What's my song?

How many times have you found yourself humming a tune or singing a song but to your frsutration dont remember the title of the song? How often I have tried to google the lyrics trying to search for the song but with not such a great result.

Well, we now have Midomi to rescue. This innovative search site allows you to sing/hum a tune and it will search for the song for you! How cool is that!!!

Can't wait to get home and try it out!!

Update: I tried this out and it works pretty good. It did return songs to the tunes (or mis-tunes :P) that I hummed. And yeah, when I sang a Hindi song (which I knew was 'based' on an English tune), it did return the English song. Now you can how which songs inspires our Bollywood songs!

A surprise

Yesterday evening I got a call from V. Ok, I know I always get calls from him. Nothing special to blog about that, you'll say. But this one was different! He told me I had received a parcel from Oklahoma. Since I just moved, I still haven't changed my postal address officially, so I'm still get my mails in his address. I was completely zapped by his announcement. Even though I have loads of relatives spread all over US, I couldn't recollect my folks mentioning Oklahoma at all. So I hurried V to open up the parcel. I have to admit one thing though, the parcel was packed damn well! It took him quite a while to get it open! Inside the parcel was two things that I had wanted for a long time. Five Point Someone and One Night @ the Call Center by Chetan Bhagat. Immediately I knew who had sent me the lovely gift. It had to be none other than my dear friend Juneli! Juneli, thank you so much for the thoughtful gift. I'll get my hands on it this weekend. And I'm looking forward to reading your letter too :). I have been waiting to lie my hands on some book and now I got two! That too the ones I had been waiting to read for a long time! Whee!!

Saraswati Puja

Today we celebrate Saraswati Puja back home. I remember as a child this meant an easy way to appease the Goddess to get you good grades in school. Then, this time of the year, we would be enjoying our 2 months winter vacation with school far away from our minds. This day served as a nice reminder of carefree days soon getting over. As you all must be knowing, Goddess Saraswati is considered to be the Goddess of knowledge. We used to do puja of text books. Since we'd have a little less than a month before a new school year started, most of us didnt have school books (for the next year) with us. Lucky me always had my brother's hand me downs. Yellow is considered Godess Saraswati's colour, so we all try to wear yellow that day.

All these years away from home and after having stayed in Pune for 7 years, I had almost forgotton about this day. I had been suprised when during my 1st year in Pune, I realised they celebrate do the puja during Dushera. Even now my non-Sikkim friends find it strange that we celebrate the puja in Jan-Feb.

This year today is special for me and my family in a different way. We are all closely related to books, not only because all of us are very fond of reading, but we also own a bookshop which is lovingly taken care of by my brother. My Dad enjoys writing in his spare time. We have in the past organised book fairs/contests every year on this day. But more than that, today happens to be my late Grandfather's 90th birthday. Apart from the puja, we had a small gathering of relatives for murti staphna of my Grandad's newly sculpted marble bust. Late yesterday evening I came to know that today is also my parents marriage anniversary! Since we follow Nepali calendar, I never know when their anniversary is :(. On top of that, when I called up home I came to know that today is also my nani's eigth month death anniversary.

Lots of mixed emotions. All my relatives and family were together today back home. I always feel sad knowing I have missed so many such occasions. I know I should consider myself lucky than many people to have been home twice in a year and I do too. But these emotions are hard to check.

I wish you all Happy Saraswati Puja, whether you celebrate it today or some other day or not at all. I hope Ma Saraswati's blessings are always with you. May your knowledge grow by two folds and you use it wisely :)