Soundararajan P.P.

Every single place in India is just so overcrowded. - Want to go to a park? Hundreds are already there, not enough space. - Want to go to a temple? You won’t even get five minutes of peace. - Want to visit a hill station? Not a single hotel is available. - Same with Ladakh, Uttarakhand, and everywhere else. It feels like the calmest place is your own house.

Birdies and me nap together in afternoon.. 👶🐥 😴

We use the word "vanilla" to mean plain and boring. The real thing is the second most expensive spice in the world, beaten only by saffron, and it's so hard to make that about 99 times out of 100, the vanilla you're tasting is actually a fake, a single chemical cooked up in a factory from wood pulp or oil. Real vanilla, the kind scraped straight from a bean, packs more than 200 different flavors and smells into one pod. The one you've heard of, vanillin, is just the loudest note. A good scoop of real vanilla ice cream tastes deep and rounded because of all the quieter ones humming away underneath it. The cheap kind tastes flat because there is nothing playing under that top note. Vanilla is also the only orchid in the world that grows a fruit you can eat. Its flower opens for just one day a year, and someone has to pollinate it by hand within about twelve hours or no bean ever grows. Out in the wild, one kind of bee in Mexico was the only thing on Earth that could pull it off. So for more than three hundred years after the Spanish first carried vanilla home from Mexico, anyone who planted it somewhere else watched their vines flower right on schedule and grow nothing. The fix came in 1841 from a twelve-year-old boy named Edmond Albius, a slave on a small French island in the Indian Ocean. Using a thin splinter of wood and his thumb, he worked out how to lift a tiny flap inside the flower and press its two halves together by hand. That exact little motion is still how almost every vanilla bean outside Mexico gets made today. He didn't get his own freedom until France ended slavery seven years later. Even after the flower is pollinated, the bean sits on the vine for eight or nine months, then spends months more sweating and drying in the sun before it smells like anything. A fresh green pod has no scent at all. The vine itself takes about three years just to flower for the first time. Add it all up, and a single bean can carry years of work behind it, which is why one storm hitting Madagascar, where about 80 percent of the world's vanilla grows, can shove the price from around fifty dollars a kilo to six hundred. The real version was once treated as treasure. Aztec kings drank it stirred into their chocolate five hundred years ago, long before it ever reached a European kitchen. The flavor we now reach for whenever we mean plain and ordinary turns out to be one of the rarest, most back-breaking luxuries people have ever learned to grow.

This is the best I have written in my life. I hope you like it. THE SPIRIT OF INDIA I am the rhythm of the dhol and the whisper of the veena, I am the smile in Holi's colour, And the silence in your Diwali prayer, And bow with folded hands at Ajmer Sharif. I beat the drums in a tribal dance in Bastar, And recite verses from the Vedas under banyan trees, And fly kites across the sky on Makar Sankranti. I serve langar in golden bowls at Amritsar, And offer 'roze ka iftar' to my brother next door. I am the cheer of children in Shillong's monsoon, I sow rice in the fields of Tamil Nadu, I herd yaks in Arunachal... And fish in the deltas of Bengal. I dance Garba all night in Ahmedabad's courtyards. And whisper lullabies on a houseboat in Dal Lake. I chant on the ghats of Varanasi, And meditate in the caves of Ellora. I wear the lungi, the lehenga, the sherwani, the sari, I am the tilak, the chandan, the rudraksha and the rosary. I write in Marathi, think in Bengali, sing in Kannada, And dream in all the tongues of my land. I am the army fighter's cry in the borders. The farmer's hope in Vidarbha. I build software in Bengaluru, And craft poetry in Kolkata cafes. I race camels in Rajasthan's sands. I am not one. I am many. I am contradiction and harmony. I am the one who prays, and the one who protests. I am youth, I am age. I am ancient, and I am tomorrow. I walk through every temple gate and every church aisle, Every dargah door and gurdwara corridor. I am welcomed everywhere with 'aadaab', 'pranam', ‘vanakkam' and 'namaste'. I am the spirit of India.

Without naming anyone, share the best and worst thing about Tax Profession, Finfluencers, Portals etc.

life hacks every man should learn and do at least once a year 1. wake up early on a saturday and take yourself out for breakfast. dress clean, smell good, go somewhere calm and order a proper meal. no rush, no pressure. just sit, eat slowly and enjoy the moment. take a few selfies too even if you usually don’t. 2. book a decent hotel room in your city for one night. nothing too expensive, just comfortable. carry a small bag like you’re escaping life for a bit. order food, take a long shower, put your phone away for some time and rest properly. learn that peace is the luxury. 3. take yourself to the cinema alone. buy popcorn. pick the exact seat you actually want. think deeply, laugh hard, cry if you need to, feel whatever you feel, no one talking to you. just you and the movie. 4. go to a café on a weekday, order a drink and a small pastry. sit by the window and face your phone down for a bit. watch people going to work, students rushing, cars passing, birds singing, children playing, just life moving in that pace. 5. take yourself somewhere peaceful outdoors. maybe a park, a quiet road, a waterfront or anywhere with fresh air. walk slowly with music in your ears or just enjoy the silence. clear your head a little. 6. learn to genuinely enjoy your own company, brother. if you can be happy alone, you become harder to break, harder to pressure and harder to control. 7. enjoy yourself man. come on, you need it, you deserve it. save and bookmark this share to men who needs the reminder buena suerte 👍

Hit me with the darkest Political conspiracy theory you know !!