They say I am a 50 year old...I am not sure though. They honoured me and celebrated my birthday with great pomp, confusion and disunity. I puffed up with pride...though only momentarily...hearing the great man who made missiles for my Mother and before that had lived with me for 20 years...heap lavish, mostly undeserved praise on me. This is my story, but I wonder what I am in this tale...the narrator, the stage, the prop, the bystander or just an onlooker.
When I was but a year old, Mother decided to turn me over to my people, hoping they would bring me up well, as she had her other 15 children too to look after, not knowing yet how many more would be carved out of her womb. Not a bad decision because she gave birth to twins a few years back, i suspect her 27th and 28th child...pardon me, but i have lost count. As for my Father he died 8 years before my coming...a sad, disappointed man he was when his end came. I leave it to you readers to let your vivid imaginations take flight, to figure out if i am a case-study for divine conception or bastardy. Anyways to take my story forward...my good people, both the poor and the enlightened of the land handed over my upkeep to something we will call a trust, which I must say did well. They gave land to the landless farmer, ushered in affordable education for all and a good many sweeping changes.
Before I could turn 4, the Rich, the Establishment, the Church and Mother's people colluded in what they called a struggle for liberating me and things were never the same again. I fell into the lap of a Governor for the first of many future ones.
Throughout my early childhood I was witness to a great dichotomy; the men who spoke great principles and supposed to nurture and lead me on forsook all their responsibilities in the quest of an eternal mojo...they called Power. And so for, with and by Power they flourished as a great multitude of associations they called Parties which swore by bigoted interpretations of religion, caste, the oppressed, the middle class and the farmer. And the greatest tragedy was my poor people who were beginning to make a name amongst my Brothers for their intelligence, hard work and education become toys in my name but everyone elses for gain.
In my teens we got a fellow companion, a mean bully, who went by the name of Trade Union. He struck us hard when we worked, studied or tried to usher in changes. Because of his adamant stand, I saw many people losing jobs, others bidding me farewell, some watching the tamasha in approval and a majority feign apathy or helplessness. Our backs had all begun showing signs of rubber than any presence of spine or bone.
The teenage years almost went past, when a woman who came so close to taking Mother's position in my mind, decided I had turned a juvenile and had me and brothers put in shackles for plotting her fall. A friend of my age studying for engineering was taken away never to be seen again but his father's struggle for justice will remain the stuff of legend for as long as I live.
Soon I was in my 20's and yearning to break free but the men who made my life miserable in the past was in no mood to let go. The storm in my life refused to abate...it was decided one front would pull me from the left and another front from the other side. And so they prostituted me in the farce they called coalition which continues to this day, though they have sucked me dry.
Then I turned 30. Not too late to learn computers, i thought and turned towards it. But rowdies, though they call themselves students, in one stroke, obstructed the one avenue I had hoped would lead to my survival. Meanwhile some of my Brothers latched on to IT and today almost all my educated young friends work for them while so many capable men and women who could have helped me out remain lost forever. Of course they built two lopsided parks which continue to grow belatedly; in two unplanned, unclean and unscalable cities called Trivandrum and Cochin where chaos is waiting to happen not too far away in the near future.
And 40 I turned. A time to invest, dream big and a plan to empower and emancipate my people ended with them looting me and leaving my coffers dry. The loans to help people get self-employed and develop subsidiary incomes was a ready reckoner to the poor businessman I was, and recovering none of the spent money, in desperation I turned again to the two hydra-headed monster brothers they affectionately or otherwise call adb and wb whose loans today keep me afloat despite the quicksand of unreasonably huge interest payments that eat into my revenues viciously.
Now I am 50. In the pangs of a large mid-life crisis. The fighting doest happen anymore between my two fronts...but within them. I turn away from them for some relief to the movies but the rot has set in there too, elsewhere mosquitoes with their vicious fangs bay for my dying lifeblood as the darkness approaches. I see the future written boldly but none else bothers to listen or see me crying...the roads will choke, the rivers run dry, crops fail further, more heads hanging on ropes.
Well that was one story on my life, there are others too...I know tales of losers don't sell, but if you are good at it, someday you can tell it with conviction to your grandchildren and sugarcoat it with a nice moral that appeals to them. As for me...
I am bitter at all the pent-up potential gone down the drain,
I am bitter as past achievements pale away into stagnation,
I am bitter that I am the luckless ground that stands beneath your all-stomping feet.
Showing posts with label My Favorites. Show all posts
Showing posts with label My Favorites. Show all posts
Friday, January 19, 2007
Friday, September 08, 2006
A Man in the House!!!
The servant returned from her 5 day onam vacation. Both of us blew a big sigh of relief...i was supposed to babysit my ammachi with dad and mom also away. For 2 weeks tension and worry was wrought on ammachi's face, as she despaired over the holocaust awaiting her under my charge...all my efforts to put her at ease hadnt really worked. Until a few years back, she would single-handedly marshall the house, but old-age had caught up...she needed help, yearned for more company and had sadly yet happily and uncomplainingly accepted the reality that her grandkids had grown up and couldnt be around, that her children had begun to also miss their kids, somewhere along the way I am sure she began to feel like excess baggage. Luckily my uncles, aunt, cousins, my parents and sis had resolved someone or the other would spent seperate months of their crowded year with her. Well, that is everyone, except for me...gave her their quality time. Sadly, Trivandrum for me, is also about my friends, cinemas, cable tv, reading and wandering the city...i always get scolded for not doing enough at home.
So ammachi and I began our few days, virtually keeping an eye on each other. She wouldnt trust me with the stove, would always keep checking to see if I had left taps running, had latched the door and locked the gate...sometimes, it was comical, other times irritating. "Ammachi, njan pazhaya aalalla, i have changed", i tried to reassure her, well i failed. Early Morning 7am. My dad had reminded me she needs a bed-tea to warm her frail body. Ofcourse I was blissfully sleeping. She comes over to my bed and softly taps me, "Moneh". "Ayyo chaaya idande", I wake up with such a wild start which scares her. Breakfast. I take the dosamaavu out, of the 8 dosas i made only 5 turned out okay. For one I forgot to apply oil on the kallu, another i tried to flip before it was ready and a third fell to the floor from the chattukam. Of the 5 right ones, 3 had got a lil too burnt...total disaster! I turned around to see a smile on my grandmoms face, and announced, "naalethotte kaappikke bread, jam and butter"! Lunch. The servant had thankfully cooked 4-days lunch, dinner and left marinated fish in the freezer. Only rice had to be cooked. I didnt remember how many whistles were needed...called up a friend and asked him to consult his wife. I had idled over doing the dishes, and ants had crept up all over the sink...dang, so this is the life of a woman, i turned towards ammachi and asked all dazed, "ammachi jeevithathil ethra dosa chuttittunde, ethra aalukale pottiyuttunde?".
Things really got bad. I misplaced the gate lock and she wouldnt go to sleep until i found it. But I tricked her, found a small lock and got the job done for now...thankfully she wouldnt step out onto the yard at night to inspect . Next morning she found out I had forgotten to keep the aviyal back in the fridge. In the evening she discovered I had forgotten to turn off the Goodknight from last night...i didnt tell her it had been that way for 2 days now! The neighbour had forgotten to turn off an outside lamp facing ammachis room and by afternoon, this was disturbing her...she called over to the aunty but noone could hear her. Finally, she asked me to walk over and tell them...i was cosily ensconsed on the sofa watching something crappily interesting and no way was i going now! She finds a neighbour passing by and asks him to carry the message. Damn, my lazy self! In the evening a few friends came over, they wanted to hit the terrace as the view would be good at sunset. I wondered what to do...until i hit upon an idea. I showed ammachi the locator button on the cordless and asked her to press that to summon me anytime she wanted, i took the handset along and trooped upstairs. A little later the calling bell rang, a visitor must be at the door, i came down, ammachi was frantically searching all over the fone for the button i had shown earlier, but though she was exceptionally intelligent, her memory had faded. Again I feel rotten. Onam, was playing out in the city. I got a boy to sit with her, while i slipped away with Shan for a few hours to see the city and its illuminations, besides guzzling a beer. I got back only at 10, an hour past her sleeping hour...and there she was waiting anxiously for me. I felt an anger rising in me, but that dissipated seeing the happy relief on her face.
