known unknowns

There ain't no such thing as a free lunch...

2010-08-21T19:13:00.005+05:30

...but there always is a free ride, atleast on campus.

Its been a month (and running...) since I shifted out of home, Bangalore to Men's Hostel 'J'-Room No. 113,South Campus(affectionately called 'The Village'), University of Hyderabad -home for the next couple of years. The first thing that welcomed me as soon as I landed at the hostel was an open door to my allegedly allotted room, bereft of the mandatory fittings of a single steel cot and a Malaysia wood-topped desk. Since class started in half an hour investigations into the current state of my room was postponed to a later time. After quickly dumping my bags in the adjacent room, ablutions completed, I proceeded to trek the distance of 4.5km to the School of Social Sciences. Having located the class, I walked through the doors to my preferred seat in any class environment-the last bench. A sweeping survey of the faces of fellow classmates left me a tad disappointed and much older. The average age of the class should hover around 22 I guess and here was a bearded, fast receding hair lined student of 25 (I have been asked if I was married and was a father 4 years back!), vigourously swabbing his face and neck post the excruciating half hour walk trying to locate a seat in the back, right below the fan. It was only later while establishing credentials with some of the classmates (I still do not know a majority of them, plain laziness and more so disinterestedness to blame)that a girl sheepishly mentioned that the first row of students (invariably girls, though that trend has changed in the one month since) attempted to stand up as soon as I entered confusing me for a professor! A lot of other people I meet around the campus feel surprised that I am pursuing a masters, they naturally assume I am an M.Phil or PhD student. Be still my creaking bones...

Post classes, investigations were afoot to determine the cause behind my furniture-less room. A quick word with the hostel in-charge later I was assured that there was no foul play and that the original room which was on the ground floor was reserved for physically handicapped students and that I was allotted a room on the first floor. Further investigations revealed that my room-mate had replaced the original lock, before heading home after admissions and would be back only a week later. I shifted in temporarily into the room opposite- 114, which thankfully still had not been robbed of its cot. Purchases to set up room- bucket, mug, mattress, washing powder, et al. made I settled in comfortably, deviously grinning to myself that the whole room was mine, when most others had 3 students in residence. The weekend ensued. I continued to wait for my room-mate. The following Tuesday, I returned as usual to the temp room at around 12:00AM (with little else to do in the room apart from stare out the window at the enshrouding darkness, the main campus with its attractions of a shopping complex, canteens, classes[but naturally], library and the venerated 'Gops'- the quintessential melting pot of food, conversation and general hang out on the campus [fossilised souls who have spent years on campus opine that ~~with the departure of Gopal, the man who lent his name to the eponymous gathering spot~~, 'Gops' has lost its charm. Apologies! I stand corrected. Gopal still occupies the store, nevertheless the captivation eludes, I believe reminiscing always makes you yearn for the good ole days] necessitates that you return to 'the village' as late as you can) to find someone else had converted it into their permanent room. I also noticed that my allotted room was not locked up and a tube light streamed from below the door. Quickly having explained and clarified the situation with my new neighbours I shifted in officially into 113. They had packed my belongings in a haphazard manner into my bags and neatly rolled up my mattress, though the case of a missing towel still remains a mystery.

I did not invoke the phrase popularised by Milton Freidman in vain. The prospect of walking 4.5km from the hostel to class and back again in the night with a good 3-4km stretch covered during the day in various short saunters around campus though a healthy option, especially for people of my slightly rotund disposition, can leave one tired and without energy for much else. The late night trek back in the fading moonlight is an ideal setting for some romance to flourish, but considering that the only residents in the direction of the south campus are men and largely sanitised international students, not to belittle my social skills (the first one week on campus was magically delightful thanks to Ms. T)I generally plod back in silent soliloquy. Unless of course you hitch your thumb out and wave an approaching vehicle down. Students generally halt be it on their bikes or bicycles. I generally do not bother the latter, though a couple of them have kindly offered to take me (though they offered to drop me only because they expected me to decline in the first place needs to verified). On one occasion the tables were turned quickly and I had to pitch in on the pedals while the offerer peacefully settled on the carrier. Official looking people, noticed by their smug faces, white shirt- unbuttoned at the chin till halfway down their gullet and strangely buttoned up at the cuffs can be a bothersome tribe. They do not slow down near you, but a few metres ahead of you and then make a strange gesticulation involving the left hand and head indicating they are not headed in your direction. There are exceptions to the rule though. Cars are a strict no-no on the hitch-hiking list. Ambulances can come in handy and one afternoon I was speedily transported from the village to the shop-comm on a stretcher, sitting, thankfully and not lying on it. Tractors too come handy, especially if it has a trailer attached. Ignore the mud and grime, but hang on for dear life when he takes the sharp turn to the right on the last gentle knoll leading to the village, light grips could land you on the road or even worse the stream running at its margins.

Conversation and experiences are never low in supply. Political Science being my subject I find the politics of the people around me more interesting. The campus is so small when it comes to gossip that if someone sneezes in south campus, the rest of the people all around should know of it by the end of the day. Politicking of the various student wings are restricted to poster-sticking and occasionally a protest march from the shop-comm to the admin block. Talks ranging from Kashmir Killings to the Telangana issue pop up on a daily basis. While fresh unwrecked minds could be brain-washed my cynicism protects me like a wall from such demagogic talk. Or maybe its my ignorance and sustained attempt to remain ignorant. In class too there is hardly a moment when Maoism, Hindutva, ideology and other such profanities is not called upon. Sides are made fast with the left oriented appearing to be in majority for now. Sometimes they appear very school like in their attitude with instances of clarifying doubts just for the sake of it, repeatedly coming up with an opposing angle to a particular subject and then looking back at his/her cohorts and sniggering, all attempts at one-up-manship- for what? Then there is the other issue of hiding books in complete disrespect to the Dewy Decimal system to prevent others from reading those particular books! I have decided I am here to learn and not take sides. Question everything and work on the reasons at the root of things

For someone who has spent all his life so far at home, the campus offers wonders- unrestricted freedom topping that list of wonders. Biting into a shawarma at 3:30 AM while strains of Uday Bhawalkar's sonorous voice stream from the open doors of the auditorium- I haven't tasted a better shawarma so far. Walking shoulder to shoulder down the stairs of Mayuri Bar with autorickshaw drivers post a session of MC whiskey and Congress mixture and top that off with a healthy serving of beef biryani at Kalyani Restaurant (though not as enticingly juicy as the beef doled in Khazana, Johnson Market, Bangalore.)Washing clothes is a completely new feeling when you land at the room at 12AM to realise they have been soaking in the bucket below the cot since the previous night. The mess remains my greatest enemy on campus for serving highly proteinicious food, read as dal, dal and more dal. Meals is very simply rice, some dal curry which masquerades as sambhar and a rather decent rasam. The highlight of the meal is the chutney and small portion of vegetables which features on your plate. The loos reek a distinct smell of dal post meals, pungent and nasal-hair destroying- making you ponder on the digestive abilities of the fellow mess-mates. "Please sir, can I have some more?" will probably never feature on your thoughts during lunch or dinner. Facing a full day can be heartbreaking when one stuffs voluntarily a whole portion of a sour rice garnished with groundnuts and topped with an even sourer chutney for breakfast. And so on and so forth.

A strange feeling of being disconnected arises though, specifically since I lack a laptop at the moment. The joys of trawling the net unrestricted, are to be postponed till I purchase a laptop and also till the LAN connections are open in the hostel. As of now I have seen trenches being dug to lay the lines, but given that its a central university, it might take a full semester or a year for the lines to become functional. For now I battle with slow ancient machines, waiting for five seconds before the full word which I type appears on screen. The battle is extended to students too during the day when it becomes impossible almost to sit down at a free system.

I switch off most times when jargon erupts during conversations. The deconstruction of the post-modernist cognitive perspective of the moral and social fabric evidenced in 'biped featherless chicken'-and I would probably excuse myself feigning a crick in my left little toe that needs to be attended to at the earliest, with an equal earnestness to will a large object like a grand piano or Fort Knox safe falling on the said person or being slowly gnawed away by birds or better still ants while the person lies awake, witnessing himself being cleaned to the bone without the powers to shoo them away- ok that might be slightly over the top, but an academic atmosphere does not mean conversing in such rarefied language. Thankfully the people I have got know better over the last month don't fit into such categories. Higher stuff will eventually start spouting from me too, but right now I need to solidify my base in the social sciences. As the Deep Purple song goes the next two years will be to-"Listen, learn, read on".

There is probably more stuff to add to this post, but-
a) I cant remember
b) I am too tired and lazy to remember...for now,
Ching ching!

On Reading, Writing and the Internet

2010-05-27T00:25:00.016+05:30

The last few months have been spent in preparations for a few entrance tests. Preparations have predominantly been reading, reading and more reading. Given the obvious part of reading up for tests the other half of the preparations should, also in retrospect, have been a liberal dose of writing-in long hand, the pen and paper variety. The prospect of writing continuously for three hours, ideas brimming one after the other, mentally making a note to include point (a) and then suddenly realising that I am already at point (e) made me wish I had an 'enter' button to add on a few lines of space. At other times while throwing a frantic line for the precise name of a treaty or date of an event, the ease with which one could Google it made me let out a low whimper akin to a dog unsuccessfully searching for a buried bone.

After four years of not having done any serious writing on ruled exam paper, apart from general doodling during official meetings and a couple of notes to potential paramours (neither were too well received), those three hours on two separate occasions, on alternate days were seriously painful. There was a visible depression on the tips of the right thumb and the index finger and it required vigorous twirling and coaxing before any semblance of life returned to the numb digits.

Reading on the other hand is more passive. Well not exactly if you are studying for an exam where it is required of you to read, understand and conceptualise it for later to tackle a question and derive a suitable answer which can lead you to a seat in a particular university. (At least that's the end of my recent bout of preparations.) It has been rather enjoyable given the style of some of the author's who I have been reading. Some are dead (literally too, bless their souls) in their approach to the subject as well as metaphors rendering the books unreadable.

Which leads me to the internet. With its vast all encompassing web, it throws you such a wide variety of voices which makes reading exciting and at the same time enervating. Exciting because of the rich multimedia, the different schools of thought and style, the ability to cross-refer and the beauty of hyper-links and algorithmically generated related and relevant subjects. Suddenly you think, "Oh!I am so enlightened now." There is so much information I have gathered, which is when the enervation sets in. The information glut begins to sap you.

Most times with hyperlinks et al, I have atleast 10 tabs open varying from currently an article on how urban sculptures can clean the air we breathe to the death of publishing. I haven't read them in detail still. I hope to soon as I finish posting this. At the same time Echofon pops Twitter updates from the hundred odd users I follow.

Most of my reading on the net is now highly based on recommendations or links which these users post on my time-line. With selective following it gives me a veritable smorgasbord of all the required reading for the day. In the time I started writing out this post forty tweets have appeared, ten of which have links with what I deem necessary reading. And so the process continues, with many more tabs opened until I end up a nervous wreck battling between a need for the next fix of information and almost drowning in a digital deluge. Until I find a quick fix solution- the 'power off' switch and curl up on bed with a peeling, musty smelling paperback. Or even better an Indrajal comic inherited from my father.

The web has certainly changed the way people read and write and most definitely the way we analyse information. Like contemplating to swap the newspaper for his Twitter stream on the pot. Potty pips apart, it gives a better platform to connect both readers as well as writers. It also gives you complete freedom on what you want to state. Feedback comes almost instantaneously. And the best part- its in the public domain, making the net easily the most democratising factor in today's society. Technology and the net empowers people. It also gives a renewed coat of strength to Francis Bacon's signature- "Scientia potentia est"- "For also knowledge itself is power".

P.S.- Continuing on the hyperlinked reading style that most above average internet users have adopted, I forgot to mention about the Google Reader. Half day of neglect and the stuff you think has to be read, clogs the whole system up. Return from a holiday sans the internet and more than the pending inbox (now that I am unemployed it doesn't affect me much)the 'Unread' list on Reader gives me the jitters. The immense pleasure derived from marking unread to read is something else as Nitin Pai explains here. In case where the reading runs in lengths unfathomable for my level of reading interest at that moment I just Read It Later, whenever I find the time and the interest. With the continuously dropping attention spans most times its-Never.

P.P.S.-On a slightly related note, I just don't seem to not stop hyper-linking up. Here is Robert Fisk on the death of 'deep reading' and the political power-media nexus.

Image Credit- Peter Steiner via The New Yorker.

Kayal Calling

2010-04-21T01:12:00.013+05:30

The sun breaks the dawn as the temple bells begin to chime. I look at the time and turn to the other side cursing the devotees. Soon the resident geese honk and join the merry clanging of the bells. It’s time to get out of bed. I step onto the patio outside the bamboo cottage as the geese flap out their wings and walk single file to the pond slightly away from the cottage. There are other birds, storks being the easily identifiable ones, flying past. The early bird catches the worm as they say, or presumably fish- from the kayal. I needed breakfast...

The steaming puttu and kadala curry, pappadam powdered by hand into the mix, is decimated in a trice. Our first objective for the day is set- locate a retired merchant navy captain, K. U. Crispin, owner of the eponymous kettuvallom, the quintessential experience of the Vembanad. A short jaunt down the jetty and the canal snakes towards the big lake, women washing clothes and vessels on either side. A blind turn reveals the canal chock-o-block with kochu valloms- dwarf snake boats, some carry vegetables, others fish- a veritable gliding grocery shop and even others carry what was explained later to be sludge, apparently good for cementing houses; and a host of kettuvalloms in shapes, services and storeys that would suit budgets from us (read middle class) to former Prime Ministers of India. St.Crispin hides behind a huge double decker, Kottayam Kunchachchan eye-catchingly noticeable because of its enticing bar, an array of the best tipples on its upper deck display. Ret. Capt. Crispin (his parents and later him are ardent devotees of the saint, interestingly the saint had a twin brother, Crispinian and together are the patron saints cobblers, tanners and other members of the leather sub-culture) is counting crisp new 500 rupee notes as we board and the guests from the previous night bid him farewell.

Having spent practically every summer vacation listening to the wind whispering in the coconut fronds, downing tender water from the nut by the dozens, gazing at green paddy fields and experiencing various other sensory soothing balm qualities in Kerala; we weren't enthused by the idea of doing the same by day and night atop a kettuvallom. Besides, a 24 cruise, a majority of it anchored in the middle of the Vembanad, the authorities prohibit kettuvalloms from plying the waters from early evening to just after dawn, would have set us back clean by 15,000 Indian monies. A chat on how he set sail on the kayal in late 2008 after having seen enough of the high seas later he heads home for a short nap before his next ‘full day-night’ cruiser couple arrive, leaving us in the company of the affable Sunil, the pilot; Rahul, the deck hand and an Old Man Mozz-esque achchayan (my fading memory is responsible for not remembering his name) who runs the kitchen on board St.Crispin.

Guided by poles in the safe hands of Old Man Mozz and Rahul and gentle coaxing of the brand new Yamaha engine we putter past other kettuvalloms getting readied for their next batch of occupants. At the meeting point with the outer reaches of the Vembanad where the canal ends many a local youth and a couple of septuagenarians stand on the concrete pier awaiting their dose of eye feasting on the bare white skins of phoren madamas. Our feasting (a precursor to the spread being prepared at our heritage home-Tharavadu) begins with a bunch of poovan pazham. Sunil who hails from near-by Vechoor soon takes us past the waterfronts of the 5 star and boutique variety hotels with snazzy jacuzzis that overlook the banks of the Vembanad. While a lone electric blue kingfisher flits across the surface, successfully having mouthed his lunch, Sunil explains how the kettuvallom industry is only close to two decades old. With the road connections to the three bordering districts- Alappuzha, Ernakulam and Kottayam, improving drastically during the 80’s and early 90’s it became uneconomical to ply boats, leaving the boat-owners to either move out to the coast to take up fishing or change their lines of business. An enterprising few however decided to redesign their boats to look like mansions on water and welcome the cash rich tourist to the veritable experience of the Vembanad.

We pass vast paddy fields which are actually below the level of the kayal, which is at sea level, and need to be pumped out during seasons of plenty to avoid the crops from getting damaged. Infact a majority of the fields were reclaimed from the kayal. Sunil’s free hand cuts an arc into the horizon to demarcate one of the richest achchayan’s (name escapes me again) fields. Like most other rich agriculturalists he too escaped much of the wrath of EMS and his Communist brethren during the Land Ceiling days of yore aided by his vast siblings, cousins and other blood brothers. He even had a church built bang in the middle of a field, so that his labourers could get back to work immediately after service!

Vembanad, herself is an undulating, sheer glazy green, dotted with hyacinth and the occasional vallam in any direction the eyes gaze. At some point, having lost ourselves in our thoughts of the emerald expanse below, we realise we are floating back on the canal that leads to the municipal boat jetty.

Our appetites perky, we head to Tharavadu, in the process passing by what the locals call “Pambu”- a drunk, splayed on the ground, occasionally attempting serpentine movement in the direction of his home or ultimate destination- in all probability the next TASMAC parlour. Kerala has the highest incidence of alcoholism anywhere in India; the papers carried an article the next day of how Chalakkudy district topped its previous record of drunken revelry on Christmas Eve, a record it apparently breaks annually.

On the spur of the moment we decide to lunch in Alappuzha and then explore the place. The road curves over tiny canals, the bigger ones away from the town have a few kettuvalloms ready to head out into the kayal and then we pass over the immense Thanneermukkom salt water barrier, which prevents the salt water from entering into the Kuttanad lowlands. The divide is clear- brackish sea water on one side, in clear contrast to the clean jade of the river-fed Vembanad.

Alappuzha, after the serene Kumarakom, is a hot and overcrowded town built around canals, which are mostly covered in water hyacinth. Though we didn’t have much time to explore the Venice of the East, (it being half past three by the time we drove into Alappuzha) we hurriedly down a rather late lunch comprising of toast, scrambled eggs, cutlets and cold coffee at the Indian Coffee House opposite the Beach. A mandatory photo session among the sand and waves later we are headed towards Ambalappuzha, famed for its Krishna Temple and more interestingly for me the prasadam offered- the famous paal-payasam. Legend has it that Krishna himself, in the guise of a sage, challenged the king of the land to a game of chess. The prize the king had to pay if defeated was ‘a few grains’ of rice which was to be laid on the chess board in a particular order- one grain on the first square, two on the second, four on the third, and so forth with each square adding grain worth twice the previous square. The king readily agreed and unsurprisingly lost. On realising the geometric progression involved in the scheme of the prize, the king panicked, naturally, considering the final figure would empty not only his but his neighbour’s granaries many times over. The ever-pardoning Krishna reveals his true form and in probably the first case of a financial reconciliation- agrees to aid the king with an installment scheme; viz. a promise to serve paal-payasam to devotees daily till the debt is paid-off. Presumably the debt was paid off by the time we reached there, for we did not receive any. It was indeed, since it is apparently dished out only in the mornings. Being wary of temples apart from the architecture, myth and history behind them the only thing that interested me was the mizhavu used by Kunjan Nambiar, the satirist poet who invented and popularised thulllal.

The sun was lowering itself into the western horizon, setting the sky ablaze as we approached the banks of the lake Punnamada. Our object of interest: the centuries old black granite statue or at least the half that remains of the Buddha. Karumadikuttan as he is locally known is covered by a small concrete stupa and a pathway leads away from the stupa to the banks, across which lie what in the late evening sunlight look like fields of gold. Buddhism was a prominent religion in Kerala circa 200 B.C. to 800 A.D. until the revival of Hinduism under renewed royal patronage. Why exactly was only one half shorn of the statue remains a question as we drive back to Kumarakom.

