Picture Gallary II

My dad, first ever successful businessman in our family.

Sridhar Yedavalli, brother and confidant, works for Motorola. Makes sure he scorns the companies that I work for because of their bad service, and pulls my leg by questioning me about it, ICICI Bank earlier and Hutch (Essar Group, Aegis is an Essar company) now.

Shanti, Jai's wife, with her daughter Athulya. This demanding wife of Jai has perfectly ensconsed into the role of a caring mother.

Jai, a proud father. Apart from being that, has a terrific business sense and the ability to make things happen, although occassionally laid back. One day if not the world, Hyderabad would stop and take a notice of this guy.


You will get to see more and more pictures in my blog from now on.

Picture Gallary I

Joules ...... for the calorie conscious

The above three images that you see are the logo options for Joules. Joules is the name of the restaurant that I intend to start along with couple of my partners. Unlike Hyderabad House, this one going to serve calorie conscious diet. It would have everything on its menu starting from Soups/Starters to Main course/Combo meals to Desserts, but all these items would be made with low calorie ingredients.

I would actually like to float a brand, not just a singular restaurant. The idea is my brain child, ever since I grew calorie conscious, I asked my servant maid to prepare "Jowariki Roti" for me and that is what I eat everyday, both for lunch and dinner. Roti made with whole Jowar hardly gives you any calories and contains lot of fiber which is good for health. One day, I casually asked her if she would like to work in a restaurant making rotis and that is how the idea to start a restaurant evolved which finally developed into floating a brand.

Joules will have everything comparable to best international food brands that you could think of. A philosophy, logo, tag line, branding, good interiors, equipment, ambience, franchising etc. The menu would be a book which would talk about the philosophy of calorie conscious food and why it is required, choosing foods, the calories of which you are sure of, basically counting the calories that you are eating. Against each menu item, we would mention the ingredients used and the style in which it has been cooked in addition to calorie information. Thus it goes on.

To start with, the menu is getting designed and simultaneously we have requested one of our friends to design some logos for us, he gave us the options that you see on this blog. I have designed three captions for Joules and they have been summed up here. Please go through them and suggest any new captions or improvisations upon the existing ones. Also, please go through the logo options and let me know which one you like the best and why.

The captions are...

"for the calorie conscious"
"What’s your calorie intake today?"
"calorie consciousness......... the tasty way"

I will await your comments on the concept, logos and the captions.

Mayur and Lalitha

Thats Mayur and Lalitha for you on the occasion of their marriage.

Mayur is a Cost Accountant working for Cordys , Vanenberg earlier. Infact he is an all India second ranker in ICWA inter examinations.

Lalitha has done her masters in computer applications and is a software engineer with Wipro.

Shopping Spree

Me and my wife planned to go out for dinner yesterday evening. I invited Mayur (He addresses me as "annayya" which means elder brother in Telugu, so it would be actually inappropriate to address him as friend. He is one "given" brother for me. Actually, how we got acquainted with each other is a big story, which I would share with you at a later point of time) and Lalita, who both got married to each other, a week ago, to come along with us. In fact, I made Lalita agree to treat us on the occasion of their marriage after great ordeal.

They apparently had a different plan of going to Hyderabad Central for shopping, because it was the last day of the "Happiness Sale" event that the mall has organized. So, we have modified the program slightly to me and Vaidehi, accompanying them to the mall and then going to the restaurant to dine. We reached the mall around 5:45 P.M, there was no parking place in the mall, so I had to drive my car to a small cul-de-sac and park it there. When we entered the mall, I have immediately understood what exactly people mean when they say population explosion. Mad Rush is what I would like to use. The number of people that were shopping was absolutely crazy. Lengthy queues at trial rooms, wash rooms and billing stations, people were literally dashing against each other while picking up stuff. We decided to be a part of the crazy bandwagon.