"Innokke Onam, TVyude mumbil theerum"...she doesnt talk much, but today she was chattering away, while along i had one eye and one ear on the screen...i was setting records in callousness. "Ammachi samsaarikke, inne muzhuvanum namukke ellaavare kurichum kushimbu paranjirikkaam". So i egged her on to gossip and she complained how mom didnt have enough patience for her, how the servant though a good lady would spent more time chatting with neighbours than her and tell her to massage her feet by herself, and how only pappa, her son-in-law and jancy, our kid cousin had adapted to her helplessness. Anyways the servant is back. The house still stands and ammachi told me she expected much worser things. For the last one week, i got calls from my two other ammachis, one is actually my grand-aunt, asking why I never call and when I'll visit. I turned on the charm, said I was just about to call when they did, assured them I am coming right away, but to little effect. Oh Jibs...tera jadoo chal gaya! All of them were like kids now...charm doesnt work with them anymore but sincerity would...i realize that becoming a man also means watching out constantly for those who got me here. Will I?...and thats the big question.
My Two Sweethearts
So ammachi and I began our few days, virtually keeping an eye on each other. She wouldnt trust me with the stove, would always keep checking to see if I had left taps running, had latched the door and locked the gate...sometimes, it was comical, other times irritating. "Ammachi, njan pazhaya aalalla, i have changed", i tried to reassure her, well i failed. Early Morning 7am. My dad had reminded me she needs a bed-tea to warm her frail body. Ofcourse I was blissfully sleeping. She comes over to my bed and softly taps me, "Moneh". "Ayyo chaaya idande", I wake up with such a wild start which scares her. Breakfast. I take the dosamaavu out, of the 8 dosas i made only 5 turned out okay. For one I forgot to apply oil on the kallu, another i tried to flip before it was ready and a third fell to the floor from the chattukam. Of the 5 right ones, 3 had got a lil too burnt...total disaster! I turned around to see a smile on my grandmoms face, and announced, "naalethotte kaappikke bread, jam and butter"! Lunch. The servant had thankfully cooked 4-days lunch, dinner and left marinated fish in the freezer. Only rice had to be cooked. I didnt remember how many whistles were needed...called up a friend and asked him to consult his wife. I had idled over doing the dishes, and ants had crept up all over the sink...dang, so this is the life of a woman, i turned towards ammachi and asked all dazed, "ammachi jeevithathil ethra dosa chuttittunde, ethra aalukale pottiyuttunde?".
Things really got bad. I misplaced the gate lock and she wouldnt go to sleep until i found it. But I tricked her, found a small lock and got the job done for now...thankfully she wouldnt step out onto the yard at night to inspect . Next morning she found out I had forgotten to keep the aviyal back in the fridge. In the evening she discovered I had forgotten to turn off the Goodknight from last night...i didnt tell her it had been that way for 2 days now! The neighbour had forgotten to turn off an outside lamp facing ammachis room and by afternoon, this was disturbing her...she called over to the aunty but noone could hear her. Finally, she asked me to walk over and tell them...i was cosily ensconsed on the sofa watching something crappily interesting and no way was i going now! She finds a neighbour passing by and asks him to carry the message. Damn, my lazy self! In the evening a few friends came over, they wanted to hit the terrace as the view would be good at sunset. I wondered what to do...until i hit upon an idea. I showed ammachi the locator button on the cordless and asked her to press that to summon me anytime she wanted, i took the handset along and trooped upstairs. A little later the calling bell rang, a visitor must be at the door, i came down, ammachi was frantically searching all over the fone for the button i had shown earlier, but though she was exceptionally intelligent, her memory had faded. Again I feel rotten. Onam, was playing out in the city. I got a boy to sit with her, while i slipped away with Shan for a few hours to see the city and its illuminations, besides guzzling a beer. I got back only at 10, an hour past her sleeping hour...and there she was waiting anxiously for me. I felt an anger rising in me, but that dissipated seeing the happy relief on her face.
"Innokke Onam, TVyude mumbil theerum"...she doesnt talk much, but today she was chattering away, while along i had one eye and one ear on the screen...i was setting records in callousness. "Ammachi samsaarikke, inne muzhuvanum namukke ellaavare kurichum kushimbu paranjirikkaam". So i egged her on to gossip and she complained how mom didnt have enough patience for her, how the servant though a good lady would spent more time chatting with neighbours than her and tell her to massage her feet by herself, and how only pappa, her son-in-law and jancy, our kid cousin had adapted to her helplessness. Anyways the servant is back. The house still stands and ammachi told me she expected much worser things. For the last one week, i got calls from my two other ammachis, one is actually my grand-aunt, asking why I never call and when I'll visit. I turned on the charm, said I was just about to call when they did, assured them I am coming right away, but to little effect. Oh Jibs...tera jadoo chal gaya! All of them were like kids now...charm doesnt work with them anymore but sincerity would...i realize that becoming a man also means watching out constantly for those who got me here. Will I?...and thats the big question.
Saturday, September 02, 2006
Oru Vattam Koodi Pazhaya Vidyalaya Padimuttathethuvaan Moham...
Today i sneaked into Loyola...some of my classmates are in town besides the guys who work and live in tvm...thought of inviting them along for a sec...felt guilty but i wanted some solitude...it has been three long years, it maybe years before i come here again...saturday, onam vacation...not a soul in sight...it was just me and my alma mater. Deserted look, is the word i am tempted to use, but a thousand memories, hundreds of shiny young faces, a dozen inspirational teachers, all seem so alive and buzzing about, around me. I remembered how troubled, insignificant and mediocre i felt when i walked out of school in 1998...even then i knew i made a wrong choice with engineering, but I didnt know much about life, the world outside tvm, big words like fate and destiny, i was a simple kid without any pretentions, ambitions or big dreams. Today I am back here, again feeling troubled, insignificant and mediocre...under the gulmohar's shade, a soothing gentle breeze, i relaxed, i started dreaming, of good days, of hardships that i would tide with a smile, of all the places on earth i would let loose my carefree spirit.
A Week Back...
The three strapping youngsters with a smile on their faces asked me,
"Chetan Loyolayil padichathalle...njangale ormayondo".
I really felt happy...I knew I should blog on my school soon.
Only a few minutes back, the school-bus had passed me, and as always I turned towards it part in reverence, part in the hope of some junior, teacher or the conductor recognizing me...no luck, i was way too history...i thought.
"Ningal ethe batchileya".(I faintly remembered one of the boys...he was one of the little boys who would hold seats for us in the school bus)
"ISC2006. We just got into engineering this year".
"Chetano?".
"ISC98. I cant believe you guys remember me. When I came out y'all were just in the forth"!
We talked for a few minutes. They were eager to know about how life treats them after school...I couldnt give them the hard part...told them to enjoy the next few years to the fullest.
As they walked away I smiled...they were yet to realize the magic 12 years of studying in Loyola would produce...how people would admire them, how they would begin to believe anything was possible under the sun, how the boys they studied with in school with would continue to be their best friends and would all grow into fine young men. This post is just a celebration...its my way of thanksgiving...to the school, to the teachers and most importantly to my classmates...in a space of a fortnight two of the boys are getting married, a third engaged and a forth broke the big news of him about to become a dad. This is a disjointed post...just some old memories, some hilarious incidents and a few personal recollections all thrown in.
This one evening, i overheard Pops telling this cool priest who teaches at the Loyola College, how studying in Loyola made a big difference in my life. Then i heard this wonderful story the achan, who i hope becomes the principal of the school some day, had to tell.
Night Time. Heavy Rain. Frantic knocking at the jesuit residence. An achan goes out to see who it is. A young couple totally drenched.
The guy desperately, "Acho, am an ex-loyolite. Am goin abroad tomorrow. Just wanted to show my wife, my school. Would you have an umbrella?".
The priest stands in disbelief for a second. But the next request floors him...
"Acho, I need a torch too..."
The poor dude was sticking to a long-standing tradition of showing wives the school...this was the place that made us men, endowed us with ethics and liberal attitudes, this was where we learnt to play hard yet fair, work hard yet be carefree, this was where we became rogues, yet imbibed lessons in chivalry and humanity. I can see Shenoi, captain of the basketball team, star-singer, center-forward of the football team, heartthrob to many a tvm gal, hero to many a loyola junior and Sajeev, top-ranker of the class, captain of the school cricket team, unfailing goalkeeper of the football team and Annan to all of us, who are marrying in this Onam season bringing their women here, recounting to them unbelievable exploits, sharing a part of the history that made them the men who appealed to the gals in the first place.
I remember this one evening at Humayun's Tomb in Delhi. My pal tells me, "Dey, lets look at it the way Pulickal would have done, in history class"
"Do you see the perfect symmetry in not just the monument but the surrounding lawns, walls and outlying buildings on either side."
"Do you see the some of the marble tiles are patchworks, done at a later time".
"Did you know, Dara Shikoh, heir to Shah Jahan, was beheaded here by Aurangzeb and this was Bahadur Shah Zafar's last stand during the 1857 revolt".