As promised earlier in the day a feast awaits us at Tharavadu. Raw rice, a spicy sambar liberally filled with the delicious small onions, a carrot-beans-cabbage thoran (finely diced vegetables stir fried with grated coconut and assorted spices), the ubiquitous yet meal completing flared pappadam, avial, a beetroot pachchidi (again grated coconut plays an important role with thin strips of beetroot curried in curd) and the protagonist in the symphony being played out on the table- karimeen pollichathu, a double my palm sized roasted pearl spot fish brought straight out of the kayal earlier in the day onto my plate in a banana leaf. Feasting complete, there is little else to do but reflect on the true nature of happiness (something which I was experiencing contentedly at that precise moment) on the bamboo chairs of the portico outside our room. A late onset of mosquitoes, aided by general lethargy prompts us to vacate the chairs and seek the comfort of the bed.

We were advised the previous evening to be ready by early morning for a walk at the bird sanctuary adjacent to the Taj Garden Retreat. Considering the heavy meal hanging in our digestive systems it took a while before we threw off the final vestiges of drowsiness and bought our tickets for the walk. Enveloped in an incessant chirping of crickets and other insects we were warned of not sighting much since it was not the breeding season. Our twitching antennas raised we kept a keen look out for any sight of feathers and beaks. Instead, we cut across a thick copse of tropical trees and bushes with overhanging creepers and bridges over shallow pools looking much like what Ophelia could have drowned in. After covering the circuitous path we encountered- two cormorants, a muster of storks on the far end of the Vembanad which bordered the sanctuary and three men in kurta-pajamas out for their morning constitutional.

After sufficiently fortifying our cells with some fluffy palappams and coconut milk it is time to settle dues and be headed out. We pass the Bay Island Driftwood Museum and decide to give it a miss due to time constraints to accommodate visits to the Vaikom Shiva Temple, the eye of the storm of the Vaikom Satyagraha of 1924-25; a host of relatives in Ernakulam and then onward to Trichur, our base-camp.

All the while on our kayal sojourn we complained of the heat and how the rains could have eased the temperature as well as enhanced the ethereal beauty of the Vembanad and its interlinked eco-system. That evening while driving on the highway from Ernakulam to Trichur-it finally rained- by the ‘vallom’ loads! Maybe I shall return to gaze upon the Vembanad under the reign of the monsoon magic. Soon...

Images 1, 3,5 and 8 credit: Vandana Nenmni (fellow traveler and sister)

Spool's out and in again

2010-04-04T15:05:00.007+05:30

A little box in a translucent black, white or grey with blank strips across its dual faces to fill in neat minute hand-writing is probably my earliest visual memory of music. (I remember my father's LP and EP collections, especially the broad and colourful covers, but that was something which was strictly out of bounds for inquisitive yet destructive toddlers) A black magnetic tape (with immense powers to attract one) hangs loosely between two spools. A light tap on the side to make sure there are no loose loops - a pen rotated around one of the spools to doubly make sure - locked into the safe cavernous desk of a National Panasonic mono-speaker - just push play. Scratchy sounds greet you as the ticker starts to count like a very slow slot machine minus the fruit pictures, before the music emanates and envelopes you.

The National Panasonic was sold to my mother's tailor (it presumably still entertains him and his troupe) and a BPL Stereo came in. Later everyone was talking about the quality of sound and the experience of a CD and that was something we audiophiles cannot resist. So out went the black BPL with plain dual speakers and in came a silver hulky looking Philips with a CD/DVD and of course the cassette player. Over the last few years music has predominantly been of the downloaded variety which is played over the computer system or on the move on my phone.

One reason - convenience,better sound quality and other technicalities apart - for the cassette player being ignored was the squeaky heads of the dual cassette desks that were running faulty or so we were led to believe by the local technician. Our repeated cleaning of the head unit with cotton and a tinge of after shave did not solve the problem. A month or so later the squeaky sounds magically vanished, but not for long. Months of dust gathering by the cassette unit later we called the Philips service centre who immediately sent home a uniformed technician with a huge bag of tools. After opening the bag much like a doctor from the Victorian times visiting a home to attend to a delivery, the uniformed man deftly located a pair of pincers, some cotton and demanded any kind of spirit available in the house. Aftershave being the only available spirit was promptly handed over which was used to douse the small cotton wad. Soon he was wrist deep into the cassette player deck, twisting and prodding, teasing out what looked like dust and grime from when Knopfler had sailed to Philadelphia. Half an hour of such sound dusting and 200 bucks richer the technician left, a bright, resuscitated cassette player in our midst.

As I mentioned over the last few years it has been only listening to music online or offline after downloading it. Thats easy. Playing music too, is easy and mechanical. Ctrl F and run through albums, enqueue songs and press play. Cassettes on the other hand involve a lot more, hand-eye-mind coordination. It takes a while in hunting down the exact song you want to listen to especially if you have nearly a thousand cassettes to burrow through to find that epiphanic album. Cassettes have the romantic ability to escape your scanning eyes for a long while and then sticking out just a bit on that left corner of the highest shelf almost out of reach. But only almost...

Cassettes also have that immensely pleasure giving quality of jumping at you point blank when you are least expecting them. Thats exactly what happened earlier this morning. While searching for a recorded version of Zappa's "Joe's Garage", the Saint
manifested himself, eyes meditatively closed, leaning slightly forward, fingers taut, lips pursed around the reed with Giant Steps. After that it was pure bliss...A Spiral.

Image via David Airey

For more magnetic tape memories go here.

'King'size shopping the Big B Way

2010-03-18T22:57:00.006+05:30

The spring cleaning bug made a mighty bite into the family sans the sister earlier this week. The Great Indian Exchange Mela is on at that temple of new age middle class consumerism- Big Bazaar (henceforth BB). Their clarion call to convert even garbage into money drives most bargain hunting (minus the haggling) households into a frenzy of hunting down everything worth dumping except maybe that family heirloom which the mother-in-law passed onto her son in the hope that it bypasses the daughter-in-law and will without much other familial cartography be bestowed on his only girl at her marriage in the near future, unless there is a crafty mistress who has attacks of attention deficit disorder prompting the son to appease her with that very dusty heirloom. Ah well, possible Star One, ZEE TV, (insert your preferred marathon family saga television series network here) scripts apart a lot of families do indeed spend quality (excuse the dust and rising tempers on what is dump-worthy or not moments) time together cleaning out attics, investigating suitcases filled with what looked like gifts from the parents wedding, tearing apart cardboard boxes hoarding dinner ware from a different era, shedding a tear over a prematurely retired Snow Job (I had a fascinating collection of GI Joe play figures, most of which was later given away to a younger relative, with much grief despite having achieved a mature facade with a french beard and a job in the financial services sector) after his leg got disengaged in combat between a door caught in the wind. The official story for the minor lachrymal precipitation is however the dust and grime which had a strange knack of attacking the eyes whenever I was in the vicinity of the boxes/suitcases.

Such sterilising activities also can lead to a catharsis of sorts. Two full boxes on being dumped out were found to contain trophies collected over the academic years: 2000-2006 for all kinds of non-academic pursuits ranging from music, drama, quizzes, mock business scenario events to shockingly dance! Metal, plastic, wood were all summarily boxed back and eventually found themselves on the scales at BB, gone in a trice at 25 bucks a kilo! Now while I sit typing this out- a certain sense of nostalgia creeps in. Memories start bouncing like dashing cars inside my brain of the final buzzer that gave us those essential five point lead to trump the favourites at a quiz in Vijaya College, the waltzing steps which led to me being awarded the Most Outstanding Dancer of the Evening (me?! of the minimal ass wiggle under extreme duress after a few knocks of the tipple), a first prize trophy which was mistakenly awarded for a second place sneaked back home unknown to the oganisers. All gone. In all probability, they should land at some trophy maker's factory, melted and remoulded into awarding someone more deserving than me for having abandoned them. But I have never felt a deep attachment for such things apart from rejigging my memory for anecdotes over drinks/dinner with friends or for the blog. Maybe 20 years from now this spring cleaning might evince a greater feeling to kick myself in the behind, but the memories will remain, suffice I am not downed by those whatchacallthems- I forget...
If you too have forgotten they are what they call age related diseases including Alzheimer's and dementia.

Having arrived at BB post dealing with all the above, the actual process of the exchange starts. A common occurrence at all these events is the snaking queue. Add the sneaky, hoity-toity, God! This is gonna take a while glances, the others behind you give you after they notice the semi-truck load of stuff you plan to exchange for some slips of paper and you begin to wonder if it was worth the trouble to drive all the way from Cambridge Layout to the BB on Old Madras Road. To tell you the truth it wasn't but I had to humour the family! Besides the kitchen was bereft of baked/fried/powdered/salted snacks, cheese and such life saviours. Aperitifs sadly didn't make the list.

Then the weighing began. While the process was on I took a quick scan of the surrounding hills of stacked newspapers, bottles, rusted cans, chairs minus the backrest, bald tyres, a broken commode! A slight satisfactory smile creased my lips- our slightly more than Bantamweight waste did not include broken WCs! Now at this point I would like to explain to all readers who are not aware of the conditions that apply to the BB exchange- after having allocated coupons depending on the value per kilo and total kilos handed over at the exchange counter, shoppers-to derive maximum benefit of the coupons must purchase four times the value of the aforementioned coupons worth of goods at BB over a specific period of time. This effectively translates to a flat 25% off on your total purchases, but on the bright side you can purchase more items which you will not need in a year's time which can be converted into coupons again that can get you more stuff. Kishore Biyani and team have a neat racket running round here.

Coupons handed over, the next leg of the adventure was about to begin. Being some what veterans at this game we braced ourselves for the amount that had to be purchased for the maximum benefits- suffice to say Bantamweight translates to 51kg - 54kg! After a hurried recco of items I might require I retire to the ground floor where my aforementioned necessities are stacked. I quietly fill the trolleys with the requirements and inform the famliy that I shall be waiting near billing counter number 14. Three hours of laborious struggle over four floors, groceries piled into three trolleys, clothes and shoes/sandals for the rest, 10,000 odd points gathered on mobile Jumble game while waiting for the family to return after their peregrinations, a cheese croissant and soya stuffed puff thrown in to revitalise the dying cells, dirty glances from a couple with 2 cans of diet coke and a couple of cups of flavoured curd behind us in the queue, purchases billed later we take five to take stock of how much more shopping to be done the next time. Again, suffice to say there is more, much much more in the pipeline in aiding increased stock valuations of the Future Group.

PS: While trawling old photo folders I came across this, something which will be more than just an image or a memory. The only trophy on display in the drawing room, gold plated, the value which was announced that night when we won it escapes me now, but something in the range slightly more than a quarter G. Ah, for nights like those again.
Below: V and me circa Feb 2006.

PPS: The second trip to BB ended with an electronic upgrade in the drawing room. Out went the 21" Philips and in came this:

Its an LG 26" LCD. Visually speaking Life's indeed Good.

Reply:

2010-03-13T15:38:00.000+05:30

Absence makes the mind wander
A heart or two drawn asunder
Messages and mails make me wonder
Could there be days fonder?

Fashion is bad for you

2010-03-12T14:16:00.004+05:30

Because I and most likely most boys of my age in their formative years were denied a healthy, unhypocritic sex education, our resort at better understanding of the fairer sex was taken up by Michel Adam and his team at Ftv. Hmmm...thats just an excuse for my voyeuristic tendencies. Though I had a late awakening (cable took a while in entering my household) many nights were spent in the drawing room on the pretext of burning the midnight oil for approaching exams. Under the fat BS Raman text books were neatly camouflaged Grishams and Higgins, which would eventually be put away sharp at 00:00 hours for some visual feasting sponsored by Midnight Hot. I wouldn't say it was my first sight of minimalism, but it did develop a short lived lively interest in haute couture. My philosophy in fashion sustains though, since those early easily influenced days- summers are for minimalism and all seasons for all things pretty and beautiful.

Now, Ambika Soni and the team at the I&B Ministry decide that a whole generation of teenagers raging hormones and all will have to be bereft of the coming of age ritual of tuning into Ftv for their daily fix of titillation for the next 10 days! Obviously there is the internet which has various sources to bypass the I&B order. But it just doesn't match up to watching it on TV in mute, ears perked to approaching feet, index finger twitching on the next channel button on the remote, in anticipation of someone entering the room.

Apart from nipping bright Bals/Valayas/et al in the bud it is also a strong indictment that watching fashionable things trotting down a ramp is a crime! In that case wouldn't it be even grievous a crime to broadcast shows like MTV Roadies, Big Boss and such? Oh, that's reality focused programing delving into human emotions under duress, a social experiment. Excellent! Repeated news flashes of Nityananda's friskiness did not cause a shut down of news channels? That would be termed social awareness I guess.

So why cant we choose what we want to watch? Because the I& B guys think "The visuals were found to be obscene, denigrating women and were not suitable for children and unrestricted public exhibition." There is absolutely no denigration of the woman or child as is the case in pornography, in fact it is more like a method of advertising your ware to potential clientele. And its perfect viewing for children in their talkative teenage prime. Have you noticed how they turn quiet when a modestly dressed woman appears on TV? Hell, most adults also do!

This suppressed hypocritical moral policing will continue in the name of saving the child from culture which is clearly anti Indian, more so anti Bharatiya Nari- until maybe the I&B guys do a workshop with Mr. Howard Stern or more locally maybe Nityananda himself.

A Morning Beat

2010-03-11T23:15:00.003+05:30

Key turned right. Choke pulled up. Petrol tap down. A gentle kick and a deep throated thump emanates, shattering the early morning quietude. A gentle nudge from the right toe and I glide out of the neighbourhood, sadistically pleased that the aerobics instructor lady (attemptee) will now be wide awake. She must have got back home a couple of hours back. HA! WAKEY WAKEY!

The throttle is slowly released as I settle into the saddle, palms caressing the handles, as I reassure my black and silver stallion. The chrome tank, shiny (I spent most of last evening wiping it, hawing steam from the mouth for the final glint) winks occasionally under the street lamps. I move up to second and quickly into third as the road widens, it welcomes me like a long lost friend. Sandwich boards whizz past like a toned down version of the Wachowski Speedracer. The needle advances beating a steady time. The black tarmac shines like a coiled cobra.

Islands of sodium luminescence vandalise the sooty morning. Barreling ahead on fourth the wind bites into my eyes. What started as a low moan is now a frenetic wail. Tears stream down, cool on the face. Every cell is active, alert, lucid, waiting...

Through this thunderous gallop, however, a strange calmness envelopes me. The seething rage extinguished, insecurities thrown to the wind, cynicism emptied, unmindful of ironies, peace reigns. I ride into the wild, unknown, on and on into the horizon until I am a small speck and then....POOF! I am gone.

Or so I think. Escapist!

Here comes the sun

2010-02-24T14:22:00.003+05:30

One downside of going the full tonsure is your scalp fights a lost battle against the sun. Stepping out for lunch turns into an excessively perspiring expedition unless you have protection of a cap/hat, which doesn't give you that naked feeling on top.

Ri-baldry apart Bangalore has turned quite into an oven over the last couple of weeks. And its only February! Climate change is here and its on your (at least my) head. When was the last February night you remember having turned the fan on full blast, apart from the last two weeks? Never in my living memory! An Uncle of mine mentioned of how they hadn't even installed a fan when they initially settled in Bangalore some 30 years back. Air conditioning is the norm now.

I have always hated the heat. Even though I was born in Madras and root around Trichur in Kerala. Summer holidays were never as romantic as in Enid Blyton stories. A month would be spent half naked fakir like in Trichur, gulping down coconut water by the dozen from the decently endowed garden in my grandfathers house. Sweet mangoes would be decimated after lunch, only to lead to further discomfort with their strange ability to increase gastronomic combustion. Just as we were getting comfortable with the frying pan we would be shunted right into the fire, a moist one at that, to Madras. A city known for its wide variety of weather conditions- hot, hotter, hottest. I would invariably land up around the peak of the last option. The evenings would provide some respite, from the sea breeze, but you would still look like you have just emerged from a sauna right after a shower. I never found much reason to having a shower in Madras. The only right thing would be stay under it-forever. In hindsight, despite the flak against heat, those days were enjoyable-they were after all the summer holidays, a time when you had absolutely no responsibilities, no deadlines, no bosses, no most things that irk me now.

What is happening to all this solar energy anyway? Apart from making us and other natural entities we share this planet with tick, what does it do? Oh, it makes a lot shiny panels generate electricity which is then used to cook food, heat water and an assortment of such nice stuff. What happens to the rest of it? I am sure there is a lot which is wasted, being absorbed by the earth to bake one hell of a huge pie. What are the scientists and other knowledgeable characters in such matters doing? Can't all this energy be tapped to run- more air conditioners? There's also the catch, the more we use such equipment, the more chemicals released into the air, blocking the sun's rays from escaping back into the upper zones of the atmosphere and leaving us hot (not just under the collar).

If things are so hot why doesn't it melt all the fat stored under my skin? Just imagine the possibilities, eat, drink, lead a merry life in say Manali or Ladakh and come down to Chennai for therapy. At the rate Bangalore's temperatures are soaring, we could heat up the competition. After reading news bits about melting ice caps and glaziers, increasing sea levels and becoming a victim of a burnt scalp I have resigned to my fate and decided to wait and marginally increase the waistline of a polar bear:

Jahaan Pyaar Hota Hai Vyapaar Bankar

2010-02-14T15:08:00.003+05:30

But for the bomb blasts at German Bakery, Pune, the media would have been quite happily covering the sappy story of how Valentine's Day is being celebrated across the nation. While Arnab Goswami might have been quizzing Muthalik on why he suddenly feels democracy has been kidnapped by gundas in the background of his face blackening at a chat show discussing the much debated V Day, he will now focus on internal security lapses or how David Headley could be connected to the blasts and where will the diplomatic talks with Pakistan now lead. Bigger issues at the heart of it, more research and fleshing out of details for journalists following the story, negotiation scripts to be redrafted for the Indo-Pak diplomats and on a lesser note, lesser stupid cupid stories thankfully on the news.

Now this is not a rant from an embittered soul who has minimal experience in the what a close friend calls "complicated human emotion that has done so much destruction rather than construction of good faith between people" department apart from the unrequited and familial variety. This is more a rant against what shenoy refers to as the Love Day Cabal- A group of money-minded publicity-hungry companies that seek to make money from unsuspecting suckers on the great Day of Love. So while restaurants exhort that food and wine is the right way to your darlings heart (what if she has a bad case of indigestion?) and multiplexes proclaim to spend a few cozy hours, hands clasped around each others stargazing at what must be the most creatively titled rom-com till date Valentine's Day, I spent a quiet afternoon (for lack of anything more exciting) scanning the TV.

You are not spared much on the idiot box too. While The Wedding Singer clears his throat on WB, Ashton Kutcher and Brittany Murphy have Just Married on Star Movies. World Movies redeemed Cable TV itself by showing François Truffaut's Jules et Jim. What arrested me for the next couple of hours however was Doordarshan which has a series on Sunday's titled Film Utsav. The programmer must have presumably undergone what I was going through (though mine was more of a self pitying nature) and decided to wreak hell on the big V Day with- Guru Dutt's Pyaasa. For all the venom and vitriol I attempt at venting, not just on the V Day itself but other larger issues, it will remain a rant on this digitised diary. Which brings me to my moment of realisation brought on me care of Messers Sahir Ludhianvi, Mohammad Rafi, S.D.Burman and Guru Dutt and thebollywoodfan (for the translation):

Parading charading

2010-01-26T14:35:00.005+05:30

My earliest memories of Republic Day are probably from the mid nineties Doordarshan telecast of the Parade. After a cursory glance of the headlines in the paper my father would switch the television on right after the morning dose of patriotic songs on Vivdh Bharathi. I was lost among the aggressively swishing hands of the thousands of soldiers marching and the greater wave of humans witnessing the spectacle on Rajpath. As the National Anthem would sound I would stand to attention ignorant of why the Red Letter Day was constantly being mentioned and also quite stumped by the commentary alternating in a rather officious sounding Hindi and sonorous English. As soon as the aero display finished I would run off for things which I presently donot remember.

Through the years Republic Day's significance (at least in historical terms) dawned on me, apart from the fact that its a day of rest and general display of patriotism at the local welfare hall. The last few years have also been taken over the manic thirst for consumer gratification through reduction sales to a new height by that 'Retail Raja'-so to speak, Kishore Biyani, whose Big Bazaar sales culminate on Republic Day.

