My sort of books & authors

 1. Jane Austen - All books, all time favourite

2. Agatha Christie

3. Bill Bryson

4. Thomas Friedman

5. P. G Wodehouse

6. Daphne du Maurier

7. Michael Crichton

8. Sidney Sheldon- Formula Books

9. Dan Brown

10. Wilbur Smith

Viral video of dancing uncle

Amazing video below of dancing uncle on Govinda song. His dancing style is so spot on that it even beats Govinda in the original song. This video became viral. It would be instructive to study it and find the reason why. 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fs54NYdpJkY

Meals menu at home during Lockdown (March 2020-Aug 2020)

 The lockdown days in Pune were difficult as we were afraid to go out much to get food and vegetables so meals were sort of short cut types with not much variety. Some of the dishes I cooked with unfailing regularity were as follows:

Breakfast: Uttapa for Sona or oats with milk, Bread and cheese or Bread cheese omlette for us

Lunch: One out of Lauki ki sabzi, Karela alu sabzi, Drumstick brinjal alu sabzi in rotation

             Masoor or Toor Dal on most days, Rice (Sona has 1 spoon of rice)

             Sometimes (Once or twice a week) Chicken nuggets or Basa fish or egg curry

Dinner : Chapatti, 

               One sabzi out of  Bhindi alu sabzi, Mushroom subzi, Alu Mutter, Alu gobhi, Baigan fry

                Curd

Very rarely I would make Veg Biriyani, Lemon Rice, Cakes or Noodles

Cakes made on gas oven for her Baba's birthday by Sona

Dhokla prepared by following a recipe from the internet turned out to be nice and tasty

Samosa made by Sona

Special Tomato soup by Sona for me when I was down with Corona like symptoms was very tasty

and helped me recover quickly

 

Special Chocolate cake on my birthday

We ate a lot of seasonal fruits: Grapes, Mango, Pomegranate, even Litchi was available for one or two weeks in June and then Guava

New activities learned: Lockdown was a lesson as it taught us to manage without maids or even the services of barbers/ or laundry services. Had to do sweeping, mopping, washing dishes, hair cutting.

I even tried my hand at painting the bathroom door

One definite advantage of the worldwide lockdown was decrease in pollution levels. We had a good view of the faraway hills from our balcony which used to be hazy earlier.

Hope this lockdown ends so that we are able to go to Kolkata soon to celebrate Durga Puja there this time.

Fault correction for Laptop Camera turning on/off in video mode

 Recently after an update of Windows 10 in Sona's laptop , her laptop camera suddenly started behaving erratically. In video mode the camera would start turning off after every 2secs and then turn on again. This caused problems in taking online tests with digital proctoring. Since we were in lockdown, getting laptop to HP service shop was also ruled out. Then I decided to troubleshoot it myself from help articles in the internet. 

  First I tried updating the driver for the camera, so I uninstalled and then again reinstalled the drivers. This did not work. I thought that Kaspersky must be hampering access to camera, so went to privacy settings and disabled the web cam protection. This did not work. Then disabled Kaspersky from running and all firewalls switched off which did not help. The problem persisted irritatingly. Then I tried to remove the Camera app from Microsoft, but it could not be uninstalled. It had to be done from Power Shell command. Following the online commands from Microsoft help I uninstalled and then again reinstalled the Camera app. No luck the problem still persisted. I then thought that the last resort would be to try to restore Windows 10 operating system to an earlier date when the camera had been working properly. But I would loose a lot of work which I had done in the intervening period. From the internet another thing I tried was altering the registry editor to enter a new key 'EnableFrameServerMode' in the Windows given path. But this solution too did not work.

Then lastly in one of the posts I read that changing the name of the driver folders slightly had helped many people facing the same issue as I was having with the camera. I did the change and Eureka!!

the camera started working properly. Eternally thankful to the program developers who can go through the code and find solutions to such problems and then publish it online so others can benefit. 

The hack 

Go to C:\ProgramFiles\Realtek

Change RsProviders folder name  to RsProviders_ (as backup)

Unknown Consequences

Most of us at some point of our lives may have felt this : a yearning to know about unfinished past occurrences which suddenly assail us. It might be a yearning to know about a long lost childhood bosom friend with whom we had spent umpteen number of hours in a  happy , scrappy innocence of childhood, the friend who had shared secrets with and aspired to be a famous actress at the age of twelve , who we lost touch with when dad got transferred, who dropped out of the face of the earth , could neither be found on facebook or instagram. What happened to her? What does she do now, what does she look like? Fair or dark ?Could she achieve her ambitions? Does she lie and scheme even now like she did when we were kids?

     Yearning to meet old friends, to know about past enemies, visit old places to relive memories, and come to know about unfinished chapters of our lives. That classmate whom we liked, but was to scared to propose to. The teacher who unfairly marked our tests but always favoured my rival what became of them? The unfair boss who was always picking on us and for whom we had to quit a good job? Was he ever punished for his actions or did he get outstanding promotions and reach the top? As we age probably these are our train of thoughts and we love to reminiscence about them as the emotions associated with these memories are strong within us even now. 

    Sometimes if we are lucky our yearnings are satisfied by suddenly coming face to face with a long lost friend in the most unexpected circumstances. Those are the happy occasions in life. It gives us closure to our thoughts which had so far come unbidden to our minds. Our curiosity is satisfied, sometimes even our sense of justice is gratified to know that the unfair boss is now suffering. We feel that there is some justice in life.

