Calamus

"Gone girl" is a psychotic thriller, a riveting tale of a marriage gone terribly wrong. The story starts when the husband and the small town that they live in, find out that the wife is missing under suspicious circumstances. Through the investigation that ensues, the inner workings of Nick and Amy's dysfunctional marriage unravels in to a twisted, frightening story of lies, deceit, and mutual manipulation. The characters are brilliant and chillingly identifiable. As a reader it gets you to ponder about your own relationship with your spouse. If your marriage has plateaued, in this terrifying psychotic variant, Nick and Amy entrap themselves in a bitter, ceaseless & toxic relationship. One of my favorite parts is when Nick describes how we as humans are finding it more & more difficult to be original ".... I don't know that we are actually human at this point, those of us who are like most of us, who grew up with TV and movies and now the Internet.

I am on a mission. I want to loose weight and feel great! For the past one and a half years I watched my husband shrink and loose up to 85  lbs. He had a diet plan and he stuck to it so the pounds just came off. Ideally I should be doing the same thing, but I haven't. At the time that my husband started on his new diet I was 5 months pregnant and used that as an excuse. But now my son is 11 months old and I just got tired of giving excuses. No more excuses from me! I have made a decision and I am determined to stick to it. I am going to follow my husband's diet plan and see where that takes me. Today April 23rd, 2013  - my weight is  152 lbs . I will check back in a month's time or may be in 2 to 3 weeks (if i get too anxious) to see where I am. Today April 26th, 201 3 - I am on track so far although it is harder than I thought it would be. Having an affinity for sugar does not help at all. Among other things, I have forbidden myself from having anything with artifici

We celebrated our son's first birthday on Saturday. Since we were the hosts, we tried to keep more healthy food options in the plate. The popular norm in kids' parties is to serve pizza for everyone; or serve pizza to the kids while the adults ate regular food. We have always avoided pizza in our kids's parties because its so common here that it has become a mundane thing to eat. And now we have one more very good reason to continue doing the same thing - though Italy may have a different opinion-for good reason, every where else pizza(restaurant-made) has been transformed in to a junk food. As per our healthy eating initiative, all junk foods are off the table. I agree that its convenient(less mess eating and cleaning) and because the kids love it, its an easy choice. But we decided to give the kids one less opportunity to eat junk. Regular, good food for all. Our menu items were the following: Appetizers  - Chips with home-made Hummus, baked Falafel with Tzaziki sa

" Mommy I love you sooo much !" "Why?" I teased just to see what the reply was going to be. " Because you are so beautiful! I love your hair too !" "Why?" " Because its so shiny and glittery ". My heart breaks to hear this for two reasons: one - for my four year old daughter's naivete to love my dwindling hair and two - for my dwindling hair. Oh my little girl is so endearing. Her sweet innocence adores not only me but also my hair........or whatever is left of its paltry, sad self. Women are extremely touchy about their crowning glory. As a little girl, growing up in a family where women were endowed with generous amounts of hair, made me a teeniest bit insecure because mine was measly in comparison. Don't get me wrong I have ecstatically received a multitude of compliments for my hair from all quarters, but in the land of hair I am but a plebby. In Kerala, a girl's hair has to measure up to many a lofty standard. M

As I was gradually waking up from my sleep this morning, I saw my daughter turn over to me slowly blinking her sleep away. She smiled as soon as she saw me and croaked softly in a sleepy voice - " Happy Mother's Day".  I was so touched. She wasn't even fully awake and those were the first words that came out of her mouth. (And then of course this sweet moment came to a pass soon and the usual breakfast battle ensued.) Today is Mother's Day celebrations at Devu's school. She had been preparing for this day for weeks. My four year old little darling let some involuntary slips in the past few days on what she will be doing. As is common with most children her age, she partially understands the concept of a surprise party. I already guessed that she is reciting a rhyme for me, because they did that last year and her occasional slips confirmed it. I just didn't know which rhyme it was because Devu is always reciting rhymes at home at random. Some times duri

I normally do not write much about recipes . But this time I thought I'll make an exception as I was inspired by my friend who regularly posts good recipes in her blog. And this dish that I came across recently, I have fallen for it and want to share it so that you can too! It meets all the criteria for being a perfect dish as per my tight appraisal ;). This dish is the definition of healthy, and recently it has come to be a regular in our weekly menu. We had been making it once a week for about a month now and chances are that we will continue to do so because frankly I don't see a reason not to. Well first of all its super easy - the preparation time is only 15 minutes and there is no cooking at all! Yes, that's right absolutely no cooking! The only attention to detail is that all the ingredients need to be chopped neatly for better appearance and the parsley is not so much cut as it is shaved. Provided you have the ingredients, which by the way is only a handful, it mak

Come Friday and I am thinking " whew I am so glad its happy Friday today. I have two days to relax." But no sooner does the weekend begin than its Sunday night all over again!  Wha-?! How? But.........where did the weekend go!!? Here is how our typical weekend looks like. I make simple plans for Friday. Its either an in-house movie, a quiet drive around the city, or simply staying up late after the kids are asleep. Even so, more often than not, the entire week's stress gets the better of me and I fall asleep early, which means I rise early on Saturday  forgoing the luxury of sleeping late on a holiday. Anyways we enjoy the day as a family and when the sun starts to set on Saturday I make it a point to make up for what I missed. So my husband and I stay up late, watch a movie or a favorite show. By the time we hit the bed its early Sunday morning giving us only 3 to 4 hours of sleep if we are lucky, coz our infant son has recently developed a habit of waking up at night 

I wanted to see what the fuzz was all about. And yes, there is sex, but its not lit-erotica like the media is touting it to be. Its a romantic novel like may be a Sydney Sheldon book, only with a prominent background of sex which is a little more explicit and is actually of different, unconventional nature, not what most people are used to . But this is very much a book like any other. Its about two people meeting, getting attracted to each other and falling in love and all the relation-shippy kind of things that come with it. I am on the 400th page and so far it seems like an any ordinary romantic novel to me although I somehow get a feeling that this book has been written keeping in mind that it could very likely meta-metamorphosis in to a TV series or movie in future. Also since this novel is the first one of a trilogy ( a little disappointed to find that out after I got the book. how am I ever going to find time to read the other two!!!) its more like an introduction in to the p