The media typically playing to the gallery takes on 'tough' debates to dissect the Indian socio-political scenario, raising our polity's consciousness, covering stories which cover the spectrum of the burning issues of the hour. Sagarika Ghose in a poll on State of the Nation deciphers that one in two people across India consider themselves a misfit in age terms while the ungraciously aging, Shobha De with a sprinkling of vampish grins declares she never felt better. Such is the state of the nation not worth a nano-glance rather than a whole hour suffused with the necessary 'inflows into coffers' breaks.

India has come a long way since drafting and amending the longest written Constitution of any sovereign nation. Its role of inclusiveness rings in its assurance to citizens- of justice, equality and liberty. A fact belied in Manmohan Singh's response to India being a slow elephant at the recent Pravasi Divas function, he said- India is a slow elephant as it has to accommodate the various sections of society which believe in the process of a democracy, but when it moves it leaves a deep imprint.

In an age of instant gratification and messaging not many subscribe to the old school of thought of informed deliberation and much want the pachydermous pace to hasten. Speed and development would come at a cost though, but surely not at the cost of the ecology, human dignity and the society.

Saving Heaven on Earth

2010-01-20T01:09:00.003+05:30

When in Kerala it is almost a ritual that I watch at least one of the latest releases in a theatre. Last week after much exhortation by posters proclaiming a ‘Realistic thriller’ I watched ‘Evidam Swargam Aanu’. Falling many miles short of the claim, it is at best- in movie parlance- a wholesome family entertainer.

Rosshan Andrrews who made his directorial debut with the much acclaimed Udayananu Tharam (2005) and Notebook (2006) returns with Mohanlal as his lead again in Evidam Swargam Aanu. James Albert who scripted the campus politics and after related ‘Classmates’ follows with a tale of one man’s (Matthews-Mohanlal) battle of brawn and wits against a real estate mafia don, Aluva Chandy (Lalu Alex).

The first half of the movie draws laboriously with unrelated plots attempting to set a comic tempo ending with a faint fizzle. Matthews, a conscientious farmer runs the Jeremias Farm House (named after his father played by Thilakan), a model bio-vantage farm in Kodanaadu, an idyllic village on the banks of Periyar. The heaven like peace is shattered when Aluva Chandy and his goons start tormenting Matthews into selling off his hard earned and well nurtured land- first through physical threats and later false legal and criminal cases. The director not only highlights the modus operandi of fly by night real estate agents in sky rocketing the price of land through false promises of developing townships but also the depth of rot in the socio-political system through the numerous corrupt officials who all receive a pretty packet from Aluva Chandy.

As Matthews steps from one sinking stone to the other his counselor turns up in Sumathy (Lakshmi Rai) a bright and upright lawyer. Advocate Prabalan aka Koshy (Srinivasan) with his inherently left leaning dialogues and his amicus curiae proves to be the last nail in the extended mafia’s coffin.

Aluva Chandy rides prominently throughout the 2 hr 35 min duration as the stronger character with deep pockets and ready wit. Lalu Alex gives his performance of the decade clearly overshadowing the now (or rather of late) sagging and dullish Lal. Till the end atleast-when the tables are upturned, the movie heading to its logical conclusion with Chandy and his gang strangely bereft of their senses and schemes. Shankar-the star of the 80s before the arrival of Lal- makes an apologetic comeback as Sudheer, Matthews’ trusted friend. He and the other veterans like Thilakan, Kaviyoor Ponnamma, Sukumari and Maniyam Pillai Raju have sadly underdeveloped characters reduced to a few lines of dialogue and minimal onscreen time.

Evidam Swargam Aanu refreshingly lacks songs which have become mandatory in any Lal entertainer. The movie in spite of its larger message ends a tad foolishly with the ultimately successful Matthews having to choose his bride between Betsy (a TV journalist played by Priyanka, Maria (Lakshmi Gopalaswamy), who loses contention midway through the movie for a lack of bovine love and Sumathy who is finally seen being pulled by a calf before Matthews enters the scene to signify the return of heaven on Jeremias Farm House.

All in all a worthwhile Rs. 30 spent at the Ragam Theatre, Trichur. Would I pay Rs. 180-200 at a multiplex for the same? I guess heaven could wait.

Of Buses and Lores in Kannur

2010-01-13T00:54:00.010+05:30

The wrought iron gates are padlocked. We peek through the slits in the gate and our eyes cannot comprehend the vast eden-esque patio which possibly ends in a promontory opening onto the Arabian Sea below. Disappointed we line up against a wall, set the digi-cam to auto shoot mode, attempted smiles lighting up our faces as the flash turns on. The touristy siege of Bekal Fort needless to say was abandoned, the attempt being prematurely fizzled out before the (now non-existent) draw-bridge itself.

About thirty hours into the our recent past we arrived at Kannur, six disheveled characters emerged from a semi-sleeper bus to be picked up by a seventh not so disheveled character who had landed in Kannur a couple of days earlier. After being deposited at a rather neat three starrer (the name of which eludes me now), express instructions given to bathe and get ready to be picked up again in a couple of hours, the seventh disappears. The former six, post critical ablutions, troop into the restaurant of the three starrer mouths salivating about plates of crispy on the sides and fluffy in the middle appams and steaming mutton stew. The drool is quickly wiped off as we are informed in not too courteous a manner that the orders will have to be restricted to poori-sagu, masala dosa and possibly if lucky (were the hens striking?) omelets. The dosa soon arrives cold and limp, the pooris look a tad more attractive, omelets thin and short of runny accompanied by grape juice which was well past its expiry date by a few months. Hunger satiated we head out onto the streets in search of Sulaimani chai, which remained as elusive as the appams and stew. (A slight aside- appams and stew were consumed with much fervour and delight a week later at the reception of the social engagement for which we had landed in Kannur-Ms. V’s marriage) After hurried baths and attempts at making ourselves socially presentable we proceed to the marriage hall.

Kannur’s sultry weather and more so movie posters for B Grade porn with titles like ‘Black Lady’, the said lady crossing her legs much like Catherine Tramell tempted Detective Nick Curran, leave us a bit hot under the collars. The air conditioned hall and liberal quantities of lime juice solve issues, at least temporarily. Soon the bride and groom arrive, immediately whisked away by young ladies (future brides in the making) brightly draped, jasmine decked, leading with flickering if not kindly lit diyas, musicians furiously blowing, drumming and clinking following them. They soon emerge on the stage of the hall, in front of thousands of eyes blinking, another dozen upfront squinting through viewfinders, flashes fulminating across the length of the stage.

After what looked like introductions of the bride and groom to the poojari, the music suddenly reaches a crescendo and the knot is tied. Garlands exchanged, we suddenly are undecided on the next course of action-what is the protocol? Senior family members were already flocking around the newly wedded couple, blessing them, hands dipping into a vessel of paddy circling the heads of the newly weds and spraying them with the sativic arsenal. Would it be sacrilegious to suddenly see seven dressed up rogues mill around Ms. V and her spouse congratulating them on their recently alt‘a’red marital status? A debate ensued on the various complexities and protocols involved. Theories floated amongst the knowledgeables- friends were relegated to the bottom of the congratulatory milieu. Factions were quickly formed and Maachas and I opposed the premise. We strode onto the stage -in spirit hitching our mundus up- awaiting our Copernican moment of proving the other theories wrong. A sudden scramble ensued and the hitherto seated couple jumped to their feet, we apologizing for broken traditions if any. Having been assured that none were, warm wishes extended, we came down the steps, smug that the others had now begun to line up at the other end. Confidence levels soaring I joined the queue again to pose for another photograph with the complete set of friends who had traveled from Bangalore to attend the wedding.

Wedding lunches always require negotiating a rather dangerous gang of famished characters. They almost have a crocodilian glint in their eye, one that anticipates a fresh gazelle between their snappers within a few moments. And they have the strange knack of assembling like vultures around carrion, only much more densely packed and they squeakingly demand- the doors of the dining hall to be opened immediately. The easiest method to negotiate the mosh-pit like crowd is to sneak in skillfully around the hulky ladies and overbearing men until you wedge yourself in-between the door and the controlled violence of the hardcores around you. Being undernourished helps to squeeze through- a handicap across my name (waist?). The downside of course is that your olfactory senses take a severe beating from being in close proximity to the toxic combination of jasmine, sweat and coconut oil. Having successfully ridden this wave of people- comparisons drawn to crowd surfing at extreme metal concerts- feasting followed.

A couple of bananas and burps later, social engagements dealt with, it is time to explore Kannur. Kannur according to legend gets its name from Kannande Ooru- Kanna’s (Krishna) place, though in all practical purpose it could be Kanathur, an ancient village which exists still as a ward in the municipality. With limited time and knowledge of the area (any tourist’s laments) we approached a localite enquiring directions to the St. Angelo Fort of him. “St. Angelo’s Fort?” a blank stare, rather many a blank stare and wild gesticulations from one old man (his hands flew like a compass gone haywire) later we stopped an autorickshaw. Quietly he excused himself mumbling about heading in another direction; we stopped another, who too refused to be employed of his services. The auto-stand quickly emptied itself of all available autos leaving us worried that the fort might after all be a figment of the tourist department’s imagination.

Finally two drivers relented and we piled in zipping through by-lanes till we reached the Cantonment area. After a short discussion with a shop keeper the auto drivers exclaim, “Kannur Kota (fort)!?, never heard of whatever fort you are mentioning” and turned, we slightly pleased that comprehension had dawned and that we were heading towards our first sight worth seeing. And quite an impressive one it was! The roughly triangularly planned fort built of solid laterite towers on top of a rocky promontory overlooking the Mapila Bay on one side and a cliff that drops into the Arabian Sea on the other. It was constructed during 1502-07, under Dom Francesco d’Almeida, the first Portuguese Viceroy to India after having won the Kolathiri Raja’s confidence. Protected by the sea on three sides the only approach was from the land side which would also be cut off when the Portuguese later built a water moat.

Colonial supremacy being the favourite European pastime from 16th C onwards, St. Angelo’s fort changed keepers from the Portuguese to the Dutch in 1663, later sold to the local Ali Rajas and finally seized by the British in 1790, transforming into the largest military base on the Malabar Coast. The architecture too reflects this colonial imperialism with the Portuguese having built the chapel, prison, administrative offices and other amenities for the officers stationed here. The Dutch added horse stables and ammunition stores. The Ali Rajas probably did not have much time to settle in to modify it to their tastes. As for the English, military affairs overrode architectural and interior designer issues. Cannons stride the bastions pointing out towards the sea. We walk along the rampart as fishing boats ply in the distance. To the east of the fort in the Cantonment a few Army jawans in shorts and vests warmed up for a session of PT. After passing the roofless chapel we stopped for water, brined pineapple and raw mangos. Refreshed we continue through the horse stables which were large enough to house elephants and reach the rocky edge dropping off into the Arabian Sea. Waves crash as crabs play hide and seek in the millions of geomorphic pockmarks created by erosion of the laterite rocks, now covered by a greenish grey carpet of lichen.

Our next port of call, Parassinikadavu Muthappan Temple, was something I had planned on the itinerary right from the start, the offerings of toddy and fish being prime reason. Having boarded a rather crowded bus, with a deranged driver at the wheel, we hung onto any area of railing offered to avoid pinning the person in front like vertical wrestling match. A quick conversation struck with the conductor revealed that Muthappan was of a fiery temper and would be cooled down with offerings of the country liquor, fish and other meats. Once when he was in the middle of his escapist sessions atop a tree he was disturbed by a localite. Muthappan with one cold stare turned the gatecrasher into stone and promptly disappeared. Later another localite sensed a divine aura around the area and having gathered forces built a temple to honour Muthappan. Muthappan has had a few lessons in anger management since and welcomes people of all castes and religions now, with the warmth inducing-barrier breaking toddy.

After enduring a drive, rocking around like a limp rag doll for about 45 minutes we arrived at Parassinikadavu. A trek down a flight of steps finally ended up in a complex of shops displaying pictures of gods and goddesses interestingly fighting for space with Comrades EMS Namboodiripad and Krishnan Pillai, various accoutrements which are generally seen around temples and blaring devotional songs later we could here muffled beats of the chenda and maddalam emanating from within the temple premises. As you enter we notice the hundreds of devotees thronging the prasadam area for their devotional quota. It reminded me strangely of the obedient throngs who line up outside the government regulated liquor shops in Kerala, the only place in all probability where queue protocols are followed with Swiss watch like precision.

The main area of the temple itself was quite packed; as devotees teemed around waiting to be blessed by Muthappan theyyam. The theyyam in a bright red costume and carrying an over sized head gear with a mask and false canines painted on the face weaved through the crowd occasionally breaking into what appeared like screams or as the devotees would take-blessings. He waved his sword and bow and arrow around in a drunken sort of way, dancing and keeping time to the now frenetically drumming musicians. As we sensed the end of the theyyam was approaching we quickly sneaked out before the mass exodus and prepared for the all-muscle-workout drive back to Kannur, this time we managed to get seats.

We had booked into a resort a little away from Kannur town for the night. After checking out of the three starrer we boarded a local bus to our destination for the night- Seashell Inn. A drunk boarded at the next stop turning many noses and heads in the opposite direction. Muttering to himself he came suddenly to life when a question from a co-passenger made him irate. Thankfully with no powers like the Muthappan he got off after a couple of stops, a stony look in his eyes indicating he was at the edge of wakefulness and exhaustion after what must have been many rounds of foul brandy.

Adikadalayil finally appeared and with it in the darkness, Mr. Haris, the proprietor of the resort. A short walk, guided by torch light, led us up a gentle slope. A turn right and we could hear the waves lolling onto the sand below hidden by coconuts and a cliff. The resort perched on the cliff, 3 houses with some more under construction. Our rooms showed, Haris took us on a tour of his property in the light of a hurricane CFL including to the bottom of the cliff where the waves were getting a bit rough. The way down reminded me of Famous Five mysteries where rotting doors would creak open revealing a smuggler’s den or an abducted child. Our door, not in the best of conditions (and that’s where the similarity ends) revealed a flight of steps cut into the rocks leading to the rocks and beach beyond. Tired and in the mood for merriment we decided to skip the beach till later and returned to the open dining garden where a grill spat quietly. Chicken, mussels, squid, potatoes in their jackets, yams awaited their turn on the last leg of their journeys to attain nirvana on our plates. The festivities were on…

Bob Marley’s strained voice, “The sun is shining” momentarily made a spiritual appearance in my ears as I stepped onto the portico the next morning. As the others emerged plans were already afoot to hurriedly do with ablutions and head down to the beach. The Famous Five look-alike path looked less mysterious in the morning. Once across the rocks at the bottom- practically empty beach stretched into eternity lined with coconuts. The sand in places was black and I reasoned it to be silt from a river at least that was my theory. The water was calm and ideal to splash around and we didn’t take much time to dive in head long, lolling in the sea, occasionally heading back to sand strip and resting, wishing for beach umbrellas and chilled beer served by earthy beauties. Water sport done we headed back to some piping hot sulaimani chai and excellent pazham pori (banana fritters). Chai washing the pazham pori down, we departed to the town for a late lunch and then our final destination for the trip-Bekal Fort.

Alighting at the Caltex Junction we strolled across to the first thattu-kada (roadside restaurant/tea-shop), neatly dropped our luggage at the cash counter and slowly decimated numerous plates of kerala parathas, succulent beef fry and a most brilliant beef biryani. At first sight the biryani looked rather queasy with a semi gravy topping the rice. The essence actually was in mixing the rice first and then wolfing it down with thick chunks of the softest beef I have had in a biryani. The full effects of the meal started settling only once we boarded the bus to Kasargod, enroute to Bekal. The heavy lunch and little sleep due to the festivities of the previous night knocked me out for about an hour on the bus. When I was jerked up and enquired if we were anywhere near Bekal, the conductor said we should take another half hour to a place where we would have to take a different bus to Kasargod and this would take us through Bekal, the current bus we were traveling in was to take a bye-pass route. “Damn!” I cursed, it was 4:00 PM already and our bus to Bangalore from Kasargod was scheduled for departure at 8:30 PM.

An hour later we boarded the other bus, this time via Bekal. Half an hour into the journey and we braked, a railway crossing, blocking our progress. The waiting time was spent in debating if we should alight and walk the rest of the distance or wait for the train to pass, as slowly the skies turned dark and birds tweeted their way back to their nests. An hour later and an enormous gate stood in our path -padlocked- and with it ending our two day campaign.

We slowly walked back to the bus stop where we had alighted a few minutes back and despondently waited to board our third bus heading to Kasargod. A common occurrence across the three legs of this slightly long distance bus journey was- the smells of the road and within the bus itself. A strong waft of atar would hit the nostrils at the least expected times knocking my senses for a few mili-seconds before the open window would provide respite. The other was of dried fish and the third most interestingly was the acrid smell of burning grass (what variety eludes me), but nonetheless interesting.

The bus stand at Kasargod loomed ominous of the end of our journey. Still a tad depressed that we couldn’t walk the ramparts like Arvind Swami did in Bombay we settle to liven up the spirits-with some appams, chicken masala and ghee rice. Spirits soldered we settle into our seats in the KSRTC Rajahamsa Semi-Sleeper. Quiet conversation ensues with each others aisle mates with a few all round laughs and curses. It’s been a while since the boys (minus Pallu) were out on a trip like this. And it all started with a call from Ms. V on a Wednesday while I was out for lunch, “Hey. I am getting married the week after next. It would be great if you could come to Kannur.”

The next day, on the local Volvo home, the only thought on my mind is, “When do we go back to Bekal?”

Turn Turn Turn

2009-12-31T14:55:00.004+05:30

In a few hours from now it will be the final turn for this particluar linear period of turning we along with a few billion other homo sapiens would do around that predominantly hydrogenous ball which forms the centre of the solar system we have existed in since the turn was initiated. A plethora of mails and messages will be sent out wishes exchanged for peace, prosperity and well being. Every year it turns out with the same old acts of terrorism, molestations, rapes, bombings, climate talks which remain talks, insert your preferred mode of violence/disasters/evil or hopeless act here. The only happy souls not under induced happiness aided by sufficient intake of intoxicating liquids and other substances are the mobile service providers I guess!

As all including me prepare for celebrating this last turn and welcome- Surprise! Surprise!- a new turn, I feel glad, sad, mad and mostly apprehensive about bidding adieu to 2009 and in effect the decade termed the noughties. Glad that there are more days ahead to keep drifting, which at the moment looks like forever.

Mortality so far has never crossed my mind, having witnessed only close to two and a half decades on Terra Firma, two and a half decades of a rather peaceful existence marked by the usual highs and lows of growing up and coming to terms with the rat race that life offers. It has been a trial of understanding my horizons and limits of socio-eco-political nature were tested. The next decade and a half presumably should witness more than having to accept the way things have plodded on so far and cement my existence here.

Mad about the sheer stupidity we as a race can to stoop to and not realise it. Or probably realise and decide to keep mum about it. Speaking of keeping mum, many people dont realise the benefits they would endow on us if they decided to keep mum. We should probably legislate to insert a section in the Income Tax Act (a full year of study [or lack of it rather] of the subject in the final year of graduation, with frequent visits to Santhrupti Wines opposite our college to mellow the pain enthuses me to add various clauses and sub-clauses to the Act at random will) where people should be taxed quite heftily according to the amount of words they spout in public forums or even a one-on-one conversation. Anyway I dont see any changes in these uncalled for but nevertheless unbearable situations in the years to come.

Sad that a few fellow travellers had to get off the bus on this what I assumed neverending journey. Fellow travellers (both in spirit and physical)who have changed course on this unknown journey, some parallel, some at a tangent, some hopefully who will join the course of our run again, sometime...

The mood of apprehension is always visible when we decide to chart out a new route. And so I stand at the crossroads-the last few years have been spent adrift, experimenting, learning, doing new things. Some bad, some good, some worth forgetting, some entombed in the back alleys of my mind to resurface at specific moments of doubt/joy/grief/hope.