Precautions against Coronavirus (COVID 19)

Corona virus has assumed frightening proportions over the world and is slowly threatening India. We must all come together to fight this dreaded disease. Since there is no vaccine for this disease as of date, the only way to stop the march of the virus is to adopt the techniques as follows: 

1. Strict self hygiene : Was hands thoroughly with soap and water for at least 20 secs when coming from market, work etc as the virus gets transmitted from hands to mouth/face/nose and eyes on touching.

2. After washing hands thoroughly, wash face with soap and water to assure cleanliness. This is my personal view.

3. Wear mask when going out to ensure that airborne particles, virus are restricted from entering nose.

4. Drink lots of hot water (2 -3 glasses in morning) to stay hydrated. 8-9 glasses throughout the day is required.

5. Avoid visiting crowded places, malls, shops, air conditioned rooms, cinema theatres to avoid spread of virus.

6. To increase immunity following techniques from ayurveda and homeopathy can be adopted

Have a kada of turmeric, ginger, tulsi and honey on empty stomach.
Chawanprash to increase immunity. Giloy (2 tablets) to increase immunity

Yoga like kapal bhati and anulom vilom to increase fitness


In India many people have the habit of spitting in public - on the roads, in public transport and also in public utilities like lifts of buildings, staircases and wherever they generally feel like.
 Strict action should be taken against such people by fining them hefty amounts, once evidence of this is collected in the CCTV, as spitting in public is not only a nuisance but can now help in spread of this disease. This is my personal opinion.

Design of my room online

I was searching online for ideas to design and decorate the house when I found this free online tool roomstyler.com where it was very easy to draw and visualise the room design.  There are readily available furniture which can be inserted in the rooms with the dimensions mentioned for each individual piece. The wall colours, flooring types all have provision to be inserted here. The camera can be positioned and renders a good 3D view of the room. The overall look and feel of the room can be planned and pricing be estimated.

Pic 1: Plan of Living and Dining area with the 3D view in top right corner

 Pic 2: 3D Visualisation of the Living and Dining Area

Pic 3: 3D Visualisation of the Dining area with camera panned to this area of the room

Pic 4: Plan view of the Master Bedroom occupied by 6 by 6 bed, wardrobes and dressing table

 Pic 5 : 3D View of the Master Bedroom with camera panned to bed area

 Pic 6 : Plan view of the second bedroom

 Pic 7: 3D View of the second bedroom

Pic 8: Plan view of the kitchen

Pic 9: 3D View of the kitchen

Deoghar Trip on 17-21Dec 2019

Deoghar is a holy city beside the Mayurakshi River, in the east Indian state of Jharkhand. The ancient Baba Baidyanath Temple complex is a significant Hindu pilgrimage site. There are many famous ashrams here. Anukul Thakur Satsang ashram, Swami Balananda ashram and Ramkrishna mission Ashram are some of the well known ashrams here. The town is small and picturesque. There are many budget hotels here and food is tasty and good. The climate and water is good for health. Very little pollution.

 Our Deoghar Trip was one which we almost cancelled, went at the nth hour, almost scared to death at arriving there but ultimately we had a single good day , returned safely and all in one piece. Our onward journey was almost cancelled the prevous day when we learned of the Howrah station trains being disrupted due to NRC-CAA ruckus. Thankfully we did not cancel it. The train was on time and we reached Deoghar on time. We reached the ashram were we were to stay. I had booked the tickets long ago as it was Ma's great wish to go there with us all. So though I had booked the forward and return journeys allright I did not search or book any hotel as I assumed we would be staying at the ashram for which we were primarily going. I was wrong here. Later came to know from my relatives that they all stay in hotels when they visit Deoghar. Ist mistake. 2nd mistake : Although we expected Deogarh to be cold in winter we didnt expect the intensity of the cold. The first night in the ashram it was so cold that we were all shivering under the thin single blankets even with sweaters and socks on  and could not sleep the whole night. Baba thought he would kick the bucket there itself. He had been made to walk almost for 1 hour after reaching the asram in order to get the rooms . At his age (82) we were all scared what would happen to him. I was scared stiff. Anyway, somehow we spent the night. Next morning first half was spent hunting for a hotel. Here Murphy's law once again proved itself. The hotels which we liked were all full or too expensive. The ones which were offered to us we rejected. After roaming through the city in an auto and visiting umpteen hotels we at last homed down on a hotel Shivam which had broken balconies, a lift which barely worked and geysers in the toilet which did not. It was an international hotel but without hot water. Seems a fire or short circuit had conked out the electrical power wiring. We took rooms in the hotel which we again had to change midway as there was no light in the toilet. After angry heated altercations with the staff during which they tried to stick us with the room allotted(without lights in the toilet) an we claiming that we would walk out of the hotel though we were all tired out we made a compromise at getting a bigger and better room at same price.

      Next day was a good one. We booked a car to go sightseeing. The weather was nice and sunny and we could visit Trikut pahar, cablecar ride, Tapovan and Baba Mandir. It was a good trip. We found a nice hotel in walking distance from the hotel where the meals were good. Our return journey was also nice with new train compartments. Baba proved to himself and to us that he was still fighting fit. So it was an eventful trip for us. On one day Shreya suddenly blew her fuse and had a huge quarrel with Dadu as to why he was switching on the room lights and waking everybody when she was feeling sleepy. That had nearly spoilt our second day as well, but she came around and we all went sightseeing together.