. So after the cleaning and all was done, the dental hygienist said that the dentist might have other ideas about the crown lengthening and I hoped so. He came in and said that my root canal tooth, gum etc looked fine and the gum seemed to be covering the gap well, so it was self healing and I needed have anything done. No decay. Yahoooooooooo. So I came back told my husband that I had approved the new dentist. The only thing is he asked to have all the wisdom teeth removed, because filling those is hard. But I can keep them till I have problems[with my teeth ]. So lets hope that its never. Also I must say this, I really don’t believe in flossing, except when there is food stuck of course. Will be a while before the dental community agrees [might never too] with me!;-)