In the middle of all this not so semi-fake despair and cynicism mixed with nostalgia and an attempt at reclaiming a what I can say a dull to mildly interesting life I take comfort in a song by The Byrds-Turn Turn Turn. The words which were adapted from The Bible, book of Ecclesiastes and set to music by Pete Seeger reads-
To Everything (Turn, Turn, Turn)
There is a season (Turn, Turn, Turn)
And a time to every purpose, under Heaven

The 'heaven' mention apart it reads perfectly well to state New Year or not, we just need to keep on turning. To more turns ahead...

The Case for a 4 Day Work Week

2009-11-08T14:40:00.007+05:30

The economic crisis has led many corporates and others, mostly the suited and booted with serious smirks as if they have the astute powers to handle such situations (well, they haven't!) variety to re-look at their strategies to stay afloat. The bigger ones have more cash in their bank accounts and make a lot of noise about it to belie employees' notions that their employer is soon going to seek refuge under the small print of Chapter 11 of the Bankruptcy Code. Some of the bigger ones were not (probably still not) in a state of financial liquidity to boast such things, as the money which they made in earlier days at a rate which was faster than the gestation period (fastest) record shared by three marsupials viz. the American and rare water opossums and the east native cat of Australia, approximately 12-13 days (which technically speaking is not fast, but its the parallel which is being drawn which is to be noted) whizzled out of their fingers as they counted the moolah at a rate faster than you could say WIP, which incidentally in certain officialese means 'work in progress' and if your basic numeracy is on a holiday half away around the other side of world let me take this moment to bring it back by stating, the aforementioned scalar quantity is faster than the previously established gestation period of three varieties of marsupials.

Anyway the fact is a lot of people have had to readjust their strategies to 'align themselves with the marginal drop (works out to more than 30% which could also tend towards 100% in preliminary back of the envelope calculations) in demand' or 'explore cost cutting measures (read as, "Thanks we think you have had a fair bit of fun at our expense, now its our time to laugh, so sod off!") keeping the best interests of all parties at stake' (quite naturally the HR teams have the highest stakes), 'rationalise annual performance benefits' (commensurate to the common name of that member of the legume family, Arachis hypogaea) and other such efforts by the top brass to satiate the ever edacious essence of shareholders with wolfish tending to piggish appetites for profits and such.

Creativity has also had a fair bit of airplay. One such piece of what I would call tremendous surge of activity in the right side of the cerebral cortex was witnessed or rather is being witnessed till the end of the calendar year at my current employers. Why might this excite me despite loss of one day's pay per month? I get a day off for each day's pay per month foregone. There were complains at the start, a readjustment in monthly expenditure, a cut in dining out, lets go to the theatre but lets not have the bucket of popcorn and cokes, that shirt looks good-looks even better on the mannequin and so on and so forth. I on the other hand was relieved. Here's one more day in a week to do a lot more things I always wanted to do but couldn't plainly because I had only the weekends to do whatever I had in mind.

The term used to describe this phenomenon of a day off to all employees was furlough. According to the dictionary a furlough is:
a. A leave of absence or vacation, especially one granted to a member of the armed forces.
b. A usually temporary layoff from work.
c. A leave of absence from prison granted to a prisoner

I rather liked option c for being brutally frank. I first came across the term in a Beetle Bailey strip where Sarge had out of desperation and a malicious fondness cuts short Beetle's furlough. Beetle returns long faced and wrathful. Now that I was facing it, I would probably react in similar fashion. The furlough days were well distributed to time around a Friday or a Monday with a festival in the near vicinity. This ensured extended weekends and more so on the other hand, shorter work weeks. Weekend getaways took a whole new dimension with an extra day to laze about or explore them. So did socialising, especially if the nights turned out to be all nighters fueled by sufficient amounts of that third favourite beverage on Earth, whose patron saint is Gambrinus. These extra non-working/nonpayable 24 hours per month also brought in benefits such as time to -
a. philosophise
b. sleep
c. philosophise and then go to sleep
d. sleep, wake up and then philosphise
and permutations and combinations of whatever you like best to do in such situations. Anyway the point of all this meandering is to drive home the point- that work is good, it occupies you, it helps you earn a living, it brings the bacon to the table, the clothes you wear and the roof under which you sleep; but despite this it isn't as important as to let go and relax, chill, loll, bum around, wake up at 12AM and go back to sleep. (of course if you sleep at 6AM its perfectly fine to go back to sleep at 12PM) So all you lazy lads and lasses reading this post, that's my case (rather weak I must say, on re-reading it) for the four day work week.

Getting back on one's feet...

2009-11-05T23:50:00.004+05:30

...not that I didn't use the bipeds. The last couple of months I have started to walk more than I would normally exercise my feet. I get off some three stops before my scheduled cab drop point and proceed home, with a what now seems regular pitstop at a bakery to meet a friend for some chai and exchange of ideas, news and general banter on subjects varying from the latest offering by James Cameron to a brand of bread called Manna. The original idea to walk the distance was a) to get off my ass (this is the only form of exercise I indulge in, apart from Garfield's favourite, deep breathing) and b) never mind the b(it never came out the way I thought it would, or maybe I thwarted it at a rather early stage).

Many might lunge at me questioning, at my age how am I justifiably claiming to gain exercise (read as loose a few inches of the waist) out of a walk. And a full 15 minute one at that. I gently riposte with a quick reminder of my days in those most hallowed of sweat pits-the gym. The one I frequented or less frequented for the one month's fees which I had deposited with them was called Athena, and how cruelly she must be turning in her mythical grave, a goddess of wisdom, peace, strategy and a whole lot of other things[women being better multi-taskers, so is the claim of management books] relegated to the basement of a slightly dilapidated building to roof grotesque machines which when pulled or pushed would make your body ache, all in the name of shaping your physique! Add to that discordant songs of this variety, it was surprising that I didn't get physical with the DJ, who incidentally was also the instructor, leaving me with options to a) quit and b) quit really fast. There ends my story of any kind of body sculpting.

I have been at the end of many a joke about my, what i call rectangular physique. The latest being when the colleagues in office feel that the AC has been cranked up and feel rather chill while I don't, because of the extra lining of fat that I have endowed myself with since I developed pinniped like capabilities of subcutaneous storage of lipidinous substances. I shrugged at their attempts to get me to do something about it. I am naturally big-boned, I cant attempt to come in natures way!

Sometime back a friend who visits one of the more upmarket sweat pit generating institutions referred me to a site www.prisonworkout.com, which I promptly surfed for, explored and erased from my memory, until now of course. That was to bring it to your attention! I might subjugate myself into following its instructions seriously, one day, maybe tomorrow. Maybe not...

But in the mean time, I shall continue to walk. Its more enjoyable and less of a strain on the muscles, not to mention of other benefits of observing the world at a leisurely pace or having ideas (mostly unproductive, nevertheless Ideas, its the thought that counts at such moments, of being grateful for a semi-functional grey cell container) popping up every other minute. More on that in a separate post, for now I need to deep breathe in a state of dormanZZZs.

When I was young

2009-10-06T23:09:00.003+05:30

When Eric Burdon of The Animals lamented in his gritty rocker voice of the blues of lost youth he was not just creating a pioneering grunge metal number but voicing the cynicism which adulthood brings.

I am not yet a quarter century old on Terra Firma and yet the relative vacuousness of existence bothers me. I am aware there are so many sights to see and so many things to do, essentially how Robert Frost wraps up his Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening. But to what avail?

Time travel a decade back and I was probably in the 8th standard, struggling to comprehend the, what at that time looked, abnormal characteristics of a trapezium or even worse, Hindi grammar. My biggest worry was why my first pair of spectacles had a power of -3.5 in the right and the plain glass in the left. Acne too had mysterious qualm creating qualities. The delights were plenty. Cycling down MG Road at 7 AM without a single soul honking at you was highly pleasurable. My Avon Montage was indeed a faithful velocipede, having safely carried me to and from the first Deep Purple show in Palace Grounds circa 2001. Cricket Sundays at the corporation ground, by 2 (sometimes 3 and 4 also)chat after school at Om Sai Ram, 2 month summer holidays, returning home to see the latest issue of Target or Tinkle in the mail earlier that day, ah sweet bliss.

A half decade further back and we used to have forceful afternoon siestas post lunch in school. Teachers, long wooden rulers in hand would patrol around heads resting on tables ensuring we were indeed sleeping. The only solace for them probably being the fact that 60 odd hyperactive boys and girls had finally decided to seal their mouths and limbs, not to mention scheming minds. But not for long, or we would not now know that "Seven sevens are forty nine"! Summer nights will never be the same like then. Tales from the Mahabharatha and Ramayana, local wits including Nadulpad and Muttasa Namboodiri, demons bearing a a single to hundreds of eyes and a multitude of other deformed organs sprung like an ever gushing stream from my grandfather's bottomless story well. Watering the gardens with him and checking every day if a rose had blossomed. Entering a toy shop and staking claim on all its wares, he gently dissuading me on my mental monopoly.

Somewhere a click happened and the next moment logic, reason and finally cynicism took over. It is of course a natural process to happen, as set a fact as that George w. Bush had evolved from a piece of rock. Escapist routes apart, I enjoy a most genuine sense of happiness in these memories. Maybe I over analyse things or just plain fret on the whole existentialism bit, but I cant agree more with good ole Eric when he wrote

"When I was young, IT WAS MORE IMPORTANT
Pain more painful
Laughter much louder
Yeah, when I was young
When I was young

My faith was so much stronger then
I believed in fellow men
And I was so much older then
When I was young"

Meat-evil Tales

2009-09-12T18:29:00.006+05:30

Last week I had been to the Majestic area to send off a friend. With its labyrinthine (old time Bangaloreans who can navigate the rather pompously named area like the back of their hands will rather see that I undergo an apoplexy at this point of time!) streets, lined with shady bars and hotels fronting shadier operations than providing lodging for the weary traveler(the bars, include a couple which I have on occasions patronised before to ease into particularly tedious journeys by bus, the hotels however are bowlderiseable) I found it apposite to meet her at the KFC outlet on Tank Bund Road opposite the KSRTC Bus Stand.

After an expedition through the dark wastes of a series of back alleys and an excruciating wait outside an ATM we settle into a booth at KFC, a banana smoothie and chicken snacker attempting to ward of mild borborygmi. The tray on which the aforementioned items were carried had a paper mat on it which expounded on the long kept secret recipe using 11 secret spices to cook up the world's so called favourite chicken. Apart from eulogising the 'finger licking good' poultry dish, the paper mat had rather interesting strips of cartoons at the bottom under the heading "Lesser known ingredients of our recipe for temptation".

Actually they were appalling and would appear so to any self-respecting meat eater. For an institution which had built its reputation on its juicy, mellow spiced strips of chicken it took a complete U-turn with its four different panels depicting integral components of the much loved piece of poultry. For me it cried totally foul! The first panel illustrated the different utensils to cook and and post that to gorge on the dishes they served. The devilishly horned spiked fork, a knife looking like it would be best put to use by Jack the Ripper and a round cutter looking like a medieval instrument of torture are labeled 'Non-Veg Utensils' as opposed to the less evil 'Veg Utensils' of saintly looking spoons, cookers and even a five petaled flower.

The next panel featured an Addams Familyesque trio (indicating the non veg crew) with black bibs to indicate their evil sides, long incised teeth and all. The veg crew looked rather sprightly, grinning ear to ear and dressed in spotless white.

KFC is a card holding right winging member of Republican USA. According to them non veg oil comes from the middle east (a member of the axis of evil). And veg oil comes from central asia presumably cleaner having been apparently cleared due to the US war on terror. The last cartoon shows a barbed fence surrounded factory spewing black smoke whereas on the other side where the grass is greener is a house with a pouting chimney emanating what looks like sweet smelling perfumes. Take a guess which side is the non veg cooking area?

I wonder why the marketing guys at KFC decided to take this approach when they are perfectly aware that they get to take home the 'bacon' on account of the plumpened, perfectly bred gallus domesticus, a fact made quite clear in the wares they sell viz. the fried chicken. Or maybe I was the only one who bothered to read the mat while the others followed a strategy of -I came. I ordered and ate. I left without bothering to read and fret. Bu'r'gger me!

I Scream for Happiness

2009-08-29T11:08:00.007+05:30

Whats common to b-grade horrid slash and kill Hollywood movies inspired by J-Horror, rock shows, Wonder-La and K serials? They all make you scream (or at least attempt to), well the last point also witnesses bouts of physical abuse like smashing up TV screens, repeatedly beating your own head with the now defunct TV remote and early signs of balding considering most it has been pulled out due to aforementioned frustrations.

Now Wonder-La on the other hand has a precise manner in which it leads you on a path to happiness. 'A path' since everyone has their own internal GPS to such an end. My own understanding of Wonder-La's service to mankind came about with a visit to the amusement park (see it- amuses people) a month back. I have'nt seen such a happy lot, all assembled at one point in my life ever so far, except when doused in heady spirits or addled in some variety of chemically induced state of euphoria.

So why do people pay about 700 bucks to willfully be thrown around, jerked about, subjected to body bending experiences at various contortious angles and land down tall water slides with stinging wedgies? Because it lets them scream. Like when they used to as kids when taken spinning around their parents/grandparents/uncles/aunts/(fill in any person who spun you around or made you think you were a spaceship on a mission to Mars here)heads. Of course the kids who actually got thrown out of orbit and landed on their unfortunate bottoms or even worse, heads might be traumatised by the series of what they might not find amusing rides.

Apart from bringing back childhood memories screaming also has other benefits. Scream inducing movies are ideal to get those hormones going. Most Hollywood movies show a first date couple going for a scream-thon, where the girl and boy feign fear and make a lunge for each others bodies and finally end up in bed. Now where do you see that happening with a comedy or an art movie as your chosen date movie.

Screaming at an infuriating boss or when in a long queue outside an ATM can also prove beneficial. Others appear at the scene of screaming when your boss is with you and you can point an accusatory finger at the sexual deviant and you are either promoted replacing your boss or sent back home with enough compensation to keep you quiet and content till retirement and beyond. Screaming at an overcrowded ATM can leave many people disgruntled, vacating the queue before their over-burdened ear drums implode.

So create more opportunities where you can scream at the top of your lungs and caterwaul your way to happiness and success. If you cant bother I suggest opening a bottle of some potent amber liquid and a bag of sunshine. The downside being you could de-evolve to a vegetable sooner than expected.

Home Coming Part II

2009-07-29T22:03:00.004+05:30

This post is a continuation of this.

Day 6

Going to sleep tucked into a warm blanket, crickets chirping into the night and the wind humming a soft lullaby in the trees is good. It’s even better to wake up with the sun gently kissing the cheeks, birds singing and celebrating a new morn, and a low mist welcoming you as soon as you open the door. The door opens into a semi-paradise, valley down below, thickly wooded, the only inhabitants in miles around being the caretaker of the guest house. The sun starts its slow journey overhead, the mist evaporating fast over Vagamon. Breakfast is a typical Kerala dish idiyappam doused in thick coconut milk. Fluffy appams and a coconut extravagant vegetable stew follow.

A plan is hatched to cover the sights of the land. Thekkady, 70km up and downhill towards the south is our destination for the day. The road leads as it has for the past two days through sea-like tea estates, leaves and branches trimmed to look like slow waves rolling in; past small rivulets, cool and fresh, waiting for feet to be dipped in. Slowly making way for settlements and finally a large junction filled with boards exhorting tourists to patronize various services including elephant safaris, boat rides, ayurvedic massages and variety of other touristy splendours. We follow signs to the Periyar Tiger Reserve, Thekkady (one by-lane looked exactly like the road leading to Baga Beach, minus Titos) and finally arrive at a huge arch marking the entrance to the reserve.

Tickets in hand, camera batteries checked, caps firmly pulled down against the rather strong winds we occupy front row seats on the upper deck of the boat which will take us on a near two hour splash inside the reserve. Tall ghosts of trees stick their dead arms and heads out of the water, drowned since the river first flowed into the dam. Now they serve as perching posts for egrets, kingfishers, cormorants and storks hungrily scanning the rippling waters for potential prey. Since its May, the banks are also slightly exposed, small expanses on which turtles sun themselves, scurrying to the water as soon as a group of wild hogs appear out of a bush, porcine snouts sniffling for morsels in the undergrowth.

Further down we spy a shy herd of chital. Keeping a watchful eye for predators they nibble at the grass ever ready to make a dash. The sighs of delight and cries of “How cute!” are routine for them I guess, as they pose for a group of intrepid water safarists, me included. Suddenly there is cry from the bottom as one clever kid in the midst of all the ‘oh ah’ing over deer spotted an elephant and its child. Quite a distance away, the pachyderm escorted its ward gently through the tall grass disappearing for some time, before reappearing on the top of a slope and then vanished from sight. Elated to have seen a wild elephant and baby we continued down the river eagerly waiting to catch sight of the largest wild bovine, the Gaur. The wait was much lesser than expected when after taking a right at a blind curve, a knoll appeared, the entire mound of green being chomped up by an army of gaur, a helmet of hard skin tapering into two large trumpet- like horns above jaws continuously masticating the grass into cud. Most of these large Taurean characters stood chewing ignoring the boat, some eying us suspiciously wondering why we were all gaping at these massive chunks of meat. I am willing to consume anything in terms of meat (atleast once) as long as the meat in question is not from a group of animals going extinct. The gaur I believe is on that list and will be off my menu. Envisioning a porterhouse cut from a fellow domesticated bovine cosuin grilled to a T we head back to the guesthouse and Vagamon. An uninspiring yet nourishing vegetabe/chappati/rice laden table is set for us. Dining done I rest in the cane chair put out overlooking the same misty semi-paradise like valley, now ominous, the wind whispering among the tree tops, images of silent leopards lunging out of them in my mind. Horrifying contemplation over, I snuggle into the blankets,crickets clicking away a lullaby in Morse, Morpheus leading me on to his land.

More to follow...

These are the days that must happen to you

2009-07-24T16:05:00.007+05:30

I work currently in Electronics City. My cab leaves at 8 in the morning. Promptly as soon as the window is opened I plug in earphones and turn oblivious to the cacophony of Radio One RJs(when one hears their Kannada influenced English and Hindi one automatically tends to switch off if not for reactions like condemning them for life to boiling oil vats, cleaning lavatories/pigeon poop outside window sills and other violently belittling things) , their repetitive Bollywood numbers (mostly rehashed words which talk about love, heart break/ache, and other emotions interspersed with the latest techno beats and scratches)and small talk about what was the undoing of a participant in a particular reality show where they challenge you against a psychophysiological detector of deception. One hour, the ears remain plugged; a book poised in front of the eyes, fingers occupied every few minutes to flick the pages. While Fugazi (currently) kicks into a blitzkrieg of fuzzy guitaring and berserk drumming I open my book to 'To be born again,' sang Gibreel Farishta tumbling from the heavens, 'first you have to die. Ho ji! Ho ji! To land upon the bosomy earth, first one needs to fly. Tat-taa! Taka-thun! How to ever smile again, if first you won't cry? How to win the darling's love, mister without a sigh? Baba, if you want to get born again...'(again currently). Apart from occasionally staring out of the windscreen of the Tempo Traveller to make sure no one is hurt when the vehicle lurches to a halt at signals, I dont move or utter much.

Duties complete at office it is time for a repeat show of the mornings actions in the 12 seater vehicle. The book is shut at just about the time we near the Koramangala National Games Village complex, daylight fails from this point onward. Attention shifted to hoardings and the backs of autorickshaws spouting gems of messages like "I date only models", this from a god-fearing,khufi wearing,devout, khol eyed driver. Also contemplate on the posible brand equity Jim Beam could generate out of sponsoring the Horanadu Bar and Restaurant at the Ejipura junction. Think its highly unlikely that the Horanadu's patrons'preferred poison would be a Kentucky Bourbon.

And so on and so forth 10 months have passed travelling up and down from the E-City. The routine is as numb as people who file within the campuses in E-City, tags around their necks summarising their personalities.