"Do you notice the steps up to the monument cant be seen from anywhere...on the raised platform...the builders must have thought it hindered the beauty".
"You know what...for this kind of crappy analysis Puli wud have given us a zero"!
We laughed heartily...remembered the old man, and what he meant to us, how he could brutally make fun of us and yet we never felt any ill-will, how he would set the most difficult question paper, how he would be so stingy in giving us marks and fail most of the class, and as if to rub salt on our wounds, would publish our blunders in the school notice board for seniors and juniors alike to mock us...we still loved him, he was our hero, still is and forever will be. We remembered how Paili wrote in Pulickals history paper, "Rani Laxmibai had no natural hair"...instead of "male natural heir" and how the whole class, and from the notice board, the whole school had a nice jolly laugh about it!
A few summers back we decided to have a reunion at school. Two of us trooped into our vice-principal's office. The surprised man was counting a huge wad of currency and my pal snatched it from him and said,
"Achanmaarke enthina kaashe...fees sherikkum kootiyalle".
I was smiling at all this when the poor priest turned to me and pleaded,
"Eda Kattakayam, avanodathinge tharaan para".
I turned to my bud and joked, "Aliya, u shud demand a Refund. Eitherways, u have turned out rotten after 13 years here and still cant speak proper English." (The Refund, a play abt a rogue who goes back to his school and asks for all the money he paid as fees back).
We three broke out into laughter. We had never heard of a Loyolite who got messed up...
Maybe I should take heart from the above...
A friend once asked me,
"Amongst all of us here, why is it that Pappanabhan and you are going back to India?"
I shot back, "Ask your parents why they didnt send you to Loyola".
"They tried, but..."
"Tough Luck, man". While saying that, I couldnt suppress a condescending smile then.
"You snotty bastard. There's one thing you didnt learn there...how to talk your way into a gals heart".
"Thats okay. There's always arranged marriage for losers like me!".
We both laughed...
I arose from the reverie i had slipped into, and headed for my car. A school is all about high spirits, the longing to grow up and become an adult, and "giving your best till the day is done"...i had soaked for a couple of hours in all what my alma mater gifted me...in a few weeks i will become a bird, i will soar, all i need is courage and perseverance, to go the distance, its a promise to be kept. The school will be watching, waiting for me...
A Week Back...
The three strapping youngsters with a smile on their faces asked me,
"Chetan Loyolayil padichathalle...njangale ormayondo".
I really felt happy...I knew I should blog on my school soon.
Only a few minutes back, the school-bus had passed me, and as always I turned towards it part in reverence, part in the hope of some junior, teacher or the conductor recognizing me...no luck, i was way too history...i thought.
"Ningal ethe batchileya".(I faintly remembered one of the boys...he was one of the little boys who would hold seats for us in the school bus)
"ISC2006. We just got into engineering this year".
"Chetano?".
"ISC98. I cant believe you guys remember me. When I came out y'all were just in the forth"!
We talked for a few minutes. They were eager to know about how life treats them after school...I couldnt give them the hard part...told them to enjoy the next few years to the fullest.
As they walked away I smiled...they were yet to realize the magic 12 years of studying in Loyola would produce...how people would admire them, how they would begin to believe anything was possible under the sun, how the boys they studied with in school with would continue to be their best friends and would all grow into fine young men. This post is just a celebration...its my way of thanksgiving...to the school, to the teachers and most importantly to my classmates...in a space of a fortnight two of the boys are getting married, a third engaged and a forth broke the big news of him about to become a dad. This is a disjointed post...just some old memories, some hilarious incidents and a few personal recollections all thrown in.
This one evening, i overheard Pops telling this cool priest who teaches at the Loyola College, how studying in Loyola made a big difference in my life. Then i heard this wonderful story the achan, who i hope becomes the principal of the school some day, had to tell.
Night Time. Heavy Rain. Frantic knocking at the jesuit residence. An achan goes out to see who it is. A young couple totally drenched.
The guy desperately, "Acho, am an ex-loyolite. Am goin abroad tomorrow. Just wanted to show my wife, my school. Would you have an umbrella?".
The priest stands in disbelief for a second. But the next request floors him...
"Acho, I need a torch too..."
The poor dude was sticking to a long-standing tradition of showing wives the school...this was the place that made us men, endowed us with ethics and liberal attitudes, this was where we learnt to play hard yet fair, work hard yet be carefree, this was where we became rogues, yet imbibed lessons in chivalry and humanity. I can see Shenoi, captain of the basketball team, star-singer, center-forward of the football team, heartthrob to many a tvm gal, hero to many a loyola junior and Sajeev, top-ranker of the class, captain of the school cricket team, unfailing goalkeeper of the football team and Annan to all of us, who are marrying in this Onam season bringing their women here, recounting to them unbelievable exploits, sharing a part of the history that made them the men who appealed to the gals in the first place.
I remember this one evening at Humayun's Tomb in Delhi. My pal tells me, "Dey, lets look at it the way Pulickal would have done, in history class"
"Do you see the perfect symmetry in not just the monument but the surrounding lawns, walls and outlying buildings on either side."
"Do you see the some of the marble tiles are patchworks, done at a later time".
"Did you know, Dara Shikoh, heir to Shah Jahan, was beheaded here by Aurangzeb and this was Bahadur Shah Zafar's last stand during the 1857 revolt".
"Do you notice the steps up to the monument cant be seen from anywhere...on the raised platform...the builders must have thought it hindered the beauty".
"You know what...for this kind of crappy analysis Puli wud have given us a zero"!
We laughed heartily...remembered the old man, and what he meant to us, how he could brutally make fun of us and yet we never felt any ill-will, how he would set the most difficult question paper, how he would be so stingy in giving us marks and fail most of the class, and as if to rub salt on our wounds, would publish our blunders in the school notice board for seniors and juniors alike to mock us...we still loved him, he was our hero, still is and forever will be. We remembered how Paili wrote in Pulickals history paper, "Rani Laxmibai had no natural hair"...instead of "male natural heir" and how the whole class, and from the notice board, the whole school had a nice jolly laugh about it!
A few summers back we decided to have a reunion at school. Two of us trooped into our vice-principal's office. The surprised man was counting a huge wad of currency and my pal snatched it from him and said,
"Achanmaarke enthina kaashe...fees sherikkum kootiyalle".
I was smiling at all this when the poor priest turned to me and pleaded,
"Eda Kattakayam, avanodathinge tharaan para".
I turned to my bud and joked, "Aliya, u shud demand a Refund. Eitherways, u have turned out rotten after 13 years here and still cant speak proper English." (The Refund, a play abt a rogue who goes back to his school and asks for all the money he paid as fees back).
We three broke out into laughter. We had never heard of a Loyolite who got messed up...
Maybe I should take heart from the above...
A friend once asked me,
"Amongst all of us here, why is it that Pappanabhan and you are going back to India?"
I shot back, "Ask your parents why they didnt send you to Loyola".
"They tried, but..."
"Tough Luck, man". While saying that, I couldnt suppress a condescending smile then.
"You snotty bastard. There's one thing you didnt learn there...how to talk your way into a gals heart".
"Thats okay. There's always arranged marriage for losers like me!".
We both laughed...
I arose from the reverie i had slipped into, and headed for my car. A school is all about high spirits, the longing to grow up and become an adult, and "giving your best till the day is done"...i had soaked for a couple of hours in all what my alma mater gifted me...in a few weeks i will become a bird, i will soar, all i need is courage and perseverance, to go the distance, its a promise to be kept. The school will be watching, waiting for me...
Wednesday, July 19, 2006
He Versus Me...
I looked at the adversary sitting next to me in the darkness. Only our voices spoke to each other. We were like boxers trading punches, not yielding any ground to the other. Noone had derided me, questioned my ideals and labelled me ignorant in quite a long time and what began as a discussion between my pal, Sreehari doing his masters at Haryana Agri University in Hissar where I was visiting him ended up becoming a debate, argument or quarrel as our constrasting beliefs clashed, depending on how a third person percieved the situation. I thought it worth to share with you all some of the stuff we talked as Sreehari's ideas and thoughts are on a plane different from many of us and though I couldnt agree with him on much, its nice to read about the alternative socio-politici-economic systems others think should be in place of the one we fortunately or unfortunately have in place now.
He: I dont agree with the IT Boom happening now, the BPO revolution we see now is making India a slave. Instead of asserting our creative energies we are working cheaply for Uncle Sam and his cronies, bcoz it costs them more there.
Me: Look at the number of jobs this has generated. Havent you thought of the huge urban unemployment crisis that would have been created. For 50 years before the mid-90's what creative resource channelling have we done. Atleast the Brain Drain stands reversed today.