My wife and Lalita, formed a team and they disappeared into the ladies section, while me and Mayur and three of his friends/relatives who joined us in the mall made our way into the men's wing. Discounts ranged from 10% to 50%, offers were like, buy one get one free, buy two get one free, buy two get two free. When we entered the "Bare" aisle, we found these stacks of shirts on display, being offered on a scheme of buy two get two free. I have always had this fascination for dark colored plain shirts. I casually started selecting. I wanted to try one and see if it properly fits, but the length of the queue at the trial room made me withdraw the idea. I picked up the shirts basing on my past experience, size 40 is what I thought would fit me perfectly, hence went on.

I first picked up 4 shirts, later I thought I wouldn't get such on offer in the near future and hence picked up another 4 shirts. My wife saw my collection and was furious that I always buy plains and hence picked up another 4 shirts in checks and stripes. When this was over, I immediately realized that I have only one jean trousers and enquired with the sales guy as to where I would get the best offer on jeans, he suggested I go to Bare Denim. When I went there, I saw a good collection of jeans waiting for me. I picked up a 36 inches waist boot cut and preceded to the trial room, as I was unable to decide which size would fit me correctly. I was happy to know that size 36 is pretty loose and hence preceded to size 34 stack. However, I was not impressed by the boot cut style of jeans, comfort fit is what I like the best. Picked up 4 jeans on a “buy two get two” offer and started waiting in the queue for billing.

After I was done with my shopping, (in fact I wanted to shop more, but my wallet did not permit me) I met my wife in the I floor, she did not sound very happy, apparently because she couldn't choose anything for herself and here I am with four big bags of clothes. Then I accompanied her to the ladies wing and helped her choose three dresses. Finally when I checked the total, I bombed around 8500 bucks on shopping, but I felt it was a good deal, I got discount of 8500. The irony is that people who planned to shop that evening ended up spending lesser or equal amount, which made me apprehensive if I was suffering with some kind of shopping mania that some women generally suffer from.

Four things worth mentioning are.

Today, I had to exchange the entire set of shirts that I bought for size 42 ones. Although size 40 did fit me perfectly, I was more comfortable with size 42.

While I was standing in the billing counter queue, I was troubled by the looks of a teenage girl, aged about 17 years. Her mom was standing in front of me in the queue and this girl was standing right adjacent to her, but facing me. She stared at me with out blinking and whenever our eyes met, I was so inhibited and turned my looks away, but she never did. This went on for about 20 minutes. Even when their billing was over, she was standing there until I was done and went on staring at me. When I shared this with my wife, she thoroughly laughed out her heart.

Not that I am claustrophobic, but huge gatherings of people at a place, that too in a closed building, rings alarm bells for me. Looking at the maddening rush, I felt, it is a potential place for any terrorist activity, leave about actual terrorist activity, what would happen if there was a bomb threat or fire. I thought I should explain my wife what she should do in such situations, otherwise what good is the training that I received in fire evacuation and basic life support. I was the building evacuation coordinator for our building when I was in Karvy. He is the actual guy who would take a call whether the building should be evacuated or not in the event of fire or threat. To prove that my fears are not silly, the first thing that I saw on the TV when I returned home is that news channel reporting a bomb threat in a mall in Delhi.

Finally, the main purpose of the outing that is eating out did not happen because, by that time we went to the restaurant it was 11:15 P.M. and the captain was not willing to take the order for my favorite dish.

What was supposed to be an accompanying activity turned out to be a shopping spree.

In Love With Coffee

I don’t remember drinking milk as a child. Early morning reminiscences of my childhood are that of my father waking up me and my brother, sometimes in a cajoling way and sometimes otherwise, we both dragging our legs to brush and then when once we are done, drinking a big steel glass full of coffee prepared by my mother.

Health drinks like Horlicks, Viva were never my cup of drink. It was always coffee and that too a big glass full. In fact, I never had the habit of eating any breakfast, all I had in the morning is coffee. I remember my mother using a big filter in the early days and later a percolator for making the decoction. There were days when we used to get up early for some reason and then wait for the milkman to deliver the milk so that we could drink coffee. Over a period of time, although the habit of consuming coffee continued, the quantity of consumption has comedown remarkably. I started consuming one third of what I used to consume earlier.