Today however has been rather different. At about 12:50 PM we decided to drive to Bangalore (as soon as I exit E-City there is a road sign welcoming one to the city of Bangalore and the distance to be traversed), Koramangala specifically. We lunched at The Jukebox. Unhurried, music from the 70's in the background, pretty ladies strutting outside the window, general buzz of conversation and peals of laughter from slightly beery drunk office goers, long forgotten LPs and sleeves hanging on fading walls, Elvis and James Dean staring down at your table, the sweet smell and smoke of a grill, a portion of garlic toast and perfect mayo to spread it on and a huge platter of smoky beef, ham, sausages, chicken, fries and rice staring up at you. These are the days that must happen to you.

Book of Jobs

2009-06-21T17:31:00.005+05:30

I seem to choose careers based on what books I read. The current night burner is Run Like an Antelope by Sean Gibbon who follows Phish on a full tour covering the highs and lows(mostly highs) of the people who follow the enigmatic band. Suddenly I feel I could do that. Not, lying in bed thinking the alarm will go off at 7AM, followed by a hurried rush through the usual necessities to get ready for another day in front of a Lenovo T60 (why such a machine, no one knows, at least no one in the purchase department), wade through traffic which inevitably leaves you snarling at the work spot, positively baying for someones blood. Not that I can draw anyone's, infact its mine which is drained, I fall in quite near the bottom of the organisational structure. Anyway branching off...back to topic which is how books influence my career paths or at least mentally.

The previous one I was leafing through was Dan Walsh's These are the Days That Must Happen to You where he sets off across the Sahara and the rest of Africa and for the second leg on the Pan Americana from somewhere in Canada through the US of A and the unmotorable Darien Gap on ferry till the south of Argentina. As he with his rock-star attitude and all clicks gears through the black tar top I too feel a need to hit the road, thunder on my Machismo. I wouldnt mind. Only the road is open, but not free. Weekend trips can be sponsored by the paycheck, but who would fund a year or more on the road?

The visible connection I found between both books are that they both are about drifting on the road. One on two and the other on four wheels. I would prefer the two wheeled option, because as Dan states "A car is like watching a movie, a bike however is when you are the hero."

Now the only thing to do is to get these ideas in motion. But I dont have the confidence to let go off the comfort of a home, a 9-6 (most times more) job, the easy relaxed life of staying home. It looks good as an idea, idyllic riding around the world, writing about it, getting paid for it, but the wrath of the parents kind of scare me. Some more thought and planning has to be put into this though. It could be the ideal world I want to live in. On and off the road...drifting.

The List

2009-06-01T23:38:00.002+05:30

Everyone makes a list at some point in their life. The hits and misses. The loves and spurns. The dids and almost mades. Mine joins the many, out there, those who cherish things the good old romantic way:
9 (thought I would try 24 but couldnt drum up that number) most cherished moments (in order of message being transmitted from memory to brain to motor nerves of my typing fingers)-
1) Sulaiman chai at Mecca
2) Riding my Avon Montage (bicycle) to Deep Purple in 2001
3) Being called at 2 AM by school Principal to be told I got 90 in Kannada, ICSE
4) First beer with Vergo and Maacha at Pecos after Gangs of New York
5) Setting clues to Treasure Hunt with the BOYS in Brigade Prince
6) My first reading of My Family and Other Animals
7) My first tape purchased- Morrison Hotel
8) Jumping up and down on the bed in Taj President after winning Tata Crucible
9) Bungee jumping listening to Aces High, Iron Maiden and Eddie in the foreground

A Quarter Yet

2009-06-01T22:37:00.002+05:30

One short of a quarter
Plenty more shots to make a full
These are the days that must happen to you
Birthday or otherwise...keep drifting.

Home Coming

2009-05-29T21:40:00.002+05:30

Day 1

Routine kills. As the road opens up, traffic-free and glistening, like a wet reptile sunning itself, in the mild rays of the rising sun, the routine killing drive to office on Hosur Road is the last thing on my mind. The speedometer sees a rapid surge as the needle shoots to the 100 mark. The trees and huts blur at the side, turning into a speck in the rearview mirror. Michael Monarch's languid riff kicks in as John Kay's gruff vocals begin to grumble. Minutes later we are all howling along with Steppenwolf, "Born to be Wild". And so begins my journey, not as wild, considering I am traveling with the family, but wild enough.

Though you could manage to speed around 90kmpha on the highways, a long stretch was being expanded into a 4 lane system, creating bottlenecks at junctions and also slowing us down with the numerous deviations. The route via Hosur, Krishnagiri, Dharmapuri(bye-pass), Salem, Avinashi, Coimbatore(L&T bye-pass), Palakkad and Trichur(destination) is mix of hills, dusty open grounds, fertile paddy fields, crowded villages, shanty towns, dingy dhabas, et al; a veritable cross-section of most parts of India. Nine and a half hours later, 470 km clocked in, a full tank down to reserve, 6 bottles of water downed, 48 idlis decimated for breakfast as well as lunch, innumerable MintRox consumed, 4 cartons of sugar free Apple juice dry mostly the efforts of my father, 2 cartons of Mango juice(normal)drunk; we reached home.

Day 2

'Native' as is the colloquial term for your home town at least for the Kannadigas is best for extended meals, sleep and the same repeated as many days as you are there. Kerala being in the boom of mango season definitely enhanced these aforementioned activities. The king of fruits in its various forms presents with various culinary opportunities. Starting with the flavoured chutney for breakfast with idlis and dosa, diced into small pieces and mixed a with coconutty paste and curd it serves well as a side dish for meals, finely cut and marinated in spices it can be consumed as a ready to eat pickle, the ripe varieties when boiled with jaggery and pumpkins make a lip-smacking curry; and just after you groggily appear post your afternoon siesta it pops up in the form of a refreshing glass of juice or two.

During the short breaks in between meals, while poring over bound volumes of my father’s and uncle’s Phantom and Mandrake (for the umpteenth time) banana and jackfruit chips serve well.

Day 3

Today is the engagement of my cousin H. The venue is about 30 km from where we live. All of us pile into the car and leave at 7:30 AM having been asked to arrive in time for breakfast. Breakfast appears a kichdi of sorts (that’s what the person serving it claims). It’s a mixed upma of rava and semolina, doused in coconut chutney. A dollop of kesari bath and a cut piece sweet boiled nendra pazham complement the kichdi perfectly. Breakfast done, its time to wait for the senior members (their actual duties explained later) of the groom-to-be’s party. It’s also time to catch up with the rest of the extended family. Gup-shup is suddenly silenced at the arrival of the matchmaking seniors. Surprisingly the groom has no visible duties on his and the bride-to-be’s betrothal as is clear from the fact that he is absent. The seniors now refreshed arrange themselves on both sides of a quickly laid out mat. After hushed words are exchanged the actual engagement process ends with everyone bursting into a round of applause. They have discussed and finalised the date and muhurtam is what I am informed by a better knowing cousin. Another hour is spent chatting. Sudden questions arise on my MBA and I mumble prepared answers and escape from one corner to another.

Lunch is served. In the true traditional format as described here, the banana leaf is spread out and feasting begins. A healthy meal later, traditional games follow; cards and dumb charades!

The evening requires us to visit the Guruvayoor temple. My parents and sister take darshan of Sri Krishna. I rest in the car, driver-like, listening to Ustad Rashid Khan’s The Song of Shiva.

Day 4

Breakfast, nap, lunch, Malayalam movie on Asianet, late afternoon tending to evening siesta, read, IPL, dinner, IPL, sleep.

Day 5

The plains begin to fade. Rolling hills build up slowly and suddenly the board appears, ‘Hairpin Bend 1 of 16’. Another board welcomes us to Idukki, famous for its numerous hydro-electric projects, wondrous rains, breath-taking views, fascinating flora and fauna and its various shades of ‘green’. Vagamon, a small hillock is our final destination for the day, but we decide to drive to the Idukki dam first. En route we come across a well in the middle of the road. Investigations lead to the discovery of water, almost half way down, but defiled by cigarette butts, packs, plastic and other tourist discards. Our next stop is a view point from where the official authorised to dispense viewing point tickets points out Vagamon in the distance. It intermittently goes into hiding behind thick columns of Cirrus before appearing in full splendour, taller and prouder than the surrounding peaks.

We drive on till we reach the Kulamavu Dam. A huge dip covered like a tropical jungle on one side with the reservoir on the other. A bridge leads over the reservoir, wide enough space for a bus to move through. There are 2 Police Outposts at both ends to ensure peace, safety, aid and prevent people from capturing the beauty. A quick conversation struck with them however helps us as they sagely advice against visiting the Idukki Dam, as people cannot gain access without a special permit. Disappointed we take a U-turn and head back down the hill negotiating the same 16 hair-pin bends, this time covered in a mild yet delightful drizzle.Next stop Vagamon. More to follow...

When your on the road...keep drifting.

The Great Indian Tamasha and other ideals

2009-04-24T09:44:00.005+05:30

Cynicism apart thousands if not lakhs of people walked/rode/(insert mode of transport here) to their respective polling stations and exercised their adult secret franchise yesterday. Secret taking second priority, as most wear their political affiliations on their chests. For me secret remains equally important as the right to exercise my vote. A strong ideal ingrained in me by my father who in turn had been adviced similarly by his father.

A large part of the day was however spent in cynicism, evaluating the bios of the candidates and their manifestos. A mighty task made simpler by Smartvote.in. Mammoth rather, as the Bangalore Central constituency had 37 candidates battling it out including a certain candidate from the BSP whose symbol inspite of violent ideals incidentally is the gentle pachyderm. Of the 37 candidates, 22 were independents. Independents whose manifestos had agenda varying from shockingly turning their constituency vegetarian to more mundane ideas which most politicians (wannabes included) stand for like water/electricity/education for everyone. My father wondered why there were so many in number. It was quite clear that some were in it for working for the betterment of society, others for the pride, some for the mere fact that they could spare Rs 10,000 to contest; but for most, its their single easiest way to achieve higher hits on the media waves.

The Economist labelled the jumbo democratic exercise as "The worst possible way of choosing a government—apart from all the others". I say the method is fine, the participants ignorant (some gullible) and the politicains (at least most of them) whose fate will be sealed for another five (hopefully) years, delinquents. The end result of this massive exercise will be a hung parliament. Independents and regional parties will eat into the vote banks leading to no clear cut results. Parties will look at reworking alliances post results to best suit their power and monetary requirements. Regional parties will become more vociferous on the national front, as they alreay are. I am sure all points aforementioned have been discussed and digressed about by psephologists/journalists/campaign managers/the public. But the point is: Is there an end to this Tamasha? And no clear answer dawns.

My solution would be to eliminate the number of political parties for the Lok Sabha elections. What we require is a basic two party system. The government and an opposition. A government who has administrative powers. All laws and rules will have to be passed by the general public. It would be a rather long process but it can be implemented. The government would act like a CEO and his team would be answerable to us and we would be the final stake holders. In a country like ours with its (trumpets and drum roll) diverse and colourful paradoxes (where else would you see two ladies walk side by side, one with a pot of water extracted from a hand-pump miles away from home and the other ipod plugged into her ears with the latest Laptop strung across her shoulder) such a proposition is hard to dream about but given the right incentive it should take off. As Alan Moore puts it in V for Vendetta, "People shouldn't be afraid of their government. Governments should be afraid of their people." A situation which is very much the case here.

The ideal situation would be when we have the freedom to pursue ends for our own good. What we deem good for ourselves physically and mentally and without impinging or denying what others deem their own benfits. But, as is the scheming mentailty of the human species loopholes will be literally expoited at the drop of the coin. The key word being ideal, utilitarianism is again a distant reality which I dont see happening in my progeny's let alone my own lifetime. However the 'human will' will survive and that day will come...soon.

Lets put a smile on that face

2009-04-06T20:41:00.002+05:30

A trickster is a god, goddess, spirit, man, woman, or anthropomorphic animal who plays tricks or otherwise disobeys normal rules and norms of behavior. And who better a trickster than....from an old photo album of mine gathering dust in the attics of my mountainside home Beetle Juice and The Joker.

In the Middle of the Night and Death

2009-04-04T16:06:00.005+05:30

Having wrongly read a news report of an electronica music show at the Max Muller Bhavan by Mouse on Mars a descendant of Kraftwerk and having also wrongly informed a friend M about the show, at about 22:00 hrs last night I felt it was only right that I make up for having brought her all the way from Koramangala to CMH Road. After downing a hot chocolate, a cappuccino and a rosemary chicken quiche at Gloria Jean's cafe and knowing she had traveled the distance to capture the electronic colours and hues on her Nikon I suggested that we go down the road to the Lakshmipuram Hindu Cemetery. A cemetery in the night time being one of the bullet points on her "To Capture" list.

A silence intermittently broken by the barks of dogs and ever excited, ubiquitous crickets welcomed us as we crossed the open gates. The quintessential cemetery, stood in the stark yellow light of street lamps throwing an occasional shadow which required a furtive second glance to make sure no mysterious characters were lurking in them. Having set up the tripod M got shutter happy and I just looked around, n stick glowering.

Knowing the area from childhood I was aware we were being observed by a couple of inquisitive characters. Ignoring them for a while didnt quite please them as one of them walked in and started questioning us in Hindi first followed by Kannada. On explaining that M was just taking a couple of snaps and not disturbing the environment or creating a ruckus the ruffled inquisitor inquired if we had permission from the gatekeeper who I assumed to be tucked in bed. The time being past 23:30hrs I contested his suggestion believing the gatekeeper didnt want to be disturbed and the fact that I rather didnt want to disturb him right now. On that repartee the inquisitor took the onus of knocking the door of the gatekeeper's ramshackle hut and after repeated knockings and pleas the lady of the house stepped. Much like Helga, wife of Hagar the Horrible in appearance, the rumpled lady was not in much too a friendly mood to have a chat on what we were doing there and our exact purposes. We explained that we were here just to take some photos of the cemetery in the night time and we would not create any issues natural or supernatural. The inquisitor tried convincing that we were upto no good and had to be evicted from the property immediately. "Helga", rubbing sleepy eyes thought otherwise, warned us not to venture into the crepier looking areas and promptly went back to bed. Inquisitor in question slightly ashamed, slunk away after threatening that we should not disturb the peace of the people in their final rest..supernatural blah...supernatural blah...

We moved ahead. M capturing gravestones, trees, the crescent, inquisitive(apparently our man was not the only one) dogs, smoke from my n stick (quite unsuccessfully though), boards advertising coffin and undertaking services. By about 00:30hrs we decided to head back home. On the way back there was another stop to capture the traffic below, on and beyond the flyover connecting the Inner Ring Road and 100 Feet Road. Some beautiful snaps later I saw M off at her home and called it a rather early Saturday morning.

10:30 hrs or so there was some commotion heard from my neighbour's house. On investigating I found that the purohit who had performed the annual death observance ceremonies had uttered the final ritual incantations and had himself collapsed. Further investigation led me to conclude from a body already quite cold as well as any visible lack of breathing that the man was dead. However to reassure the neighbour that such was not the case and that there could be hope I quickly put the man into the car and drove him to the nearest nursing home. The doctor on duty presumably shared my sentiments explaining that she could not feel a pulse and advised us to rush to Chinmaya Mission Hospital. After weaving in and out of traffic for about 15 minutes we reached the hospital only to be confirmed that the purohit had indeed died. Tight lipped the neighbour and I waited for the purohit's son and daughter in law to arrive, complete the necessary formalities and then returned home.

It was only at home when it struck me that I had a near reverse chronological experience of visiting the cemetery first and then the death, all in less than a span of half a day.
Its a funny thing how after a life of division; from birth through caste, creed, sex, wealth, knowledge, position, health; a life of being ahead or being beaten by someone; a life of compromises, competition, celebration, confusion; everyone meets the same end-Death. Death is the ultimate leveler.

Going down cancer street

2009-03-18T22:47:00.003+05:30

when you re going...

it winds long and dark
tenacious muck dually lined
perceived emotions of lightness dawn
burdens add drawing deeper within oneself
yellow stains mark ends
constantly gnawed at to hide and cover
sticks in packs of ten add
false cheer and misery too
addicted comprehended realisation evades
rock n roll angst ridden rebel act
psychoanalytical reasons put forth
anthemic songs pour praise
denounced closer home
days of sunshine burn

...down cancer street

Emosonal eat-achchar

2009-03-04T11:14:00.007+05:30

Frank Zappa said "There are more love songs than anything else. If songs could make you do something we'd all love one another."
Now, we dont all love one another, do we? That's out of the question unless you are a saint or one too many down in a bar, suddenly you love all around except the one you made an attempt at dating. The "datee" in question comes at the wrong end of your spleen venting, foul tongued mouth. But then Zappa's statement would be rendered void. But then his statement is true only and only if "songs make you do something...". What if you listen to it and move onto the next song on your playlist? And that song turns out to be "Emosonal Atyachar"? That brings memories to your mind...bad memories, of course you hardly have any good memories.Its not meant to be. Of times when you thought you were in love, thought being the operative word. You tend to perceive Dev's emotions. His, being pickled in a bottle of Smirnoff and yours neatly bottled in the deep recesses of grey matter. You commiserate with him on the lack of spice in life. And then the answer dawns, The Answer to Life, the Universe, and Everything (love included) is not 42; it's achchar!
Rice, dal (pappu-charu) and pickle, 'As Gult as it Gets'.
Enough rambling...

Musical Journeys

2009-03-02T09:16:00.007+05:30

Culture and all its siblings (cousins included) descended on Bangalore the last two weeks as she witnessed music, dance, theatre and all the assorted ensemble which makes up the wonderful world of art.

Starting with the Iron Maiden concert at Palace Grounds on February 15th, practically every evening was spent in a mood of complete intoxication of (mostly)divine music. Maiden, was a visit out of sheer habit, to attend any international rock act in Bangalore. Unlike last time as I heard, when I missed the show, from attendees that they had come to promote their at that point latest album, A Matter of Life and Death,they did belt out the classics. Song upon song, Bruce Dickinson and the Saggy Gang came at you like a dragon whose fire was not so hot anymore. Though he flung himself all over the stage, cavorted, head-banged, rabble-roused the crowd,etc. the essential trooper quality was missing. Or atleast, so I think. Having sufficiently doused the liver with products from Mallaya's stable, critical thought had been dumbed down to a certain extent. Anyway in between such numbers as The Number of the Beast, Fear of the Dark, 2 Minutes to Midnight and such, there were a couple of incidents worth a mention.

No 1. A tall, rather pretty, blonde, presumably from Poland, passing me, took a moment off from her conversation with her acquaintance, looked at me and said, "You have a nice beard!" Ah bliss. The moment too short, her legs too long and off she had gone.

No 2. Mallya's stable was opened on various occasions through the show and after 4 such runs in the stable, I decided I had to take a bungee jump, which was conveniently located outside the arena. Having taken a medical before the jump, I was buckled and hooked up onto a long elastic cable and then lifted into what at that point looked like the stratosphere (exaggerated now it seems, but nonetheless quite high.) On reaching the highest point I was asked to turn around, let go of the handles and step off. Two seconds later I fell, much like Gibreel and Saladin, though it was 1/222nd the height from where they took off, and I had a cord attached.

On day 2 regulation black tees were shunned and the bright kurtas took prominence. It was after all an evening of cultured grace. Having opened the concerto with Beethoven, the Scottish Chamber conducted by David Murphy were truly magnificent and beautiful. Adding beauty to the stage was a lady of East Asian origin on the cello weaving gracefully, with short flicks of her hair.
Later the stage was handed over to the venerable Amjad Ali Khan on the sarod accompanied by the Pt.Tanmoy Bose and even later the Scottish Orchestra joined the maestro, putting forth shimmering waves of the most divine kind. Each string was coaxed by his masterful hands to a point of no return when suddenly it was realised that there further levels to explore. His favourite tune (I have heard him play it atleast on three different stages before) Ekla Chalo Re by Rabindranath Tagore was rendered most beautifully with the minutest of vibrations being heard clearly across the hall. The latter half was equally exotic with a jugalbandi and hence the name of the concerto, Samagamam.