He: Why dont you open your eyes to reality? We are being recolonized again. The WB and IMF keeps pumping in funds and we recieve with open arms. Do you know anything about the Chinese Model and that they dont beg for aid.
Me: In 1991 we were on verge of default and about to pledge our gold. The economic reforms we undertook thanks to the conditional aid they gave us has rejuvenated atleast a part of India. It is the West's helplessness of their lack of manpower to leverage the technological revolution that they are turning to India. It is fiction that our billing rates are dirt cheap. I know Infy bill at more than $25 an hour which is more than my first salary in the US.
He: 65% of India is dependent on agriculture. Compare this with US where only 2% lives on agriculture. Ignoring agri and villages in not the way to gun for development.
Me: I agree. But if you put things in proper perspective you will find that coz we have solved the problem of urban unemployement to a great extent the govt has been freed to pursue rural development now. Havent you read how NREGP, Bharat Nirman and PURA are all doing good work.
He: Gandhi's call to go back to villages and the self-sufficiency inherent in that model would have saved India. The bastard Nehru's socialist industrialisation programme ruined everything.
Me: Cant you guage the enormous amount of responsibilities Nehru worked under. There were communal riots, states reorganization, the kashmir problem, refugees, etc and then india was lacking in any sort of industrialization and only the govt had means to invest money. Until the 1st FYP and 1957 our focus was entirely on agriculture b4 Nehru changed focus to industries and in 1960's green revolution came and we had a food surplus.
He: Whats the use? They havent implemented land reforms except in WB and Kerala. Kerala has been ruined by joining the Indian Union. We were a self-sufficient state. We had the leading spice trade in the world. Today we have to beg to India for everything.
Me: Would Kerala have been able to pay the salaries of our huge edu and medical and other govt employees with just the spices trade? It is meaningless to conjecture separatism today. No state in India can survive by itself. You are not looking for ways to improve the current system but just ranting and raving at it. I have an Indian identity and there are millions of malayalis like me who are proud of it.
Me: Look at Smart City. So many people would have got jobs. That land lies waste now.
He: We dont need Smart City. It is obvious from T&C's that Smart City is a fraud and eitherway if jobs come from selling our land and resources to foreigners to do dirt-cheap work, we dont need those jobs.
He: You are speaking for your class. I expected you to have a voice for the underpriviledged. You are just another bourgeousie.
Me: You speak from outside the system. Your grouse is you feel frustrated at not being able to be part of the changes the 91 reforms brought about. You havent attempted to see the change through millions of young people who can dream of good jobs now and you doint attempt to find out how we can channel these changes to rural India too.
He: You are ignorant and unable to percieve things better. Your class always wants to keep the poor in chains. You are hiding in the convenience of pragmatism like thousands of Indians and dont want any meaningful change in our feudal system.
Me: You speak of idealism and utopian change when it is so hard to bring changes in present system. Good things are happening and you are blind to it coz the changes are not happening the way yo want them to. You look only at the negatives. I am frustrated at your inability to see even a little silver lining.
-------------------------------------------------------------
We ended it there. It had taken harsh tones. We had to use words that fell below the normal courtesies among friends. Somehow we relaxed. An unspoken agreement to not talk on these issues emered. The rest of my time in Hissar was spent in malayalam songs, old memories of schoolife, a junior of his who entertained us to some soulful rendering of Hindustani vocal and a little sightseeing. Meanwhile I am pissed at Manmohan that while he urges G-8 leaders to take a strong stand on terrorism while the best stand he could do was block bloggers like us from talking to the world. Now I want to take you to another scene, another conversation, what you read may disturb you. All this happens only in India!
-------------------------------------------------------------
First Friend: I am sad man. My mind is telling me to cheat. I know I fall in the creamy layer. Its so easy to get an income certificate and so much easier to crack the civil services through the OBC reservation. What should I do?
Second: I made a mistake. I didnot know my community was notified as an OBC. This time I wrote in the General Category. But next time I'll fix it.
Third(a Mallu): When others are manipulating the system why should we be left behind. I decided long back that I would make use of OBC reservation.
Myself(a little uncomfortable, yet unable to muffle a smile): Do you guys know what Narayanamurthy said, "India must be the only country where people fight to be called backward".
Smiles all around. My point was made for a little time but will soon be forgotten. In India our youth are taught to survive at all costs. Morality can come later!
He: I dont agree with the IT Boom happening now, the BPO revolution we see now is making India a slave. Instead of asserting our creative energies we are working cheaply for Uncle Sam and his cronies, bcoz it costs them more there.
Me: Look at the number of jobs this has generated. Havent you thought of the huge urban unemployment crisis that would have been created. For 50 years before the mid-90's what creative resource channelling have we done. Atleast the Brain Drain stands reversed today.
He: Why dont you open your eyes to reality? We are being recolonized again. The WB and IMF keeps pumping in funds and we recieve with open arms. Do you know anything about the Chinese Model and that they dont beg for aid.
Me: In 1991 we were on verge of default and about to pledge our gold. The economic reforms we undertook thanks to the conditional aid they gave us has rejuvenated atleast a part of India. It is the West's helplessness of their lack of manpower to leverage the technological revolution that they are turning to India. It is fiction that our billing rates are dirt cheap. I know Infy bill at more than $25 an hour which is more than my first salary in the US.
He: 65% of India is dependent on agriculture. Compare this with US where only 2% lives on agriculture. Ignoring agri and villages in not the way to gun for development.
Me: I agree. But if you put things in proper perspective you will find that coz we have solved the problem of urban unemployement to a great extent the govt has been freed to pursue rural development now. Havent you read how NREGP, Bharat Nirman and PURA are all doing good work.
He: Gandhi's call to go back to villages and the self-sufficiency inherent in that model would have saved India. The bastard Nehru's socialist industrialisation programme ruined everything.
Me: Cant you guage the enormous amount of responsibilities Nehru worked under. There were communal riots, states reorganization, the kashmir problem, refugees, etc and then india was lacking in any sort of industrialization and only the govt had means to invest money. Until the 1st FYP and 1957 our focus was entirely on agriculture b4 Nehru changed focus to industries and in 1960's green revolution came and we had a food surplus.
He: Whats the use? They havent implemented land reforms except in WB and Kerala. Kerala has been ruined by joining the Indian Union. We were a self-sufficient state. We had the leading spice trade in the world. Today we have to beg to India for everything.
Me: Would Kerala have been able to pay the salaries of our huge edu and medical and other govt employees with just the spices trade? It is meaningless to conjecture separatism today. No state in India can survive by itself. You are not looking for ways to improve the current system but just ranting and raving at it. I have an Indian identity and there are millions of malayalis like me who are proud of it.
Me: Look at Smart City. So many people would have got jobs. That land lies waste now.
He: We dont need Smart City. It is obvious from T&C's that Smart City is a fraud and eitherway if jobs come from selling our land and resources to foreigners to do dirt-cheap work, we dont need those jobs.
He: You are speaking for your class. I expected you to have a voice for the underpriviledged. You are just another bourgeousie.
Me: You speak from outside the system. Your grouse is you feel frustrated at not being able to be part of the changes the 91 reforms brought about. You havent attempted to see the change through millions of young people who can dream of good jobs now and you doint attempt to find out how we can channel these changes to rural India too.
He: You are ignorant and unable to percieve things better. Your class always wants to keep the poor in chains. You are hiding in the convenience of pragmatism like thousands of Indians and dont want any meaningful change in our feudal system.
Me: You speak of idealism and utopian change when it is so hard to bring changes in present system. Good things are happening and you are blind to it coz the changes are not happening the way yo want them to. You look only at the negatives. I am frustrated at your inability to see even a little silver lining.
-------------------------------------------------------------
We ended it there. It had taken harsh tones. We had to use words that fell below the normal courtesies among friends. Somehow we relaxed. An unspoken agreement to not talk on these issues emered. The rest of my time in Hissar was spent in malayalam songs, old memories of schoolife, a junior of his who entertained us to some soulful rendering of Hindustani vocal and a little sightseeing. Meanwhile I am pissed at Manmohan that while he urges G-8 leaders to take a strong stand on terrorism while the best stand he could do was block bloggers like us from talking to the world. Now I want to take you to another scene, another conversation, what you read may disturb you. All this happens only in India!
-------------------------------------------------------------
First Friend: I am sad man. My mind is telling me to cheat. I know I fall in the creamy layer. Its so easy to get an income certificate and so much easier to crack the civil services through the OBC reservation. What should I do?
Second: I made a mistake. I didnot know my community was notified as an OBC. This time I wrote in the General Category. But next time I'll fix it.