Years later, in the later part of nineties, I had to stop coffee consumption owing to health reasons. I was having this acute acidity problem because of obesity and was advised not to drink coffee. Although I was a regular consumer of coffee, I did not have any trouble in stopping it at the same time it didn't mean that my love for coffee was lost. Meanwhile I went to US, the largest consumer of coffee in the world, the country which brewed different coffees like Latte, Mocha etc. Out of my one year stay in US there was only one occasion in which I drank coffee. I happened to only hear praises for Starbucks coffee, never got to taste and make myself. Although I didn't completely do away with consuming coffee, my coffee drinking has become anecdotal over a period of time and every time I tried drinking some, it gave me acidity.

Seven long years have passed from 1998 to 2005 without consuming coffee. In the mean time, I got married. My wife is an avid tea consumer but not coffee, although she occasionally enjoyed coffee. Unlike my dad’s place, where your mornings are filled with aroma of filter coffee, our evenings at my home are generally filled with the aroma of ginger tea. Since there were no coffee drinkers, we never got into the habit of making coffee at home on a regular basis. I bought a coffee filter from Coffee Day, to be used during my dad's visit to my place.

Over a period of time, the acidity problem gradually lessened and after I started putting down weight, I practically didn't have it. Proximity of coffee bars like Barista and Coffee Day to my office made me to start enjoying coffee occasionally. After a couple of months, I stopped consuming tea in the morning and started having coffee, as days passed by I did away with tea in the evenings and replaced it with coffee.

My dad's last visit to Hyderabad was the final kick start to regain the habit of preparing and enjoying coffee at home. It is a practice that we make coffee at our place during my dad's stay, but me and my wife continued it even after he left. The situation today is we are consuming around two kilograms of coffee powder in a month and are drinking coffee both morning and evening. The final stroke in this episode is that, my wife discontinued her habit of drinking tea and is now drinking coffee three times a day, which only reminds me of my dad's words that no drink equals coffee's taste.

"Inspired" Movies - The Mahesh Bhatt Way

Around a month ago, I saw a newspaper report that Mahesh Bhatt is planning his next movie on the bomb blasts that have rocked London in the month of July. It reminded me of a funny incident that has happened.

My wife is an avid Hindi film goer, in fact one of her complaints of our marriage is that I don't take her to Hindi movies. To compensate that what she does is to get VCD of latest Hindi flicks and watch it at home. One day after our dinner, she was watching a movie called "Zehar". I don't generally sleep immediately after the dinner, so I was sitting in the chair and watching the movie, finally when I got up to go to bed after about half an hour, she wanted me to accompany her through the movie. I remained in my seat to watch the movie, not because I had high expectations about it but because couple of numbers of the sound track are quite good. We watched through the movie and voiced out our opinions before we retired to bed.

A week days later, I was watching Star Movies, and there was a trailer of a movie being advertised during a break and the name of the movie is "Out of time", starring Denzel Washington. I had this strange de javu kind of a feeling that I have watched this movie recently although that was the first time that I ever heard of the movie. Finally before the trailer was complete I have realized that I haven't watched this movie but I have watched another movie which was "inspired" by this. If a movie's trailer could make me realize what the other movie that I watched is, imagine the extent to which the original movie "inspired" the second one.

On the day "Out of time" was telecast, I watched that movie completely. It would have been very courteous on Mahesh Bhatt and Co.'s part if they had acknowledged "Out of time" in its titles. As simple as that. Story, dialogues, screenplay, costumes, everything is an absolute translation/download from the English version. My wife who was very vocal in eulogizing Zehar was dumbstruck when she watched the English version.

Mahesh Bhatt was always known for making inspired movies. The following is a list of the movies that he made (being a director or producer or simply presenter) and their originals that I know, please feel free to add anything else that you know of.

Dil Hai Ki Manta Nahin - It happened one night
Sadak - Taxi Driver
Criminal - Fugitive
Paap - Don't remember the name of the original, but it stars Harrison Ford
Zehar - Out of Time
Murder - Unfaithful

I have read one of the prominent Telugu film journalists quoting that the movie "Criminal" was literally made by showing the original to the actors in the sets shot by shot. Finally, the news item that I read makes me wonder, which English movie has inspired him to start his latest venture.