Day 3 was less cultured to the Day 2. Saw Dev D, and whatay movie. Anurag Kashyap truly blew the levels of societal comfort. His show of excesses realistic yet surreal in terms of its depiction. I especially liked the Twilight Players and what cannot be said about Emotional Atyachar...nothing.

Day 4 was reserved for some carnatic music, the Mysore Brothers, Nagaraj and Manjunath on violin. Three hours of ethereal divinity (though its a word I dont much associate with) and about 45 minutes of that period dedicated to understand the legerdemain of a certain Umayalpuram K Shivaraman and his adept sishya Arjun Kumar.

And so on and so forth...add a bit of Evam and their rib tickling Macbeth-The Original Spoof...some more ransacking of Mallya's stables...an entrance exam to a certain institute going wrong...more ransacking in honour or disregard of the exam...Playstation at Mr P's house...and a fortnight passed.

Day...? The evening sun mellowed into a purplish bruise as I set off from Mr.P's house. Ms M. picked up from a pre-designated spot, petrol tank filled and close to 27 kms later we were at the Srishti Institute of Design. A night of Sufi music infused with Kabir's lyrics awaited us. As we waited for the hostess of the evening Ms. S and Mr. A to arrive I met my cousin N.
What followed was an eclectic mix of nirgun style Hindustani classical (Vijay Sardeshmukh, later to be found as a disciple of the great Pt. Kumar Gandharva) thumris (Vidya Rao), hypnotic Rajasthani folk (Mahesha Ram) and ecstatic qawalis (Farid Ayaz, who sang with true aplomb). It was unlike anything I had experienced in a long while. Unfortunately the police as they usually do, played truant, and stopped the proceedings at about a quarter past two in the morning, in the process leaving a wide gap in the soul, having missed or rather forced to miss the performances of two other folk singers Mukhtiyar Ali and Shafi Faqir.
Having retired to N's abode and proceedings concluded including a viewing of favourite scenes from Snatch, topped by this, we crashed about four hours after the music was stopped at the design school.
The morn brought a bright sun out, leaving little but me out on the long ride to Ms.S's home for lunch. Nice wining and dining followed...

PS- This post was pending a long while since the first thought of it happened as soon as the tall, blond Pole complimented my beard. It took a while in the making...a couple of hours on the upper end in front of the comp...hazaar ransackings of Mallya's stable and pit-stops at various points across Bangalore as well as of the mind.

PPS- It is dedicated to cousin (removed twice?)A, who was the prime reason for me landing at the Maiden concert. If you are reading, lets RockNRolla!

Bored at Work

2009-02-27T12:34:00.005+05:30

When bored at work the internet is the proven answer to unleash you into a hyper-relistic world of stories that overwhelm you, leaving you gasping for more and more importantly not so bored anymore.
In a recent such incident I came across this and which later led me to this.

P.S.- My stomach lining was split in the process and is healing quite well now.

Family Functions

2009-02-08T19:18:00.004+05:30

I was at a family function yesterday. Most of my family functions happen in Kerala. They work as great excuses to bunk office, travel by train and most importantly EAT. Once in Kerala the routine numbing weekday transforms into a highly orgiastic day of exercising number two and number four of the Seven Sins, Gluttony and Sloth.
This last visit saw me wolf down 8 appams with stew followed by 4 adas(a sweet preparation of jaggery and grated coconut in a flattened momo style rice flour, the whole preparation is then steamed in a banana leaf). There is nothing better than a Malayalam movie to keep you company in the midst of all this and Mukillyatha Rajyatha was heaven sent at that moment.
Promptly after the last ada vanished from my plate the eyelids turned heavy and the bed beckoned. Morning siesta over it was time for lunch. Though the fare was a simple rice/sambar affair the highlight for me was the unlimited servings of banana chips and 2 preparations of raw mango, one a chutney kind of curry and the other a freshly cut and spiced pickle. Lunch over it was time for another trip to a far far land. The heat tried playing spoilsport with a power failure but with such a laden tummy nothing could stop me.

The function was a "grand success" as such events are described in various sections of the media.

A general occurrence at such events is that all the seniors in attendance, out of curiosity and possibly ulterior motives of a future alliance making, enquire on my status education wise-"MBA not done still?" and work-"how is the new company?". These are the the two prime questions, followed by other meanderings. I have been wondering if there is a possibility in the near future where such curious peoples' lives is made easier with a tablet kind of contraption which lists out the tedious details of a person's bio-data matrimony-wise.

PS: Ennui continues unabated after the lazy weekend trip to Kerala.

Rest my weary limbs/soul/eyelids.

Reader's block

2009-02-08T18:55:00.003+05:30

I am facing a major (atleast I think so) problem for the past couple of weeks or more. I cant read anything for more than 5 minutes. I start off something and then 5 or max 10 mins later I have turned to something else. Concentration is becoming highly economic. Irritability is also high. Withdrawal symptoms was my first guess, and then I asked from what?
Settings might be main cause I have decided. Most of the reading now happens on the way and back from office. Travel takes a good 2 hrs of my day. Its tough to concentrate when you are virtually in the middle of a death race with each driver taking out his bit of anger, with the world, on Hosur Road. Add to it the high bass effects of the latest hits from Hindi and Kannada mixed with the non stop raucous talk of RJs, and any reading goes for a toss.

The downside of such travel and 9 hours of work in between is when you are back home the only thing you wish to do is get numbed by the TV. Its quite unbothersome in the way it sits there and lets you stare at it. Apart from exercising your eyes It hardly troubles the body. The lone digit that has to change the channel gets slightly vexed at moments but never feels strained. But wait I am digressing, my reading habits were being talked about till a while ago. See, its the same with writing. I have in my to do list 3 posts pending, one on the trip to Bijapur, one a short story and the third about the Bullet ride to Sakleshpur. The topic of discussion wanders away, untethered. Is it a sign of a crossover from the classical to the days of hyperlinking and shortening of patience?

Maybe I just need a good lazy Sunday to put up the legs and open a taut thriller or a mellow travelogue.

Maybe I just need to put my mind to it.

Time Out

2008-10-13T22:42:00.002+05:30

The dust settles, and two wide grins behind the windscreen of a Mahindra Bolero welcome us. We pile in, luggage and all. Gears shift and we are off bumping up the road and it looks like we must mandatorily pay our respects to all the craters visible and invisible. Intermittently snapped up by the dark when Mr A switches off the headlights, we are headed to Craigmoore Estates in Polibetta. Wiki says that Polibetta has an excellent 9 hole golf course. I am more into 9 course meals and such like, a liberal dose of spirits before the meal included.
A neatly trimmed hedge with the board proclaiming the estate’s Scottish descent greets you at the gate. A rubbly path leads you down; over a rectangular strip of grass trimmed by the underside of the wagon; onto a wide area dropping you off at the rear entrance. Saddam, the “One Eyed Dalmatian” stands guard along with “Bingo the Canine Baring”. A whine escapes its throat, and it’s reassured of our credentials.

The sun smiles down on the red esplanade and matching mansard roof. Tea in one hand (bear in mind we are in a coffee estate), nicotine stick in the other, mundane talk happens. The call is heard and we flock to the breakfast table like the faith full. Rice rotis, chicken fry, a delectable fish curry and mutton gravy stare at you from behind covered plates and pots. Our own plates filled, liberal helpings of ghee heaped on to the rotis, we settle in for a journey where the taste buds are taken for a gentle spin much like on a coracle. Cells refurbished, we open the board, for a game of Monopoly. Freshly squeezed lime juice washes down the remnants of breakfast. As the others progress to build houses and hotels on Mayfair and Strand, money and sites mysteriously vanish from my portfolio, as mysteriously as a chilled beer landing in my hand.

Lunch was another cell bursting explosion of chicken biryani and other meaty dishes. Some of us retire to the esplanade conversing under an open canvas parasol. The others head to their beds. Afternoon siesta over Mr A groups us like a mother hen gathering her young. Walking (more like prodding others backside) sticks cut off from trees the estate walk starts off.

Parallel paths made by the wheels of a wagon, cut through the Arabica branching off in all directions. Balls of pepper, young and green, peep sheepishly from behind vines. Huge conifers bend matronly, over the coffee, providing shade. Crickets chirp as cameras click, suddenly going silent as we pass close to their hide-outs. Mr A and CEO G, deep in their own triumphs and worries of looking over coffee estates lead us through copses and grasslands till we reach a narrow mud path hanging over emerald paddy fields. Suddenly Mr A says we need to back track and leads us up another grassy slope, to a dilapidated structure, below which lie the estate deities, adorned by flowers and other votive offerings. A strange tranquillity descends on the soul, as hands are joined and silent prayers emanate from the devotees lips.

The walk continues, this time finally settling at the banks of a largish pond. Guava trees sprout from the muddy banks, fruit hanging waiting to turn ripe and be picked. An abandoned shed waits in anticipation for people during an unexpected downpour. A bench made of planks makes a good photo opportunity for the cameras accompanying the nature walkers. We continue and are almost back home as the auburn sloping roof comes into view.

Bath and other ablutions complete, it is time for the spirits to take over for the night. Bottles of varied hues and shapes appear, as does a dusty unused hookah. Poisons chosen, the hookah turned out to be a bummer and was quickly replaced by the ever dependable Gold Flake Kings.
A short précis of the eventful night could be written thus- pole dances, more imbibing of spirits, pulling down of pajamas, raunchy jokes, all round debauchery, et al.

The next morning found me with a chainsaw splicing the head. While the others played another round of Monopoly I preferred the comfort of my bed, resting the aching cerebrum. Lunch, this time starred a cashew rich ghee rice, ably supported by mutton fry and yellow tadka dal. The bed beckoned again and I followed like a moth to a flame. Hours were passing, and soon after a 'pick me up' for the previous night’s escapades and dinner, we were all packed and delivered to the bus stop.

As we wait for our bus a magical mist envelopes us, trees appear ghoul like, adding to the eeriness. A sudden feeling of indebtedness comes over me, a feeling of thank fullness to Hazrat Dada Hayat Mir Kalandhar, the Sufi mystic who noticed an uncharacteristic burst of activity in goats which consumed a particular seed. He returned to India with seven of these seeds snugly tucked in his robes and planted them in the Baba Budan Hills. The descendants of this strain were later transferred to other locations, including the Arabica through which we walked the previous evening. I close my eyes and the magic seeps in, quiet and peace reigns.

Promises

2008-10-13T19:58:00.003+05:30

Half baked, never kept
Hypocrite you rant
Bastard and what not
Silent I shall remain
Time will come
When I fly the coop
Jailed till then
Beating blue funk
Drunk as a skunk
I will wander
Exploring ladder theories
And Gorky Parks
Dots and lines join us
Hemoglobulus fluids too
Antipathy I cannot offer
The truth will blow when you agnise
I am mine.

Benevolence

2008-10-01T16:49:00.004+05:30

On the way to Melkote last week, I saw a truck with a North Indian registration. On the look out for funny messages usually painted at the back of trucks, this particular one struck me for the owners/drivers benevolence-"Buri nazar wale, tera bhi bhala ho."
Also on the trip was a movie placement never heard of or thought of before. My biggest scoop so far...

DVG and back

2008-09-13T16:37:00.007+05:30

'Tis 5AM in the morning and MG is nowhere to be seen. The train leaves at 6 and we need to employ the services of an auto rickshaw, a task easier said than done at that hour. Finally his number flashes on my cellphone. He is 2 minutes away from home. I hitch the backpack onto my shoulders and wait at the gate. He jumps out of his car, snatches his bag from the back, waves a bye to his father who groggily shifts into the drivers seat, recently vacated by MG. The car shifts gears and moves out slowly. Suddenly MG swears out loud and waves and beckons his dad to see him waving in the rear view mirror and runs after the fast disappearing Santro. The tail lights turn right leaving the now distraught MG in the middle of the road, slowly his head lifts, a call is made home to inform his mother that the cars auto locking system broken and in MG's hand now will have to be later collected from my house. The broken piece of electronica safely deposited on my window sill, instructions discretely given to my parents, its time to find that elusive auto rickshaw. Minutes pass by, MG's yakking barring, the streets are silent. Finally the puttering of auto in the distance, hope fluttering we search the length of the road. From the far end a faint light suddenly bursts, searching, prodding, moving ahead in search of a prey. We wait. It passes, it already has had its fill. The driver smiles ruefully. We march ahead. The sequence repeats itself twice and then finally we see him. Our redeemer. How much, we ask? One and half he says. We look at the watches, hem and haw and quietly climb in.

Our redeemer deposits us outside the City railway station. The digital clock says we have 15 minutes to book our tickets and board the train at platform 8. We start running. We reach the advance booking counter, only to be told that advance booking for the Jan Shatapdi which will pass through our destination Davanagere is closed. We curse out loudly. We plead. The man behind the glass wall shakes his head, and politely asks us to make way for the man behind us. We curse again. Resigning to the fact that advance booking counter will not help us we run to the current booking counter. Touts block our way, Chennai, Chennai, they say. We reach the counter, worm like lines spout from glass walls similar to the advance booking counter. A flurry of hands and heads bob jostling for space and their tickets, their only key to the other side, the key to break their shackles, their key to freedom.

We give up and walk out of the station. Breakfast first, cells rejuvenated, we decide to take the bus. What escaped our senses at that time was the bumpy, bone rattling experience ahead of us on NH 4.

Tickets bought, we sat back in our seats. Finding a comfortable spot which would immediately shift every time we careened over a road hump or a crater. Just as the first signs of sleep started peeping from below my eyelids a strong assault was made and this time not on the coccyx but the nostrils. A heady smell of sweat mingled with the nauseating red beetel and to add to the melee a hairful of jasmine. And a battalion of such like women. Resigning to my fate I inched closer to the window in search of the redeeming fresh air, occasionally peeking at the Kannada paper in front of me in search of movie tag lines. None piqued my interest. Not the likes of "Madesha-You walk...You die."

The hours passed by, as did the towns and villages. Finally after three rounds of assaults by the fast recuperating jasmine laden, beetel chomping, sweat emanating ladies I surrendered at Davanagere.

Having been ably guided by the great MG we arrived serendipitously at a certain restaurant, the name of which I currently forget. The food, was the very opposite, with some succulent chicken kebabs, including a reshmi kebab which was covered in actual cotton candy reshmi. Meal complete, we headed to our host's house. A neat apartment with the usual messiness of a bachelor, but with complete amenities, beer apart.
What did we do in Davanagere you might ask? Ummmm... we watched Speedracer(completely tripped out), went out for a stroll around Gundy Park, did a walking tour of my host's college(in itself a primer on the labyrinthine culture of the place) , had tea(aside:the host drinks tea at this particular shop) had a milk shake with host's friend, went for dinner and returned to host's house to watch Wanted.
The highlight of the evening was probably the ride back from our restaurant of when we were stopped by a policeman who asked us for ids and licenses and other such administrative requirements. Thankfully we were able to prove our credentials except for the host's bike's insurance policy paper, which had lapsed. The renewed policy was safely tucked in at home, unaware of the trouble his absence was causing. Matters eased out when the policeman was assured of its existence and attempts made to bring it to him while I waited with him observing his monotonous nocturnal routine. He let us go and we were ready for the late show, Wanted.

The next morning we groggily made off to the Benne Dose shop which had dissappointed us the previous evening. Having had our fill of the crunchiest outers and softest inners of a dosa ever with a potato masala and tantalising chutney, we returned to our host's house now sans him to watch a third movie, A Wednesday. And what a movie it is! Crystal sharp, searing dialogues, skilled craftsmen at their best. Naseerudin Shah exceeded himself as the common man taking religious fundamentalism by its horns and yanking it off. I especially liked the scene towards the end where he almost forgets his grocery. Movie over, lunch eaten, this time a nice veg pulav and some ghee roast, we head back to the KSRTC bus stand, the lead cause for the spurt in practitioners of chiropracty. The journey back was much the same, though this time it was longer and darker. The ladies were there, eveready with there assault weaponary. I pressed for a mercy plea and occupied a window seat.

We reached Bangalore at about 21:30 hrs. After a hasty zinger meal, I was back home exactly 2 hours before my 23rd Onam. Happy feasting followed.

Pickbrain am I missing an R somewhere?

2008-09-09T19:19:00.005+05:30

Watching Pickbrain is nauseating. Caught the Pune round of TATA Crucible on tv and it was an excruciating 2 minutes, thats as long as I could bear him. Cant imagine how we sat through various quizzes of his as a contestant and I think one as a member of the audience. Having observed him at close quarters on stage on a couple of occasions here are a few observations:
1) The man is excitable at the drop of a hat. You could argue that he is enthusiatic about his compereing and wants to play to the gallery. Sorry sir, its a farce which comes through right in your face. By the end of the "show" you can be rest assured you have attended a stage show of the crassest variety, "subtle" humour (read as making digs at the contestants when they give answers which are related to industries of the processed latex variety) lines most of his one liners. His "superbs" and other superlatives restricted to "brilliant" and "excellent" delivered at audibly defeaning decibels bore your ear and yourself to death.
2) Veritably pompous, he likes the attention bestowed on him by serville sycophants who throng around him like those who bow at the feet of godmen of the Sri'do' variety.
3) Everything is played according to a script, even a slight deviation from the original and he is left gasping like a fish out of water.
All these are detterents to attend his quizzes, sorry "shows" but the money is good, though coming across it has also become tough for me, who am I kidding it was only Tata Crucible 2006, campus edition that clicked for me, hopefully not the last. I will continue attending his "shows", after all as someone said there are whores and then there are quizzers.

Moving On

2008-09-06T13:53:00.004+05:30

Seasons change. Situations change. Everything changes, people included. Like a river, change flows, eternal and ever-moving. Thats the truth. If you cant handle it, dont attempt to live on half truths and a false sense of well being. Enough sermonising...
This last week I saw Rock On. Its decent in the fact that its attempted to cover a band and its aspirations, the tensions among them, how things fall apart after the juvenile star status makes them think nothing can bring them down (things definitely can) and how they re group for their swansong. The tag line LIVE YOUR DREAM on the whole looks like a chapter from a self help book on the lines of Robin Sharma. Urbane, cool, appealing to the metro-multiplex yuppies, all in all a good entertainer.
In spite of all the hype and slick marketing for Rock On, Mumbai Meri Jaan, made a quiet entrance at the multiplexes (sadly there are hardly any stand alone theatres near home). It was absolutely brilliant. Tight in its composition, gritty portrayals and, for lack of any other superlatives, brilliant performances by Paresh Rawal and Kay Kay Menon. It revolves around five interlinking characters a la "Crash" around the July 7th Bombay Local Train Blasts. Worth every paisa you spend in buying a ticket apprx 180 bucks on a weekend evening show.
Coming back to the moving on part.... I will be shifting from my current employers within a couple of days time. The first 2 years and 3 months of my corporate career have been spent in the company of wonderful individuals with their idiosyncrasies, loves, hates, moods, et al. Its with a tear gleaning my eye that I will have to bid adieu to A, M and the others. I will miss the innumerable lime teas on Edward Road, the full meals at Eden Park, the Nico(man) across our office. Monday morning con calls, extended lunches, book hunting during office hours, attempts to set the lovelorn life right, New Fund Offer madness,FMPs, Gold Fund NAVs, call report by Friday 6PM, less than 36 hrs in Goa trips and most of all the "BLADE". Thank you S,A,M you have sharpened me:-)
Endure. The memories will remain, soon to be laminated in sepia in some corner of my brain, untouched till a trigger happens. Time to move on, flow, experience, see more, learn more.

Peripatetic

2008-08-04T00:45:00.004+05:30

Open roads lead
to the back-lanes of the mind
of an unending journey.

Goon and Friends- The Preview

2008-07-20T15:57:00.002+05:30

Goon and Friends
"what are friends for?"
Alternate tagline-Nuts Forever
Tentative Release Date: 12/12/2008 (interesting trivia, the release date has been scheduled to time with the birth date of our very own MOTTE BOSS- Rajanikanth-The Boss.
For updates watch this space.