Third(a Mallu): When others are manipulating the system why should we be left behind. I decided long back that I would make use of OBC reservation.
Myself(a little uncomfortable, yet unable to muffle a smile): Do you guys know what Narayanamurthy said, "India must be the only country where people fight to be called backward".
Smiles all around. My point was made for a little time but will soon be forgotten. In India our youth are taught to survive at all costs. Morality can come later!
Wednesday, June 28, 2006
A Blessing in Disguise...
A chance request heralded in a refreshing change in life. My uncle needed a malayalam translation of an interview he gave for his forthcoming novel. I hesitantly embarked on it, scared of not being able to do justice to something that would be appearing in the papers, 10 years after i last wrote something seriously in malayalam, the 10th ICSE exams and barely escaped from disaster. But the words flooded in, the beauty of the malayalam language manifested itself in me, something that never happened in 10 years of cramming malayalam at school. Oh! I have rediscovered a lost love. All the years of wondering whether I squandered a legacy in the mother tongue has lingered like a permanent scar, several times in life i have rued my overt fascination for the english literature at the cost of malayalam, but this time I am determined to make a new beginning.
And so a new beginning, i think i am making...a friend who has come into life like a whiff of fresh air, a person who has begun to make me think in new dimensions, look at human relationships from new perspectives and introduced me to paradigms in philosophy and psychology i had not cared to observe...handed me a collection of 6 scripts of M.T.Vasudevan Nair. I took it up pessimistically, with a valid reason too...none of the 6 films, Kuttiyettathi, Murapennu, Olavum Theeravum, Nirmalyam, Iruttinte Athmave and Kanyakumari...I had not had the priviledge of watching. I wondered how I could relate with it, but what an experience it has been, scripts as a branch of literature have come to stay!! MT's character have so much life and feeling in them, he invests his simple stories with such multi-dimensional relationships and the beauty of his language just leaves you captivated. As I write this, i am a fortunate reader transported to the banks of Bharathapuzha, wondering if characters and families like this still live, whether time has eroded the values, stigmas and burdens these people carried and so much more.
Its been ages since that romantic feeling coursed through my veins, I never thought it possible again...somehow i have become charged and inspired to pick up my pen and start scribbling in malayalam my thoughts, and the also resume an old habit that i thought had died in me...of writing little stories. Its such a painful, tiring process...to be laboring with the language thats my mother tongue, my diary which had for so long been eclipsed by this blog is coming alive again...i know its now or never. Its like the next few months are all I have been given to do all I want, before I sacrifice myself at the altar of what's still a maddening world to me...of careers, consumerism and monotony. When MT talks of silent, sometimes unrequited love i gush at how convincing and universal his characters still are, i wonder if it will remain so for eternity. I once read of how all of MT's male characters are weak, vacilliating, defeated creatures and how somebody wrote a peice called Shantante Amarsham(An Impotent Man's Rage) deriding him...but i now think no amount of criticism can take this man's genius away from him.
Anyways I just cant wait to head back home, walk into DC Books and come out with a shelf-load of modern malayalam literature. All those years in college of fretting at long, boring homilies at Sunday mass where I was more impressed by the command of the priests over the malayalam language rather than the message they strived hard to impart, and the online reading of Manorama, Deepika and Kaumudi must have struck root in me somewhere. Else I wonder how I achieved my little feat of doing the translation...i was about to give up even before i looked at it, but my dad, my most earnest motivator urged me to look at it as an opportunity...tonite as i pen this post down in my diary to take to the cafe and key it down, i wish you readers could feel my euphoria, my excitement and happiness at discovering a lost love. When life gets too boring and that accursed question mark hovers about you...a blessing comes in disguise.
And so a new beginning, i think i am making...a friend who has come into life like a whiff of fresh air, a person who has begun to make me think in new dimensions, look at human relationships from new perspectives and introduced me to paradigms in philosophy and psychology i had not cared to observe...handed me a collection of 6 scripts of M.T.Vasudevan Nair. I took it up pessimistically, with a valid reason too...none of the 6 films, Kuttiyettathi, Murapennu, Olavum Theeravum, Nirmalyam, Iruttinte Athmave and Kanyakumari...I had not had the priviledge of watching. I wondered how I could relate with it, but what an experience it has been, scripts as a branch of literature have come to stay!! MT's character have so much life and feeling in them, he invests his simple stories with such multi-dimensional relationships and the beauty of his language just leaves you captivated. As I write this, i am a fortunate reader transported to the banks of Bharathapuzha, wondering if characters and families like this still live, whether time has eroded the values, stigmas and burdens these people carried and so much more.
Its been ages since that romantic feeling coursed through my veins, I never thought it possible again...somehow i have become charged and inspired to pick up my pen and start scribbling in malayalam my thoughts, and the also resume an old habit that i thought had died in me...of writing little stories. Its such a painful, tiring process...to be laboring with the language thats my mother tongue, my diary which had for so long been eclipsed by this blog is coming alive again...i know its now or never. Its like the next few months are all I have been given to do all I want, before I sacrifice myself at the altar of what's still a maddening world to me...of careers, consumerism and monotony. When MT talks of silent, sometimes unrequited love i gush at how convincing and universal his characters still are, i wonder if it will remain so for eternity. I once read of how all of MT's male characters are weak, vacilliating, defeated creatures and how somebody wrote a peice called Shantante Amarsham(An Impotent Man's Rage) deriding him...but i now think no amount of criticism can take this man's genius away from him.
Anyways I just cant wait to head back home, walk into DC Books and come out with a shelf-load of modern malayalam literature. All those years in college of fretting at long, boring homilies at Sunday mass where I was more impressed by the command of the priests over the malayalam language rather than the message they strived hard to impart, and the online reading of Manorama, Deepika and Kaumudi must have struck root in me somewhere. Else I wonder how I achieved my little feat of doing the translation...i was about to give up even before i looked at it, but my dad, my most earnest motivator urged me to look at it as an opportunity...tonite as i pen this post down in my diary to take to the cafe and key it down, i wish you readers could feel my euphoria, my excitement and happiness at discovering a lost love. When life gets too boring and that accursed question mark hovers about you...a blessing comes in disguise.
Tuesday, May 23, 2006
Herbert and Pip...
This is a story of two friends, Herbert and Pip. Ofcourse most of you have heard those names come alive in Dickens great novel, Great Expectations. I looked at the shiny smiling faces seated opposite me. To compensate for missing his wedding, I was taking my longtime chum, Motta and his fiance out for lunch. Motta with his goodnaturedness and unpretentious simplicity, the girl...sweet and pretty with a shy smile, the both making a very winsome couple, and myself carrying a burden of wondering what future lay ahead for me but overjoyed for my friend...all brought alive the characters of Herbert, Clara and Pip in my thoughts. It reminded me of a memorable line from the book about what Pip says about Herbert..."We owed so much to Herbert's ever cheerful industry and readiness, that I often wondered how I had conceived the old idea of his ineptitude, until I was one day enlightened by the reflection, that perhaps the ineptitude had never been in him at all, but had been in me."
Right from school, I would wonder how motta would survive in the hard, tough world out there. He was forever falling in and out of love, never interested in his studies(well, for some reason i considered myself superior to him in this dept!) and never serious about life. While a huge horde of us took up all the elite engineering branches, he took the only seat available to him in kerala...for architecture, but there again he ran into serious problems of back papers and impossible odds of clearing his arrears. I would advise him, but as usual it all hung lightly on his shoulders...in terms of unflinching optimism I never ever met a more equal match to him. Life has its ways of bringing out the best in a person...personal tragedies which we feared would drown him, instead propelled him to emerge stronger...breaking university records he passed his exams, intime he had begun to love his field of work and his peers began to admire his drawings. He had taken on life with a smile, when friends needed a kind word, when old classmates returned to the nest called trivandrum, he was there organizing weekly gettogethers to keep the loyola spirit alive, after many girlfriends my "Herbert" atlast found his "Clara" and finally he had learnt the trick that lay behind the success-act in life...hard work!!!
