My first blog-hop!

Thanks mfdt for nominating my rather random blog for the blog hop! I am as much excited as surprised by this nomination :)

 So, about me..  I have been blogging for almost 8 years now. Didn't realise that so much time had passed till I actually wrote the last line! My first blog was for a specific period in life - when I was studying. And I promptly discontinued it when I stopped. I jumped from a life of a crazy college goer living in a big city, trying to do something good with myself into a completely different world, in the backwaters of this country, a place where I know noone, still trying to do something good.. failing a little, succeeding a little.. so i decided to document this strange but realistically real world and its happenings too through this blog. Its funny that after almost 7 years of starting this blog, its introduction still holds absolutely true!

Given that I write mainly about things that happen through/during work, I want to keep my anonymity intact. Suffice it to say that I'm a government servant. Ive grown up in different places due to my father's transferable job but I loved the variety it brought to my life. Unlike rest of my family, I have had a fairly cosmopolitan upbringing and I am thankful for that. I had always loved to read and play different sports in the past but not much now. 

 I look at mfdt and have been in awe of her versatility. Her ability to juggle her work her baby and all her hobbies and yet find time to read so voraciously amazes me.. I am pretty much the opposite. Since I started working, I have pretty much dropped all old hobbies and havent picked up any new ones, mainly due to my innate laziness I suppose. My time passes from work to my son to tv.

But yes! How can I forget, the one passion that still lives on is food. I am obsessed. I dont blog about it because this blog has a specific mandate. But I spend a lot of time surfing all these wonderful blogs on food. And watching Masterchef Australia! I started with cooking 4 all seasons  - I have spent many wonderful wonderful days in the kitchen in our jammu home making her biryanis and andhra mutton fry! from here on, i started exploring the world of food through many blogs such as  simplyrecipes.com , foodess.com, smittenkitchen.com, chefinyou.com tarladalal.com, yummytummyaarthi.com and so many more! What I love to do nowadays is surfing for food that my very picky son may like to eat and cooking for him. I think these days, the thing that makes my day is when i come home from a stressful tiring day at work and my son climbs into my lap and says in his cute just-begun-talking way that he wants cake! He associates certain things with certain people. So the first time he ate cake was when I baked one incidentally and ever since he associates cake with me alone. A cake baked by anyone else just isnt cake for him! So, now I keep trying out new things which he will like and associate with me and climb into my lap and ask me for!

Blogging has been a big part of my life because it feel therapeutic to write it all down, its a wonderful way to relive your past.. I still read some of my older posts with nostalgia and blogs are what keeps up my passion for cooking. Since this blog - hop is about passing on the spirit of sharing, I nominate pilani pictures , a blog of a friend turning into an author that I follow and aarthi from yummytummy because even though we dont know each other personally, her's is the blog I'm following religiously these days for her yum south indian food.

Reputations and their uneasy road to formation

Rough week. We all read so much about so many people in papers, on the Internet everyday. And we sit in our offices or couches or on the train or flight and make judgement calls on them. Sometimes in one sentence - all sarkari fellows are corrupt! Sometimes waxing eloquently to whoever is nearby about the depths of corruption we as a nation are drowned into, so on and so forth.. 

Today I feel sorry that I have been exactly like one of those people. I have no qualms, no guilty conscience, no sliver of doubt that I am a thoroughly and completely scrupulous officer. And I don't mean that in some compromised, oh-that-doesn't-include-such-and-such-thing manner. I am absolutely clean. Yet, I have been accused of many wrong doings in the papers - about not caring enough , of caring too much, of so many things..I learnt that its a part of the package deal that this job is.. and I'm still trying to get used to it.. skin gets a bit thicker each day.. But, I could not believe my eyes reading a  story on my "corruption". Couched beautifully in a nuanced way, without a direct liable attack and yet it was right there, pointing a finger at me. Since then the only buzz in town has been about 10 other possible ways that in which I could be corrupt. 

After dealing with all the emotions there are - from shock to anger to hurt to helplessness - I am left with just this question in my mind.. how many of those that we read about are like me? and why are people like the reporter above so hell bent on poisoning people's minds and breaking officers' morale? What possible good can come out of this?  For anyone - the reader or the reporter? 

What none of these guys realise is how tough it is. How god damn ******* tough. To be clean and to be seen as clean. And when you are able to carry it through, to be able to meet that standard of toughness day in day out, it makes you proud. Proud that you can wade through this flowing muck each day and yet not let dirty you. All it took was one piece of a devil's imagination to drown me under. I can get used to a lot of things I guess, but this is one thing I will never ever get used to. And I will never ever forgive or forget this. 

I don't know how many people read this blog. But if there's even one person and that person takes a pause next he/she reads such an article about someone, it would be worth it to write this painful experience down.