XXIII and Wayanad

2008-06-03T23:23:00.004+05:30

Its been a year since I turned 22. And I have posted only 17 times in the mean time! According to Paul Theroux who I had the privilege of meeting( rather hearing) a couple of months back at a author/reader interactive session in a bookshop and also most other wordsmiths- To become a writer one needs to assiduously put pen to paper daily. Laziness, lack of time, writers block, matters of the heart and mind, et al prevent me from writing more frequently, not necessarily in that order.
I complete 2 years of work at my present employer on the 26th of this month. A time to introspect on how my career path is shaping up, what steps do I take it more solid and endearing. As of now I am mentally ready to change jobs, sectors from sales to marketing/communication. Any openings please do let me know.
Tripping continued. Wayanad was covered during the last weekend of May. A light drizzle welcomed us as we drove into Kalpetta, our base. Check in, lunch, and rest later it was too late to visit any of the sight seeing worthy places, so we took the road to Kozhikode which leads through about 25km of winding hairpin bends. An undulating ebb of green rises up and down like a calm ocean. After having a good laugh at the thought of a comic scene from a Malayalam movie of how Kuduravattom Pappu manages to negotiate the same stretch of road at high speeds on his roadroller, we headed back to our hotel.
The next morning our first stop was Soochi Para Falls or Sentinel Falls. The road leading to this falls was through a velvety green tea estate, which was explored with many a photo opportunity. The falls per se were a delight. Stripped to our innerwear we spent the better half of an hour getting pounded by crystal clear water falling from a height of close to 40 feet. Water sports later it was time for lunch. Full meals at Hotel Afsaa (completely Muslim sounding place, serving pure Veg fare, liberal doses of garlic included!) later it was back on the sight seeing circuit, the Pookote Lake.
We hired a boat for 4 and got midway through the ride when a heavy drizzle started which converted itself into a full fledged cloud burst. The boatman quickly sculled us to safety under a couple of trees on the bank. Five minutes later we were all drenched. The boatman suggested that since we were already wet now, we could complete the ride. So off we went in the rain, which had eased off a bit by now. Water water everywhere.....couldnt be more apt. A cormorant perched on the water buoy continued its hunt for fish inspite of the rain.
On the way back to the hotel we paid our respects to the Chain Tree. The tree is believed to have the soul of a local ghoul chained to it. The next morning we proceeded to Thirunelli, a temple town about 60 km from Kalpetta. The 3000 year old temple dedicated to Vishnu towers over the settlement on top of a hill. The Papanishini stream flows nearby. According to myth, Garuda was flying over the stream with 'Amrita' when a drop of the divine nectar fell into it, rendering it so pure, that it turned into a purifying spot, with redeeming qualities. A dip in the stream is essential as part of the last rites for your parents. The stream being quite empty, did not look inviting enough for me to take a dip to purge my sins.
The return drive turned out to be quite an adventure, with a new route which according to the mile stone would have cut distances by about 40km. The road soon disappeared to a pothole filled semblance of a road, and finally into just a mud path. According to a villager who we stopped for directions the road had not been repaired from the days of the Wodeyars, 50 odd years back. The 25km stretch took us close to two hours to conquer, leaving us with a punctured tire in Mysore 70 km later. Apart from accosting black faced langurs, a peacock who crossed our path and a couple of elephants in the distance we were kept company by various interesting noises from the jungle. The rest of the journey passed off uneventfully with a break for refreshments at Dasaprakash for Masala Dosa, Bonda and Coffee.
The punctured tire replaced we continued to Bangalore. An adventurous weekend behind us, the traffic on Mysore Road brought us back to reality, pollution and the sad fact that the next day was work as usual.

Elusive

2008-05-25T16:20:00.001+05:30

I did ask you,
It is true.
Questions asked,
Answers denied.
I wait and wait,
At your gate.
Down the corner,
Like a foreigner.
Shunned by his own state,
Cursing my fate.
Looking for a sign;
Hopes benign.
Weeks pass by,
I try and try.
From the day I was born,
I remain lovelorn.

Whats your trip?

2008-05-13T00:13:00.003+05:30

It certainly feels good to own this machine than collecting fancy watches and pens.

It feels better to let the wind through your bald head.

It feels best when you know that each weekend ahead of you, you are on a trip with nothing more than a backpack and the open road ahead of you.

Ladies and gentlemen, yours truly is now the proud owner of a Royal Enfield Bullet Machismo.

The Indian Wall (of shame) Comes Down

2008-05-10T20:36:00.004+05:30

I exercised my suffrage toady for the first time. The indelible ink stained my left index finger and I pressed the blue button against the ............ symbol. It did feel nice later, that you had helped decide who would set your policies and laws. Hopefully it is for the best. Heres a wish-list for the new government......
1) Cheaper booze.
2) Watering holes to be open in Bangalore till 2 AM.
3) METRO in place by end of 2009.
4) Well tarred roads everywhere.
5) Close all malls and open more shopping streets.
6) Adding on to number 5 open more stand alone theatres.
5 and 6 might not be the best of requests to the new government, but 1 and 2 i believe definitely are.

Jokes apart I was surprised to read that in spite of the right to adult franchise and India being the largest democracy and what not, there existed a wall in Uthapuram near Madurai which divided the Dalits from the upper castes. Though the 600 m long wall was put up to avoid further clashes between the warring factions of the lower caste Dalits and the upper caste Hindu Pillaimars in 1989 on the jointly taken decision of the leaders on both fronts, it took nearly two decades for any government to oppose the idea. The Dalits who form a majority in the village till date could not access any of the main areas of the village and faced discrimination in a very subtle but shameful manner. The government finally said the wall had to come down and was demolished(not fully, as a portion was retained to remind people of such atrocities) on Tuesday, 6th May 2008 as the situation had become so aggravated that the wall had an electrified fence on it to prevent Dalits from crossing over during the nights. The dividing wall has been brought down, but apart from the literal division going, when will the cultural and attitudinal wall fall? When will oneness reign?

Misty Mountain Hop

2008-04-10T22:25:00.005+05:30

The winding open road beckoned again, so off we went to Kodaikanal, the last among the jewels of the hill stations of Tamil Nadu, completing the quartet of Yelagiri, Yercaud, Ooty( covered over the last 8 months) and of aforementioned destination.
The timing couldnt have been better. Our Natural Resources and New Energy NFO closed on a dismal note, collecting a grand total of 230 Crs as against a planned collection of 1800 crs or there abouts. The sibling's exams had finished. And Monday, being Ugadi was an optional holiday, optional as the stock exchanges were working, and we close officially only when the stock exchanges are closed, made the weekend a long one. So what better thing to do than take off on a road trip.
Friday morning loomed faster than I expected, I slept at 1:00 in the morning and had to wake up at 3:00! A quick brush up later we were silently driving through the darkness, the only car among a dozen trucks on Hosur Road. Though apprehensive of the Hoggenakal mobs around Krishnagiri and Dharmapuri we safely passed through till our breakfast stop just before Salem. We were saved by the early departure I guess for the next morning's paper carried a photo of a KSRTC bus in flames. After passing through Rasipuram, presumably the native town of the famous RK Narayan and Laxman, Karur (my local neighbourhood banker) Namakkal (famous for its bus building services) and Dindigul (famous for making locks) we had left the dusty plains behind us.
We wound our way up intermittently stopping to click photos and gaze at distant waterfalls shimmering in the afternoon sunlight.

Kodai town or rather the touts there welcomed us with the usual furore of race enthusiasts waiting for their favourite driver to cross the checkered flag. The smart guys who noticed the KA number plate started off in Kannada, "Cottage beka saar?" "Banni saar, room ide, guide beka saar?" Ignoring their plaintive cries we headed to the TTDC hotel where our bookings had been made. A second quick brush up, bread omelet and tea later I was ready.............to hit the sack. It had been 10 hours of driving, a majority of the miles covered while yours truly was behind the wheel, so sleep was essential. But we did go out for a short evening stroll to savour the cold and see our breathe turning into a mild mist in front of our faces.
The next morning a lazy sun nudged us up with great difficulty from between our blankets. After downing a rather filling breakfast of Dosa, Pongal, Vada and tea, it was time to set the limbs in motion at Coakers Walk, a kilometer or more long pathway along the edge of a hill, the name of which I forget. Though hawkers had set up shop on one side of the walk selling trinkets, woollen clothing, ice cream, carrots and a whole lot of other things the view along the walk made up for whatever shortcomings or disturbance they were the cause for. Verdant rolling hills sprawled below, in various hues of green, low cumulus suddenly covering everything from sight. Cars snaked up on the winding roads like ants. Couples hands locked in eternal love smiled at each other. Time stood still for them, until a bunch of probably drunk visitors decided that screaming their lungs out from the top of the hill was a good way to entertain themselves.
Next stop was at Pillars Rock (viewpoint) considering the rock itself was in front of us. A jagged V shaped protuberance alternatively getting covered by the clouds. Though I felt that I should have stood there for some more time to capture the various moods of the cloud covered rock the bus loads of tourists predominantly from my home state prevented me from doing any justice. A short drive from Pillars Rock is the Green Valley View Point formerly known as Suicide Point as the board claims. The approach to the point is lined, by shops, this time on both sides, selling wares varying from homemade chocolates to sea shells! The point itself is barricaded by a high pointy fence. Monkeys with swishing tails though were not apprehensive about the drop below as they patiently waited to be captured on camera, sacrificing their privacy and inhibitions for scraps of food and drink.
Twilight led us to the Kurinji Andavar Temple. Devotional songs and incense sticks along with the sweet smell of jasmine greeted us at the entrance to the temple. In a corner a rectangular piece of land, about 2 feet by 6 feet, sprouted the kurinji plant, the plant whose purplish blue flowers which blossom once in 12 years lends its name to the Nilgiris. A board above it proclaimed that the flowers would blossom next in 2018. Incidentally we had witnessed the flowers in bloom in 2006 in Munnar.
Night descended quietly as we wound ourselves back to the town after having stopped at the Chettiar Botanical Garden. The Kodai International School with its campus bang in the middle of the town was host to a rock show, the last event of their cultural fest I believe. Strains of Megadeth, Metallica and the screams of 100s of hyper active teens floated along with the harsh calls of street hawkers peddling their wares.
The lake is probably the most attractive sight of the town. A large limpid span of water which looks even more attractive during the night reflecting the twinkling lights from nearby hotels and other buildings. Almost 4 kilometers in circumference, walking around it is an ideal way to work up an appetite before dinner, also to soak in the milieu around the boat house with its various nik nak shops and tea stalls. Though a round on the cycle also wouldnt have been a bad idea. This done, followed by a warm dinner of phulkas and aloo ras later, it is time to do another round of the lake, this time in the comforts of the car.

Day three of the trip started with me making a visit to the Forest Office to seek a letter of permission to visit the Berijam Lake Reserve. The letter having been signed and authorised we turned towards Berijam, a mere 21 kilometers away as the map claimed, only to turn out to be 45 kilometers, almost half way to Munnar across the border in Kerala! The route was so scenic, passing through thick pine forests, lush meadows and copses with rivulets gurgling through them that finally the distance didnt matter. What disappointed us though was that once we reached the forest office check point and this was 9 kilometers from the actual point we were informed that we couldnt go further as a large tree had conveniently decided to place itself in the middle of the road. After much debate whether the tree had naturally fallen or was planted in the middle of the road to prevent people from visiting the place and hot words exchanged with the forest official we traced our tracks back to the town with a pit stop at a point where a board claimed it was a view point of the Palani Hills. Half a day wasted because of a communication gap among the forest officials. Damn!
The evening turned out to be more fruitful with three beautiful places covered. First was the Upper Lake View Point from where we could see the entire lake in all its shimmering glory with little paper like boats gliding on its surface. That was followed by a visit to the Fairy Falls, a quaint little falls inside the Horticultual Research Institute campus. True to its name it fell like a white curtain quietly from a small cliff, in an environment which greatly evoked of a sense of being transported to an Enid Blyton world of fairies, elves and pixies among colourful flowers and mushroom shaped houses. The last was an even quieter place with a slightly more thundering falls called Bear Shola Falls. An ideal spot to sit and contemplate the meaning of life and various other philosophical thought processes which might have been ignored so far.
We returned to the town to finish a quick round of shopping, viz home made chocolates and some glass trinkets for the sister. A speedy dinner of Mushroom Sukka, chappati and mix veg curry downed we did a last round of the lake, this time looking oddly eerie with a light fog hanging on the surface of the water and trees dancing spooky shadows in the mellow street lights.

The next morning dawned earlier than anticipated. The drive down the hills was slow. A steady hum of crickets punctuated the air, occasionally broken by the sound of a gushing stream. The sweet piny smelling air slowly disappeared to be replaced by the dusty highway. Cool replaced with heat, reminding us of the harsh summer ahead of us. The hills were left behind, a magical land, of solitude and calm. The words remained in my head though. Respite. Refuge.

Alive

2008-03-17T23:53:00.002+05:30

To reiterate what is already mentioned in the title:( a sad reference the blog not being updated for the past 3-4 months) man I need to write.....

Son, she said, have I got a little story for you
What you thought was your daddy was nothin but a...
While you were sittin home alone at age thirteen
Your real daddy was dyin, sorry you didnt see him, but Im glad we talked...

Oh i, oh, Im still alive
Hey, i, i, oh, Im still alive
Hey i, oh, Im still alive
Hey...oh...

Oh, she walks slowly, across a young mans room
She said Im ready...for you
I cant remember anything to this very day
cept the look, the look...
Oh, you know where, now I cant see, I just stare...

I, Im still alive
Hey i, but, Im still alive
Hey i, boy, Im still alive
Hey i, i, i, Im still alive, yeah
Ooh yeah...yeah yeah yeah...oh...oh...

Is something wrong, she said
Well of course there is
Youre still alive, she said
Oh, and do I deserve to be
Is that the question
And if so...if so...who answers...who answers...

I, oh, Im still alive
Hey i, oh, Im still alive
Hey i, but, Im still alive
Yeah i, ooh, Im still alive
Yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah

Morbid Thoughts....and the past weeks and the future.....

2007-12-20T00:04:00.000+05:30

Random Quote
"When one by one our ties are torn,
and friend from friend is snatched forlorn;
When man is left alone to mourn,
oh! then how sweet it is to die!"
Anna Letitia Barabauld

According to thedeathclock I will rest eternally from Thursday, March 13, 2059. The funny thing is it appears as the same "date" whether I am overweight or not and also whether I am a smoker or not. Since I am a Gemini I shall humour myself and thedeathclock thinking it is the 'twin' funda.

Was in Goa for less than 36 hours the last weekend. The journey was planned on the spur of the moment. Maybe I should reconsidered it as I was lighter by about 2000 after the 36 hour sojourn. Maybe not, I like entering tunnels even if there is no light in sight.

This weekend being a long weekend has been booked for the family. So we are driving down to Shravanabelagola, Belur and Halebid and from there onto Hampi. I am sure there is some Gypsy blood in us, tending towards the higher end I must say.

Last week I also won a quiz after a long drought. Sai and I (aided by the fact that some sitters decided to come to team four,Aristotle; that was our name on stage)teamed up for the quiz at St. Josephs College of Business Administration and went home with a coupon for Rs 12500 each. The holder of the coupon gets a one day packaged natural healing and stress relieving at Ayurvedagram for a couple. I tried giving it to my parents and was downright refused. Any way its got a validity of 6 months, so that much time to find an eligible lady. - Must try a pick up line with this coupon featuring somewhere. - Or maybe not. The fact that I could get my ears boxed is not something that I might look forward to.

The end of the year fast approaches and I have only about 1616579720 seconds to go in my life. So I shall linger not no more and attempt at getting ahead.

Raising the Bar

2007-11-22T01:10:00.000+05:30

Its appraisal time at office. So everyones cross evaluating each other apart from doing their normal work. The thing about cross evaluation is that it allows you to loll around office acting important in front of the computer (sales guys, unlike techies don't have much opportunity to do this). It also makes you think hard about the person who you are evaluating, what you do unto him/her is what will be done to you!
Surprisingly today a colleague from another state, calls and asks, "Dude what are your strengths?" Cant figure out for myself, so just list it out so that I can put it down for you! Also suggest some areas of improvement. The main intention of this exercise I believe is to avoid self evaluation. Ultimately what all this leads to is an annual bonus, a promotion and a hike in my salary, something that I am eagerly awaiting. Economic benefits are most welcome.

Update wise.....had been to Udhagai two weeks back(family trip) and Kerala last week to attend a couple of cousins' weddings. Hectic weekends leave little time to blog and write. Heading out of Bangalore again this weekend to Mysore to visit a certain Mr P at his Infosys campus and if possible head to Wyanad from there.

Need to generate more ideas for this blog. Its stagnating into 'a what I did and what I will do' journal with practically no literary content. More than generation of ideas and thoughts I think its about logging in the ideas when they strike you. Probably need to just write them down on a piece of paper and later add it here or better still get a blog enabled device. Wanted to write something about love's labour lost, my job and people i meet on a daily basis as part of my job. Just cant think of anything though suddenly. Shall blame it on writer's block and lack of time, not to mention lethargy. Anyway shall stop before I continue ranting.

In case of....

2007-11-07T01:09:00.000+05:30

.... no posting for sometime I feel good by putting a one liner or adding a photo just to think to myself that this thing is alive. So here it is, one of mine own.
Venue-Casa Picola
Day-Today
Characters-A bunch of girls zonked after their European Literature exam and I(the said ladies not having been zonked by me).
Context- Ms SB is thinking aloud to herself that she is thankful for the number of people she knows from the banking industry.
The 'banking industry' phrase being wrong, I corrected her to mutual fund sales guys and that she should be thankful that she has so many friends to 'bank' upon. Ha!
And to add a photo, for aesthetic sake, heres one from the Pondi trip. I was proud of myself after capturing this.

Where is the love?

2007-10-17T22:11:00.000+05:30

Black Eyed Peas performed here sometime back. Though I am not a great fan of theirs, the mix of funk and hip hop do add a certain spice to any playlist. I believe they would be better to listen on the radio or CD than a live show. Live shows are for more mature artistes, like Led Zeppelin who is reuniting with Jason Bonham stepping into his father's shoes(bless his vodka filled soul). Vir Sanghvi explores his Led Zep experiences here. I unfortunately do not at this moment have any such tales.
The only story closest to this kind would be the one where I cycled down to Palace Grounds for the first Deep Purple concert when I was in the 10th. This was prior to the days when my father would trust me with his two wheeler. BMTC would not exist once the concert was over and micro economics worked against me paying an exorbitant figure to the auto guy. So my faithful Avon Montage, a brand of cycles which had eluded most other cyclists in Bangalore was the only go. Company was restricted to drunken Northy guys running around in circles through the crowds and felt that it was their birthright to do the Bhangra to Blacknight. Most of the moments are still quite clear in my mind especially the sing along with Ian Gillan for Smoke on the Water and 1000s of completely out of tune voices. Jon Lord fired from his hammond at will. And Paice was bull dozering through us with his unending drum solos.

More recently I had attended the Sepultura show. Though much of the concert eludes me for various reasons, the highlight for the show was probably a rendition of a famous metal number which I fail to remember. Gosh, what was I doing there?! If someone reading this was at the show please do jog my over strained memory.

In the meantime last month I had been to Pondicherry. I intended to write a travel blog about it, but reconsidered the thought once I realised that it wouldn't look like a travel blog once I look at the whole event from a couple of weeks time gap. The freshness to the whole trip would be missing. The essence of travel writing is to capture the real flavour of the place at that particular moment and engrave it for future reference instantly, not to go on a trip somewhere, return to base, wait for a couple of weeks, contemplate the incident and then decide "Oh lets put it on paper!". Thats why I prefer photos, because they capture moments instantaneously and remain the same for a long time to come unless it is attacked by Photoshop and suchlike. Words can always be meandered your way at any point of time.
And in a couple of days I shall be of to Ooty, Kodaikanal and the rest of the hills for four days. Prime reasons for the trip being listed below:

It gets too noisy around here during Deepavali. My ears are of the sensitive type. I am almost deaf as most people who have interacted with me might have experienced. (Though I have noticed that it does not happen at work but only when socialising with friends).
We have bought a new car, a Zen Estilo. So lets go...Wrong one I guess.
Thursday is an optional holiday and Friday is a holiday, so no question of leave from work.