One of the most memorable moments for me this time in tvm was visiting motta's office, as last time was all abt seeing my collegepals Shan's and Anoop's new chic office building at Vazhuthacaud. It was around 10 pm at night...motta was holding deliberations with a client who had come all the way from malappuram...letting them go on I wandered around the unruly office...there were papers lying strewn all over the place with rough drawings, calculations and unintelligible scribbles on them, his portfolio lay on his drawing table, he motioned me to the computer where I browsed thru a ppt file of his drawings...my admiration for him growing with every next button clicked. Among his works there were a few houses outside tvm, a small shopping complex at medical college, and a superb mini-mall coming up at Vazhuthacadu which I am sure will soon become a building-of-note in tvm. All this he had achieved after labouring from morning to evening at a senior architect's office for a pitiable salary, and then from evening to midnight at this office of his which he shares with a few guys also running a web-designing firm there...so that he could afford the rent. His way up the ladder that lay ahead was obvious to me...soon he would need to hire more staff, kick the guys who shared his office out and finally earn the fame and respect which only the best get. I was really overwhelmed...the friend who I always despaired would never make it to the league of the rest of us go-getters, had raced past all of us. The moment the client left and he turned around to face me I enveloped him in a bear-hug and said..."Motte today you have made me so proud"...what I didnt tell him was..."I always thought of you as inept"!
Ofcourse like Pip the ineptitude always had been in me...Unlike motta never in life I could take firm decisions what best to do with my life and kept deluding myself that i had taken the easiest possible path to wealth, independence and contentment. I looked at his fiance...she was timidly stealing glances at me all the while instead of looking me straight in the face(this was the first time I met her!)...unlike many of my friends or myself, I knew by now with an absoulte surety that Motta coz of his rough ride to maturity, would make a great husband and she was a very lucky woman. As were leaving, like old times he joked to me..."nee ente pazhaya kaaryangal okke erakki kalyaanathine mumbe divorce aaki tharaathathine valare thanks"...we broke out into a smile and parted with a customary warm hug. As I walked away from them, I thought about myself...life's journey leading me back to delhi, an exam where my chances stood at a razor's edge, and beyond there was hardly any light to show me a way, almost 26 and still unsure what career-path lay ahead...I thought of my dear Herbert and prayed that his success find echoes in my life too.
Right from school, I would wonder how motta would survive in the hard, tough world out there. He was forever falling in and out of love, never interested in his studies(well, for some reason i considered myself superior to him in this dept!) and never serious about life. While a huge horde of us took up all the elite engineering branches, he took the only seat available to him in kerala...for architecture, but there again he ran into serious problems of back papers and impossible odds of clearing his arrears. I would advise him, but as usual it all hung lightly on his shoulders...in terms of unflinching optimism I never ever met a more equal match to him. Life has its ways of bringing out the best in a person...personal tragedies which we feared would drown him, instead propelled him to emerge stronger...breaking university records he passed his exams, intime he had begun to love his field of work and his peers began to admire his drawings. He had taken on life with a smile, when friends needed a kind word, when old classmates returned to the nest called trivandrum, he was there organizing weekly gettogethers to keep the loyola spirit alive, after many girlfriends my "Herbert" atlast found his "Clara" and finally he had learnt the trick that lay behind the success-act in life...hard work!!!
One of the most memorable moments for me this time in tvm was visiting motta's office, as last time was all abt seeing my collegepals Shan's and Anoop's new chic office building at Vazhuthacaud. It was around 10 pm at night...motta was holding deliberations with a client who had come all the way from malappuram...letting them go on I wandered around the unruly office...there were papers lying strewn all over the place with rough drawings, calculations and unintelligible scribbles on them, his portfolio lay on his drawing table, he motioned me to the computer where I browsed thru a ppt file of his drawings...my admiration for him growing with every next button clicked. Among his works there were a few houses outside tvm, a small shopping complex at medical college, and a superb mini-mall coming up at Vazhuthacadu which I am sure will soon become a building-of-note in tvm. All this he had achieved after labouring from morning to evening at a senior architect's office for a pitiable salary, and then from evening to midnight at this office of his which he shares with a few guys also running a web-designing firm there...so that he could afford the rent. His way up the ladder that lay ahead was obvious to me...soon he would need to hire more staff, kick the guys who shared his office out and finally earn the fame and respect which only the best get. I was really overwhelmed...the friend who I always despaired would never make it to the league of the rest of us go-getters, had raced past all of us. The moment the client left and he turned around to face me I enveloped him in a bear-hug and said..."Motte today you have made me so proud"...what I didnt tell him was..."I always thought of you as inept"!
Ofcourse like Pip the ineptitude always had been in me...Unlike motta never in life I could take firm decisions what best to do with my life and kept deluding myself that i had taken the easiest possible path to wealth, independence and contentment. I looked at his fiance...she was timidly stealing glances at me all the while instead of looking me straight in the face(this was the first time I met her!)...unlike many of my friends or myself, I knew by now with an absoulte surety that Motta coz of his rough ride to maturity, would make a great husband and she was a very lucky woman. As were leaving, like old times he joked to me..."nee ente pazhaya kaaryangal okke erakki kalyaanathine mumbe divorce aaki tharaathathine valare thanks"...we broke out into a smile and parted with a customary warm hug. As I walked away from them, I thought about myself...life's journey leading me back to delhi, an exam where my chances stood at a razor's edge, and beyond there was hardly any light to show me a way, almost 26 and still unsure what career-path lay ahead...I thought of my dear Herbert and prayed that his success find echoes in my life too.
Thursday, March 23, 2006
Remembering the 80's...
It wasnt a decade of magic. And it certainly wasnt a period when people could forsee the huge technological revolution or the economic liberalisation that would forever change the face of thhe globe and more than any place else, of India. India was the sleeping giant, its population fast approaching a billion, its largest employer, the government scratched its head, alarmed over finding jobs for millions of young people coming out of its colleges. Let me leave the country at large, what was the eighties to me as a kid? I was just opening my eyes, the world around presented me with more questions than answers...and in writing this post I decided to rewind back in time and bring back memories and perspectives of my nascent years...and most of all try to write this post as me as an 8 or 10-year old would. Of course, I am today armed with the benefit of hindsight which undeniably would forever corrupt my post's content and quality.
The Early Years
The bus was the official vehicle of our family unit. Our Amby doubled as a tourist taxi and I forever remember it to be running from one problem to another, one workshop to another...and I really hated the beast. Pops took the university bus to Karyavattom, mom the KSRTC bus to Ayurveda College and then a long walk to Vanchiyoor(poor thing...after all that, she had to contend with two devils in the evening...but how where we to know!) and we kids took the school bus. We lived at Vrindavan Gardens, at Pattom, a huge housing colong of almost 1000 apartments, lots of space to play and a huge jungle for a backyard(it was our fave haunt!) and many many bubbly kids, our own age. These days when I pass by there, the place looks almost dead, devoid of the kids who made that place a wonderland, I guess they are all watching the telly or sticking to their books. For me Vrindavan was paradise, I yearned for the time("or whatever it was, I would wonder, that made school get over") to fly and get home to an evening of soccer, cricket, eripanthu, hide & seek, police and robber, seven-tiles and after Fauji, we were javans and guerillas mowing each other down with guns, catapults, ruubber bands & paper-bullets inside our jungle.
Prime-Time!!!
If I wrote abt telly 10 years back, I would have called Doordarshan, the biggest practical joke, the govt played on us people. But then those were the days of evolution...that is, I wonder if Cable TV hadnt come, the process of evolution has remained stagnant even in 2005 with only marginal improvement in the programmes they telecast. Unlike these days, we never were left satisfied with the measly programmes telecast and to add to our misery, the death of some lame politician would be celebraed with days of mourning and mournful ragas tested our paience no end!! But then who could forget, The World This Week which earned for Prannoy Roy the position he holds today or Siddhartha Basu's quiz, or the classic malayalam comedy serial, Panchapaandavar or Ramayana, Mahanbharata, Fauji, Circus and Mungerilal which stands fresh in national memory even today.
Where Was The Money, Yaar!!!
Today the ATM machines spit at me wads of 500's and 1000 rupee notes which are over sooner than I can make the next trek to the counter. Back then, for Rs.10...given after a few weeks of begging ...I would eat a plate of barrota and beef-curry for 7.5, an incecream soda for Rs.2 and a sipup for 50ps. And well, what was money worth, a few beating, I suppose...sent out to do some shopping with my sis for company I lost a Rs.5 note on the way back and after the thrashings was told to come back only with the money...and as we tearily combed the road a good uncle who chanced on it some way ahead handed it over to us! I realized things hadnt changed much in the 80's from the 50's when my grandmom recounted a similar story of how she caned my dad along the road for loosing Re.1 she had given him to buy a hero pen, only for him to be saved by a man walking by who had found it on the way. And the 80's were the heydays of the Gulf Mallu. These men and women, strutting abt in goldwatches, sunglasses and cars laden with electronic goods earned the envy and admiration of all...scarcely a family then, and even today to some extent, didnt have somebody in the Gulf.
School...
