I am back again with a new look. WordPress likes to call it Journalist. I will keep try it for a few days. I am thinking of swtiching over to a darker background so that the photos show up good here.

During the long gap between that last post and this one, a lot of stuff happened.  I travelled all the way to Delhi with my camera gear and came back without taking a single picture. Note to self: Never ever take your entire gear when the college is booking the tickets for you.Then there was the annual Amrita Entrance Examinations that we all look forward to. This time my posting was in Patna, Bihar. Never in the entire span of my pathetic years in college mess have I felt such great love to our own sambar and thairu saadam. Everything that we ate in Patna was either too expensive or covered with black salt. After 2 days, I was surviving on bread and mineral water. Needless to say, I lost a lot of weight and different people had different versions to it. The Chairman of Admissions thought that I was model example of how to manage food expenses while travelling and proceeded to slash the Dearness Allowance for everybody by 10%. My collegue Saravanan, whose only aims in life are to have a flat stomach, an incessant supply of protein powder and a hotline to all unmarried girls in Tamil Nadu (and maybe bordering areas of Kerala and Andhra Pradesh) firmly believed that I was dieting to get married. My PhD guide was thinking on the lines of cancelling my medical leave and vacations. As for me, I was just too happy to get back to the regular canteen diet of the so called sambar and mushy thairu saadam.

And then something wonderful happened in the month of April. The Holy Mother came to our house and blessed us with Her divine presence. Our family spent one hour with Her, where The Mother discussed everything from my grandmother’s health to my research plans.  It is always thrilling to watch a great master at work. Mother had come after giving darshan in Thrissur for a straight 15 hours, but there was no tiredness about Her. Amma says her battery is always connected to the mains.