My only gripe right now is I might not be sanctioned leave in December when the gang ably led by Mr A is heading to Goa. If I miss that "trip" there can be only one comment made, again in the words of the most noble Mr A, "Oh, what a tragedy?".

PS The date of posting this appears to be the day when I started it and left it as a draft till today, November 6th 2007. What have I been doing all this while?

Swinging all the way

2007-09-20T23:32:00.000+05:30

Six things that swung all the way....
1 Yuvaraj Singh's 6's in Durban.
2 Sensex crossing the 16000 mark
3 6 years since the 9/11 attacks
4 Today I had my 6th haircut in 6/3 years. (Bad one i guess!)
5 Gold hitting a 16 month high
6 My waist is fast approaching 36. Glad to see that I am still in the OK zone.

Eyeballs :

2007-09-20T00:00:00.000+05:30

I have just seen that I have had only 67 profile views since I started blogging. The essential need for a blogger is to be read and appreciated or criticised depending on the need of the post. Like I enjoy reading, writers also live by being read. Hence the need of the hour-more eyeballs. (I love taking things literally and also make things more graphic.)

Of Past Haunts(loves)

2007-09-18T23:11:00.000+05:30

Last week was convocation day in college. Had to give it a miss though as I was not in town. So decided to collect the degree certificate today, in the hope of seeing myself finally having achieved the status of a GRADUATE, some fifteen months after I had passed out of college! Unfortunately the concerned person was having his lunch, hence I am still not in mine own terms a graduate.

The time earned thus was quickly diverted to make a couple of calls to old loves and haunts. Love being an emotion (for me) restricted so far only to books, music, movies, food and a couple of other unmentionables and not the fairer sex (apart from the familial subset) as might have been thought of by you my discernible reader. Though I did come close to exploring it.......

The first stop was made at SK Bakery, on that colourful road named after a certain Markham. Two lime juices (sweet and salt) downed faster than I can type this last word, and a quick exchange of gossip about the alma mater with the Malayalee owner later, I parked my bike outside the Kerala Beef Stall near Johnson Market. Though Khazana with their delectable beef biryani and vonderful veal kebabs called out, time constraints, made me dash to Mecca Cafe for that timeless brew of Sulaiman Chai. Lime pips bobbed up and down tickling the lips till they were left low and dry at the bottom of the cup, their services completely used up.

All this brought back memories of the numerous discussions we had at Mecca and SK topics ranging from the latest cover of the Rolling Stones magazine to Britney's tonsured head. All the jokes cracked, laughed at loud and cut short by the killer stares to maintain decorum from the maitre de at Mecca. All the classes missed, all the ego clashes, all the last one rupee coins pulled out to pay for the chai, juice, samosa, et al.

The sepia tinted smoke clears in a flash. The memories remain......

Questions.....

2007-09-11T23:28:00.000+05:30

Yesterday for some strange reason someone messaged me, "Are you wearing red?". I replied in the negative, and that was that. Now, I have been trying to logically deconstruct the whole act. The main thesis will refer to why she SMSed the aforementioned message. I believe, the reasons are as listed below:
(1) She saw me, or a person like me, but instead of calling out (and in case of mistaken identity and embarrassment on finding it was not me) she got away by messaging me.
(2) She did not want to bump into me (as I was scaring her?) hence check with me by SMS if it was actually me.
(3) Since I hadn't seen her for quite sometime maybe it was a line to start the conversation with me?
(4) I am fast running out of reasons, primarily because this post was initially written a couple of months back and I do not seem to remember what I might have thought at that point of time.

And apart from that I just did not want to see a 'draft' post as part of the 'post settings'. I like to complete what I start. So here is to Le Fin.

Why?

2007-08-24T08:59:00.000+05:30

Why should I go to work in the next half hour? Why cant I just sit around home? Read, watch movies, listen to music or just sleep. Why not take the bike and go for a long ride?
The answer is very simple, I know, but I hate it.

The Week So Far....

2007-08-22T21:42:00.000+05:30

Its been quite a hectic week so far, with a new fund offer(World Gold Fund) closing tomorrow. The high point of course would be the rains yesterday I think. The topic of conversation for most people I met today was "Where were you stuck?". They made it sound like it was the great deluge or something. As for me I was below a scaffold near Bangalore Central, being subject to conversations like, why a certain pair of trousers had to be returned without being altered as the bill for the aforementioned trousers were not in order. This from an employee of Central most probably part of the Merchandise Altering Dept. to a colleague from a different Dept. who gave him an exasperated look as if, "Oh I know, the nerve they had to ask you?!". Inane might just be my middle name.

Monday was a good day though. Had attended a kutchery at Odakkathur Mutt near Ulsoor lake. T M Krishna had a delightful voice which deftly wove through various ragas. Though I am not a specialist on the subject of Carnatic music(i cannot identify ragas or anything, except for Hamsadhwani),I enjoy carnatic music, especially the thaniavartanam (percussive duel should loosely describe the word). A rather sad thing I noticed was that quite a number of the elder people find the best time to break for a leak or anything else is during the thaniavartanam. Rather discouraging for the artistes I feel. Anyway a good, rather divine two hours were spent in the Mutt.

Tuesday was the day of the rains. And it was quite heavy to say the least. Three hours stranded near Central and not an acquaintance in sight. Heavy on the legs, not to mention the boredom. The torrents in the silver and gold lights falling on the hoardings did break the monotony though.

Just saw Woody Allen's The Purple Rose of Cairo. Truly a treat. A wonderful work of absurdity. Its about a girl who lives a sad real life during the great Depression and longs for the reel life. And out of the blue, the star from the movie she is seeing in a theatre, walks out of the screen abandoning his reel life for the real life. Among the various adventures that they share including the girl's(Mia Farrow, she does a brilliant job as the small town girl forever in awe of starry Hollywood) trip into tinsel town on the black and white screen, dark comedy blends with absurdity seamlessly weaving a magical world, leaving you very warm at the end of it all.

The Simpsons

2007-08-11T23:50:00.000+05:30

All hail Matt Groening, James L Brooks, Sam Simon and the rest who are involved in The Simpsons!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

The Eighth Habeet

2007-07-28T19:35:00.000+05:30

Its been more than a month since I blogged. The reasons are listed below:
(1) Travelled to Kerala for a cousin's engagement.
(2) Travelled to Goa for obvious reasons. (Break from what ever I am doing, being the prime reason)
(3) Travelled to Mysore with family over the weekend, last weekend or was it the one before?
(4) Travelling around the city as part of work.(That hardly qualifies, but reasons are also excuses.)
(5) Reading
(6) Movies
(7) Travelled to WonderLa(thats hardly a reason, but to make the next excuse an even number)
(8) and finally laziness.
I shall add a few photos from the Goa trip ans Wonder La trip, to conform with the shop- worn phrase, "a picture is worth a thousand words."

One Year Older.....

2007-06-02T20:12:00.000+05:30

Yesterday I turned one year older. Messages and calls flowed in, the whole day from all over. Much thanks to all my well wishers. Though it wasnt anything special, the day as such. The usual happened work, chai in the morning, informing my clients that we would be launching a gold fund soon, some gossip on the latest movies, meeting friends for lunch and dinner.

Thought I would treat myself to couple of new books at Premier, but forgot to carry my coupons care of the KQA. That was a disappointment.

Everyone at office was quite gung ho that I had turned a year older. The joke around office is that I turned 32, a reference to my balding pate and other characteristics of what is generally seen in what they term affectionately an "Uncle". Jokes apart I have turned a decade younger than the aforementioned number. As Mr A, a colleague of mine puts it, age, is after all a number.
A first of its kind was witnessed by yours truly yesterday. I cut my first birthday cake! Surprisingly I cant remember having cut a cake during the whole process of having existed so far in my life. Thanks again to everyone in office for that distinction. Apart from having cut the cake, it was me who also the chose the cake, another dubious distinction in professional quarters. The day also left me richer with a Pepe short shirt, slightly in line with shirts worn by Jaswant Singh, the ones with flaps on the shoulder blades. Though his shirts donot have any juvenile slogans and designs!
Birthdays are also a time to reflect on the past and what can be witnessed in the future. So heres to a great year ahead. Cheers.

P.S.- Saw Pirates the Third today. Quite Bollywood in nature with a "Dus Saal Ke Baad" end after the credits. The high point for me would be Keith "Dark Prince" Richards appearing as Sparrow's father, pickin' at the guitar(Spanish?) with the usual aplomb of a sinister wizard. And of course Jack, himself and his dainty moves around the screen.

P.P.S- This made my day. At the back of an auto, "Aunty Joot, Uncle Tus"

Kozhikode Welcomes You.

2007-05-19T15:11:00.000+05:30

In Kozhikode right now, had to attend a marriage of a cousin. Came by Rajahamse, the semi deluxe KSRTC bus. Like always I managed to pick a seat which was located in between two windows with neither opening out near me leading to my sweat cells (what ever they are) working over time. Finally having managed to wedge a part of the glass open things started to seem better, but for some guy behind me who was probably returning from a trip round the Sahara, who wanted the window to be shut. Ignoring his frantic nudges at my hand didnot work my way and he finally prevailed, closing the window completely. Sleep was not the first thing on my mind at that moment, considering that I was being stifled to death. Anyway the blood did cool down later, aided by some ice cold mango crush.
I managed to finish a couple of chapters of that infamous book by Dr. Gonzo before nodding off. The first pitstop for loosening bladders and revitalising the senses was some place just before Mandya, a dirty dingy establishment filled with Malayalis on the way to Talassery, Kannur and my destination(also present spot where I am writing now from). Most men after hurrying down their food were heading to the lone cigarette shop, probably their last smoke for some time(eons apparently for them).
I quickly settled back in my seat and let the movement of the bus rock me back to sleep.

Kozhikode appeared faster than it seemed it would. It was also hotter than expected. The pores just let their sluice gates open, they knew they had no control over it. Five minutes in the sun and it was like I had just stepped out of a shower. It was torrid to say the least.
The morning was occupied with a pre marriage ceremony. The rites having the least of anything to do with me, took ages to finish. What saved the day was the food. The food was just wondrous. Rice covered in thick sambar, with a variety of dishes decorating the periphery of the aforementioned rice. The smell of coconut grated and cooked to perfection in ghee, banana chips, rasa kalan, and other condiments. The rest, is a gastronomic journey to truly understand the "naadan sadhya". To top it was the most heavenly payasam I had ever tasted, in recent times.

Post lunch the rites continued, but I had enough of that. Headed for a movie, its essential to watch a Malayalam movie when in Kerala. Saw Vinodayatra, starring Dileep, Meera Jasmine, Mukesh and a bunch of veteran comedians who would basically push the movie through till the interval with various antics and wordplay, essentially clearing the platform for the lead actor and actress to romance around till the end, peppered with various struggles through their lives, some contemporary issues like lawless demonstrators fighting the police and finally like it has always been atleast in most movies ALL OF THEM LIVE HAPPILY EVER AFTER. Well that wasnt an exact review of the movie. But it is quite watchable, the second half tends to border the situation where you are about to let out a sigh of relief and get up from the seat under the impression that the movie is over, but NO its not, this happened quite a number of times. But what really piqued my interest was the number of ads for gold and tiles before the movie started. And all of them sounded and looked the same with the same voice overs, hardly bringing out any message or individuality for the brand.

Anyway the marriage was today. Again the notable activities of the day were related to the stuffing of yours truly, breakfast and lunch.
Right now at a house of a relative's relative. Thats another thing to astounds me, how everyone has some kind of a connection with each other.
Waiting for the bus back home, at 21:00 Hrs. Another long back breaking journey ahead of me. Atleast tomorrow is Sunday... Can rest the whole day and then its back to work. That reminds me I need to buy some halwa and chips, quite a number of people are eagerly waiting to swoop down on that oily jelly like sweet which I hate. The chips will not last long though....i can eat most things which are fried.

Boogie Chillun'

2007-04-17T00:32:00.000+05:30

Read an article on the blues in a Brit Folk music magazine. Though I forget the authors name, he writes about the new avatar of blues and how the old guys still influence the new breed in much the same way as Robert Johnson and Muddy Waters re-created or re-stylised their predecessors music, who were mostly talking of their lives on the "Pickin' Fields". Anyway the author gives a brilliant tail-piece to his article which has been published below-
"There's more blues available to you today than there ever has been. Most of the giants, I grant you, no longer walk among us, and those of us old enough to have seen some are increasingly grateful for the experience. But if you want to immerse yourself in the subject from top to bottom, using all the media available to you, and still go out to get drunk and boogie occasionally, then the time to do it is , as it always has been, right now."
Will try to find the author's name and link soon.

Sat Tzu and the Art of 'Board' room Warfare

2007-04-15T11:38:00.000+05:30

Heres a tip to do well, when you face corporate bored(ro)om. Play Monopoly in office! Thats what we did yesterday. The topic of discussion over coffee in the morning was a weird German sounding chess move which was brought into the topic as an analogy as to how Reliance screwed up some other company in the telecom indusrty, which made an abnormal twisted reference to my favourite board game MONOPOLY.
So we headed out to Sapphire on Brigade Road to purchase the deluxe version of the above mentioned game. The first step inside brought back memories of my pre-high school days when I battled alone in my mind with GI Joe and Cobra figures
Those youthful yet violent days have made way to board room warfares, of course these are choreographed on the table in our conference room; our artillery, money(of the fake pound kind) and our business acumen. Though most were not familiar with the nitty-gritties of the game they picked it well and proceeded to thulp the shit out of me, the apparent veteran on the Monopoly gaming circuit.Mr A and Ms AM teamed up to show us how a duopoly works by joining hands and building houses on sites which they jointly held. A considerable investment was made in developing the key sites of Park Lane and Mayfair, which proved beneficial at a later stage when all opponents including yours truly made uncanny rolls of dice to land exactly on the aforementioned sites.
A stupid move on my part to hand away Fleet Street with all its journos to Mr M in exchange for Liverpool Station turned out to be disastrous with the rest of the game slowly being taken over by the joint team of Mr A and Ms AM. Though Mr M made a few decisive blows intermittently, the impact on the financial prowess of A&AM was next to negligent.
The game finally ended with A&AM emerging on top of the corporate ladder with their assets closing at 10K Pounds, Mr M followed at 4K odd, yours truly with a respectable 3.8K and Mr S on the verge of filing Chapter 11.

Some one mentioned Apna Sapna Money Money as a parting shot to the days events. I shall stick to "Show me the money!"

Till the next board meet....

Yeracud and after.....

2007-03-25T23:28:00.000+05:30

Drove down to Yercaud last Saturday. The same day as the Maiden show. What a shame. The trip was worth it though. Was dead beat after work for the past couple of months. So it was a good break from the drudgery of work. More on the trip later....Too lazy to type the whole story right now.

Went for a movie screening of Brazil by Terry Gilliam today. I arrived some fifteen minutes late I think, should have made that about three hours! Quite a mind numbing experience, with dystopian rants and according to me never ending final scenes.(It looked like the end but was not, at least five times I thought "Ah finally." but no it just didn't stop there.) Apart from some nice sets and some mildly peppered humour the only thread running was the Brazil song which reminds me of the aerobics classes which happen diagonally opposite to my house. They would play this song at semi full blast at five in the morning when the rest of the neighbourhood were snoring blissfully. The classes continue, frequented by shapeless "seismic" in nature beauties and the songs they cover these days are more of the "nach" variety currently the flavour in Bollywood.
As for Brazil Sai quite summed it up with, "Its 1984 Monty Python style."

Travails of a business quizzer.....

2007-02-05T18:33:00.000+05:30

Some weeks back IFMR, Chennai organised a Business Quiz. The key factor of thinking of taking part in it was the cash prize of Rs 24000. (Business quizzing considered by serious quizzers as a trivial pursuit is more for the money and the glamour of winning the big ones like Brand Equity and TATA Crucible.) So the cash prize lured my team mate and me to Chennai. The quiz was ok with a mix of old chestnuts, recent business trivia and decent connects. We missed qualifying for the finals by 4 pts which is a mile in quizzing standards. But what actually made attending the quiz worthwhile was the journey there.
I had no reserved tickets either by train or bus. A flight was out of the question unless sponsored by my organisation. If someone from my organisation is reading this maybe you could offer to sponsor the next time I face such a situation. The solution...travel by unreserved train in the general compartment.

So I landed at the Cantonment station at about half past nine, bought a general ticket(Rs 102 all the way to Chennai) and waited patiently for the first train to Chennai to come. The Chennai Mail came promptly( most trains which start from City are on time at Cantt.) at 22:55. The general compartment just behind the engine loomed ominously and passed me by. (The G8 Make Poverty History concerts had lesser people per square foot than this compartment.) People were literally flowing onto the platform.

The patient man that I am, I decided to wait for the next train in an hour and assumed that people do not travel at midnight. They proved me absolutely wrong. The Cauvery Express which wheezed onto the platform just short of midnight had both its general compartments in the front,full. I didnt bother to run up to the rear and check if the other two were relatively freer. I had no other option but to push myself, Footloose bag and all into the second compartment. There was hardly any space to move my backside let alone standing space. And with two grumpy rotund characters sprawled all over the aisle near the door, stepping onto them was the only wise action to see that I reached Chennai. Choicest of swear words flew in my direction in a sleepy state, followed by them quickly turning around and completely ignoring me and my prodding to make them clear the way. After much persuasion the sleeping Buddhas willed themselves to clear some space for me and some other guys who boarded along with me.

Once inside, the first thing which I came across was another sleeping man. This time well placed in between the two bathrooms, covered with the only crumpled lungi he had on himself, on a heap of shaadi mahal lights(the long connected ones). Having already imbibed a large amount of alcohol, he was in a state of delirium(loud searing with occasional pleas of mercy and occasionally turning over into the toilet and throwing up violently).

Seeing the kind of faces around me, all flustered and sleepy I decided against taking my pod out for fear of being beaten up or something. I found a vacant area on the side to lean on and rest my haunches and tried to get some forty winks. Just as i was about dozing a loud high pitched lady's voice woke me up, only to be followed by angry males trying to box the ears of another in his early twenties. I still dont know what the reason for the commotion was, but the guy who was assaulted made a quick exit at the next station.

A couple of hours later I was still on my haunches, thinking why did I ever decide to travel like this when a couple of seats became vacant. I quickly grabbed my bag and flung myself onto the upper berth. It was already bagged by an elderly but rowdy looking guy who wouldnt budge at first but finally relented to sacrifice some of his space. So I settled down as comfortably as I could with my feet on the opposite berth and backside on four or six cold wooden slats.(Thankfully Lalooji has planned to change these berths to cushioned ones from this year)

After five hours of intermittent dozing and a butt which felt like it had gone through a paper shredder the strong characteristic repugnant smell of Chennai woke me and my nostrilsup at about seven o'clock. Basin Bridge had come. Some more minutes later I was on the platform. The "Ting Ting Ting" welcome note which emitted from the PAS at Chennai Central sounded like the suprabatham, after my early morning capers.

Two hours later bathed and well stuffed with my aunts idlis and chutney it was time for the quiz. Nothing much to report on that front. We didnt qualify. We saw the quiz, went to Spencer Plaza (some kind of relief at last), and caught a KSRTC Rajahamsa from Koyembeedu Bus Station(the place is atleast three or four times bigger than the Bangalore HAL Airport!) to Bangalore.

And with that we come to the end of another unsuccessful endeavour of a business quizzer who won the TATA Crucible Campus version 2006. I like to live in the past! Corporate quizzing is so bloody competitive.
And yes I did get a good nights sleep on the bus.