I hated junior school. I had few friends, hated my lessons, I had no head for Maths, and I cried for days on end about it. Whatever I studied seemed not to go to my head, as the exams proved, but later life disproved, and the progress card, I discovered, was the worst peice of torture modern civilization has inflicted on many a carefree child. Of school, I remember this act of charity on my part...a senior who helped me cross the road and was from the same bus-stop would talk about Michaeal Jackson all the time, and discovering a huge, black leather belt wih silver studs and a pic of MJ embossed on metal, which someone had carelessly gifted had lain disused for a lot of years and with my moms permission gifted it to him(those were the days seniors were like gods and we proud to be of any service to them!). I still remember the next day he came strutting towards me, his hair all wet, a few strands pulled forward like MJ, his shirt tucked in flouting school rules, and the belt and MJ gleaming in the sun...Oh! What a fall,MJ!!!
Clothes...
I hated the tailor-stiched clothes of the 80's, but then I was to blame for all lack of finesse...the first jeans, I got was discarded, coz I wondered how people could wear something so stiff and heavy and my mom telling me, "Eda, ithe jeans aada"! and me replying..."Enthonne Jeans"! Sometime last year, my sis remarked how she felt, after looking at college fotos of the chechis at the flats, that the mallu college gals of the 80's were more trendy, style-conscious and wore jeans, skirts and sylish salwars unlike the ones of the '90s and all I could think was...Ayyo! What a big loss!!!
Attitudes...
The first time I took up a newspaper was at the height of the Bofors scandal and I also remember a pic of computers destroyed in tvm...years later I conneced the fotos with the agitation launced by SFI to protest loss of jobs due to computerization. How stupid those guys must be feeling today. The computer remained an object of puzzlement thru the 80's to the mid 90's and sometime when I was in the 4th I remember an elder pal, Rahul inviting me to go learn BASIC with him for fun...6 years later I learnt it out of compulsion only to find the world had moved way past BASIC and was at the verge of the IT revolution.
Sports Afficianados...
Trivandrum was a hotbed of sporting activities thru the 80's and early 90's The televised-cricket fever hadnt struck and thanks to my cousin, Ajichetan I got to see some great basketball and football matches where it seemed the entire college crowd of TVM had descended...and of them(mostly SFI guys!) howling and shouting down Mr.K who did prize distribuion with a "kallan karunakara" yelp and me too joining in it with delight only to be dismayed at the cool dude turning to our section, folding his hands and giving that trademark valicha chiri only to make us shout louder. Of cricket, my first memories are of dilip vengsarkar taking on the fearsome west indies quartet only to see his hand broken by marshall after scoring a century, but I wondered why these men didnt score more often like us kids who flashed at every ball...yeah, I still didnt understand Test Cricket!!! But a moment in late 1989, swayed my attention to cricket for almost 10 years later, when a 16-year old rookie swamped veteran Abdul Qadir, playing in his last match, for 27 runs in an over...
The Big Gap...
Those days, my native places, Kattanam and Arakulam, seemed to me like places on the verge of civilization. The gap between cities like tvm,cochin and villages were huge. Everytime we visited the nadu, we got lost, or the car got stuck in the mud or wouldnt climb up a steep slope bcoz it lost momentum and the roads were untarred and at many places rocks protruded from the road. If lost, my sis and I would shrink in our backseats, scared of the darkness around us, frustrated at the absence of streetlights, irritating crickets, howling dogs and not a person in sight to ask for directions and I'd think of my parents, "Gosh these people cant even take me to their homes of so many years without geting us lost"...I missed the whole point...of the romaniticism of these places and how it moulded my parents...for me it was a conspiracy to distance me from friends at the flats. Today when I think abt the lost native places...it is and isnt a big loss...the natural ambience persists but today the gap between cities and villages in kerala have narrowed...everywhere you see mobile towers, cable TV and internet.
And Then...
The 90's arrived. The Maruti came into our home for the first of many later ones. It signalled the upwardly mobile aspirations of my parents. And they never looked back. The frugality of the 80's was over. A decade of saving, career-building and investment paid fruit. We moved out of the flats, my dad started lecturing internationally, my mom became a busy lawyer, I was out of junior school, the Rao-Manmohan Reforms came and from feathery strides, India started to gallop to catch up with the developed world. Well what was the '80's to you and me...trace your way back to your parents booking trunk calls and waiting anywhere from 30 mins to 24 hrs for the call to go through...and memories will come flooding back!!!!
The Early Years
The bus was the official vehicle of our family unit. Our Amby doubled as a tourist taxi and I forever remember it to be running from one problem to another, one workshop to another...and I really hated the beast. Pops took the university bus to Karyavattom, mom the KSRTC bus to Ayurveda College and then a long walk to Vanchiyoor(poor thing...after all that, she had to contend with two devils in the evening...but how where we to know!) and we kids took the school bus. We lived at Vrindavan Gardens, at Pattom, a huge housing colong of almost 1000 apartments, lots of space to play and a huge jungle for a backyard(it was our fave haunt!) and many many bubbly kids, our own age. These days when I pass by there, the place looks almost dead, devoid of the kids who made that place a wonderland, I guess they are all watching the telly or sticking to their books. For me Vrindavan was paradise, I yearned for the time("or whatever it was, I would wonder, that made school get over") to fly and get home to an evening of soccer, cricket, eripanthu, hide & seek, police and robber, seven-tiles and after Fauji, we were javans and guerillas mowing each other down with guns, catapults, ruubber bands & paper-bullets inside our jungle.
Prime-Time!!!
If I wrote abt telly 10 years back, I would have called Doordarshan, the biggest practical joke, the govt played on us people. But then those were the days of evolution...that is, I wonder if Cable TV hadnt come, the process of evolution has remained stagnant even in 2005 with only marginal improvement in the programmes they telecast. Unlike these days, we never were left satisfied with the measly programmes telecast and to add to our misery, the death of some lame politician would be celebraed with days of mourning and mournful ragas tested our paience no end!! But then who could forget, The World This Week which earned for Prannoy Roy the position he holds today or Siddhartha Basu's quiz, or the classic malayalam comedy serial, Panchapaandavar or Ramayana, Mahanbharata, Fauji, Circus and Mungerilal which stands fresh in national memory even today.
Where Was The Money, Yaar!!!
Today the ATM machines spit at me wads of 500's and 1000 rupee notes which are over sooner than I can make the next trek to the counter. Back then, for Rs.10...given after a few weeks of begging ...I would eat a plate of barrota and beef-curry for 7.5, an incecream soda for Rs.2 and a sipup for 50ps. And well, what was money worth, a few beating, I suppose...sent out to do some shopping with my sis for company I lost a Rs.5 note on the way back and after the thrashings was told to come back only with the money...and as we tearily combed the road a good uncle who chanced on it some way ahead handed it over to us! I realized things hadnt changed much in the 80's from the 50's when my grandmom recounted a similar story of how she caned my dad along the road for loosing Re.1 she had given him to buy a hero pen, only for him to be saved by a man walking by who had found it on the way. And the 80's were the heydays of the Gulf Mallu. These men and women, strutting abt in goldwatches, sunglasses and cars laden with electronic goods earned the envy and admiration of all...scarcely a family then, and even today to some extent, didnt have somebody in the Gulf.
School...
I hated junior school. I had few friends, hated my lessons, I had no head for Maths, and I cried for days on end about it. Whatever I studied seemed not to go to my head, as the exams proved, but later life disproved, and the progress card, I discovered, was the worst peice of torture modern civilization has inflicted on many a carefree child. Of school, I remember this act of charity on my part...a senior who helped me cross the road and was from the same bus-stop would talk about Michaeal Jackson all the time, and discovering a huge, black leather belt wih silver studs and a pic of MJ embossed on metal, which someone had carelessly gifted had lain disused for a lot of years and with my moms permission gifted it to him(those were the days seniors were like gods and we proud to be of any service to them!). I still remember the next day he came strutting towards me, his hair all wet, a few strands pulled forward like MJ, his shirt tucked in flouting school rules, and the belt and MJ gleaming in the sun...Oh! What a fall,MJ!!!
Clothes...
I hated the tailor-stiched clothes of the 80's, but then I was to blame for all lack of finesse...the first jeans, I got was discarded, coz I wondered how people could wear something so stiff and heavy and my mom telling me, "Eda, ithe jeans aada"! and me replying..."Enthonne Jeans"! Sometime last year, my sis remarked how she felt, after looking at college fotos of the chechis at the flats, that the mallu college gals of the 80's were more trendy, style-conscious and wore jeans, skirts and sylish salwars unlike the ones of the '90s and all I could think was...Ayyo! What a big loss!!!
Attitudes...
