The rose plant that I have in a pot perched on my balcony is a story of survival. It flowered, grew, withered, sprouted and just about survived. But it’s time had probably come. The branches were withered and the leaves were dry or unhealthy. I was willing to let go of it. I did the occasional pruning and deadwooding, but not regularly. I watered it nonchalantly almost everyday. It didn’t look heàlthy and its days seemed to be numbered. But it had its own plans and over the last few days a small bud appeared on a delicate branch. I saw 2 bright new twigs with leaves sprout out of drying stems. For unseen by me, my mom was carefully…

I have a small balcony garden that has made it to my blog on a couple of occasions. Summers in Vellore are harsh and the plants don’t like it since the sn sun shines directly on this side of the building through most of the day. I usually water the plants in the morning before I go to work. However, there are days when I can’t and by evening a couple of them start to wilt and droop. What surprises me is how they revive soon after I water them in the evening! I tried a time-lapse video over an hour or so and you can see how they perk up: Now there are some downsides. By allowing it to…

We’ve got a narrow balcony behind our home on the fifth floor. This was my second attempt to grow some plants there – the effort included dropping into a nursery and picking up whatever JJ thought looked good. Pots, some soil, some vermicompost, some accidents and they mostly survived (My previous success rate was 17%). I know one was a rose plant, there were a couple of cacti and the rest were mostly green with one which was a fancy shade of purple.So when a friend dropped in and excitedly said, “Wow you have a desert rose!” She stared at it like it was a pot of gold and said, “This will survive. Water it once a week. Blah blah……

We’d just reached Chennai after the long drive from Trichy and just as we were cleaning up and taking some rest it started. My dad’s tummy suddenly did a flip and he literally collapsed vomiting recurrently probably due to food poisoning. He could not even take any tablets or a sip of water and within an hour his blood pressure crashed to 60 systolic. My father-in-law and I decided to treat him at home and within a few minutes set up an IV line and rushed in some IV fluids and gave him some injections while the others rigged up a make-shift IV stand, etc. The BP improved to 100 systolic and after several hours the vomiting subsided after which…

As the best husband in the world I will now run you through a crash course on how to impress your wife in 5 minutes! Follow these steps carefully!Lesson 1:1. Arrive home from work 15 minutes before your wife (The hardest part!)2. Boil some water, add the tea leaves, add some milk and sugar – i.e. make some tea (If you can’t do this step you’re in trouble dude!)3. Look at wedding gifts received and pick out the cute blue tea set with a cute tea pot and cute small cups (Duh…. didnt you get one on your wedding??!!)4. Set it up just in time to hear the doorbell ring.5. Give cute wife warm hug (she needs one after a…

We finally had our Home Fellowship (aka ‘The Pitstop’) today. I decided to talk about the topic ‘barriers’ and built it around a musical skit I saw on YouTube. Here’s the story: A few days ago one of my friends Jebahar on Orkut had added a video on his profile. At the end of the video, a usual, YouTube showed related videos and a link to a video entitled “Everything by Lifehouse – a skit”. Curious, I opened it and waited patiently till it opened completely. The next 6 minutes blew my mind away and almost brought tears to my eyes. The skit with its simple message so powerfully portrayed touched me so much that I decided to use it…

Today was Beckys birthday! And that meant a lot of things to try and make it memorable for her (and me!) to be executed by this blog author – me!I simply threw in a standard cocktail – her favorite cake and some snacks (including her favorite Mysore Pak sweet!) and called up the other docs to barge in at 12 MN! That would be a great way to start. So there we were 12 Midnight – Praburam and Rajendran at a movie theater; Arun and Catherine sleeping beyond chance of waking and Gokul and Prakash not responding to SMS/Missed calls. My plans seemed to be ready to vaporise. Finally at 12.15 there was a hushed knock on the door –…