The first time I took up a newspaper was at the height of the Bofors scandal and I also remember a pic of computers destroyed in tvm...years later I conneced the fotos with the agitation launced by SFI to protest loss of jobs due to computerization. How stupid those guys must be feeling today. The computer remained an object of puzzlement thru the 80's to the mid 90's and sometime when I was in the 4th I remember an elder pal, Rahul inviting me to go learn BASIC with him for fun...6 years later I learnt it out of compulsion only to find the world had moved way past BASIC and was at the verge of the IT revolution.
Sports Afficianados...
Trivandrum was a hotbed of sporting activities thru the 80's and early 90's The televised-cricket fever hadnt struck and thanks to my cousin, Ajichetan I got to see some great basketball and football matches where it seemed the entire college crowd of TVM had descended...and of them(mostly SFI guys!) howling and shouting down Mr.K who did prize distribuion with a "kallan karunakara" yelp and me too joining in it with delight only to be dismayed at the cool dude turning to our section, folding his hands and giving that trademark valicha chiri only to make us shout louder. Of cricket, my first memories are of dilip vengsarkar taking on the fearsome west indies quartet only to see his hand broken by marshall after scoring a century, but I wondered why these men didnt score more often like us kids who flashed at every ball...yeah, I still didnt understand Test Cricket!!! But a moment in late 1989, swayed my attention to cricket for almost 10 years later, when a 16-year old rookie swamped veteran Abdul Qadir, playing in his last match, for 27 runs in an over...
The Big Gap...
Those days, my native places, Kattanam and Arakulam, seemed to me like places on the verge of civilization. The gap between cities like tvm,cochin and villages were huge. Everytime we visited the nadu, we got lost, or the car got stuck in the mud or wouldnt climb up a steep slope bcoz it lost momentum and the roads were untarred and at many places rocks protruded from the road. If lost, my sis and I would shrink in our backseats, scared of the darkness around us, frustrated at the absence of streetlights, irritating crickets, howling dogs and not a person in sight to ask for directions and I'd think of my parents, "Gosh these people cant even take me to their homes of so many years without geting us lost"...I missed the whole point...of the romaniticism of these places and how it moulded my parents...for me it was a conspiracy to distance me from friends at the flats. Today when I think abt the lost native places...it is and isnt a big loss...the natural ambience persists but today the gap between cities and villages in kerala have narrowed...everywhere you see mobile towers, cable TV and internet.
And Then...
The 90's arrived. The Maruti came into our home for the first of many later ones. It signalled the upwardly mobile aspirations of my parents. And they never looked back. The frugality of the 80's was over. A decade of saving, career-building and investment paid fruit. We moved out of the flats, my dad started lecturing internationally, my mom became a busy lawyer, I was out of junior school, the Rao-Manmohan Reforms came and from feathery strides, India started to gallop to catch up with the developed world. Well what was the '80's to you and me...trace your way back to your parents booking trunk calls and waiting anywhere from 30 mins to 24 hrs for the call to go through...and memories will come flooding back!!!!
Friday, September 23, 2005
25 Years, 25 Blessings...
Sep 23, 1980 - My parents bring me into this world...i have given them such tough times over the years I have at times wondered whether having kids especially boys is worth all the trouble.
May 6, 1983 - The only person who to this day has shared in all my happiness and sorrows comes along...I feel the time running out on what has been a long journey of comic sibling rivalry, acrimonious fights, and of being each others confidante, best friend, philosopher and guide...I wonder how I'll cope when she leaves.
May, 1984 - I walk into the hallowed campus of loyola not knowing even for a second the ways it wud mould my life later on. An article The Wall Comes Tumbling Down written by my classmate Krishnachandran, says it all...from the viewpoint of a senior of ours at school by two years, but who passed out with us, a python, truely signifies the impact the great institution will forever have on me...
May, 1990 - My first academic success...i manage a first class...for the first time I brought my report card home without my knees shivering.
Aug, 1992 - The caning i'll never forget for a lifetime...eager to watch the sunday evening film, "Mimics Parade" on doordarshan...i rush home too impatient to wait for my dad to pick me up after tuition as he promised...got flogged almost a 50 times till my grandpa stood between us and bailed me out...i guess i'll realize how much pops worried that day about my missing, only when i have a kid.
May, 1993 - I qualify for the icse section in school...fr.pulickal, i know definitely had a hand in getting me thru as except for english and history i fared poorly in everything else.
Oct, 1993 - I am vice-captain of the school mini-basketball team and selected to the trivandrum district team...my mom refuses to let me go for the camp as i wuz on the verge of flunking my exams...in hindsight i think she decided wisely as always, but i gave up the dear sport for almost 3 years in disappointment.
Sep, 1994 - My first and last article to appear on print, got published in The Loyolite, our school magazine. It wuz titled Efficiency, India's Deficiency. Again somewhere down the line I lost the confidence to write for a long long time.
Oct 14, 1994 - Experienced the first death in my family...my maternal grandfather who doted on me more than all his other perakuttis. Sadly the night b4 he wuz felled by a stroke and fell into a coma for 10 days, we quarelled and i have ever since lived to regret that act and with it a realization of never ever leaving an apology, thanks or expressing my affection or appreciation left unsaid for another day. To this day, I believe Appachan and Fr.Pulickal have been steadfast guardian angels, watching over me...every step of the way.
May, 1995 - I am selected best camper at camp india, a summer camp for kids. unfortunately the confidence from that never rubbed off on me in school amidst my super-talented classmates.
Jun, 1996 - In a class of 44, 43 of us pass our 10th with distinction equalling a long-standing school record...it marked the turnaround in my life...never again in life did I worry or cry about academics.
Oct, 1996 - I head out for an iit contact class in cochin with thomman, muthu and ponnan. those were the days these 3 guys were the top rogues in class and i wuz the puny, silent introvert but they graciously took me along. when i returned it wuz like i picked up some of thommans daredevilry and all his high spirits, a slice of muthu's tongue and ponnan and i were deskmates for the rest of school life. Most of what i am today happened in those 3 days spent with these guys and since then i have forever looked up to life, never ever had to look back in regret, look down in shame or look on in silence.
Jun, 1998 - Despite my teachers hounding me and fearing for the worst, i surprise them all with a distinction for isc. the boy who scraped into loyola by the skin of his teeth with a provisional 89th seat in ukg walked out with his head held high and a 16th rank in the 12th. my dad told me that day, except for him everyone else including my mom thought i wud end up a pazham...for me, coming from him that wuz the sweetest praise i ever got.
Sep, 1998 - I write my SAT and get admission into Johns Hopkins and Kansas State Univ but unexpectedly clear my Kerala Entrance and choose home and a Comp Engg seat in SCT over a Mech Engg seat in CET where almost 20 of my ex-classmates had joined. That vacation we all travelled abroad for the first time, to the US and Italy...all I thought the USA wud be over the years swelled up into a great disappointment but somehow I knew I was fated to come back. Italy will stay in mind forever...seeing the saintly Pope John Paul at close quarters and the divine touch of Michelangelo's paintbrush in the Sistine Chapel.
Feb, 1999 - Barely a week after learning to drive an 800, we headed for my cousin's wedding at Kottayam on our uncle's Tata Estate chaffeured by his driver. My parents left for Velankanni, and ammachi, jish and me headed back to tvm but the driver stopped at one of our relatives' bar for a free booze, gets too much to drink and almost got us into two accidents. By then at my wits end and my sis crying about her exam next day and in pouring rain and a bleak night I take over the wheels of the Estate, unsure of the roads to take, abt controlling the huge car and my sheer inexperience, with ammachi praying calmly and not even closing her eyes even for a second...to keep me company, and with a lot of "help" from the driver totally fit and ranting and raving...nobody cud believe the tale we had to tell back home but since that day, for everyone it wuz almost like i cud do no wrong!
Mar, 1999 - Just a month after chastising the driver I take up my first beer and i have never felt more of a hypocrite than at that moment! The 8 guys i identified to let into my heart as friends soon became like brothers to me. I coined the name of our gang, Savages from the first phonetic of each of our names and soon to everyone, classmates, teachers and collegemates we were known under that identity. We shared so much together and achieved so much with our unity...my confidence and zest for life was at its zenith in those years.
Nov, 2000 - Every day in college wud have been worth to mark down here as a milestone but for a few seconds i achieved sheer nirvana...on the cricketing field. We were playing the best team in college and I came in at 0/3 and the first three balls i faced wud forever remain etched in memory. I straight-drove the first ball thru the on-side, and the next, again a straight drive thru the off-side and now with men at mid-off and mid-on I again hit a much straighter one beating both these fielders. The sound of my pals lustily cheering me and the opposition clapping sounded so sweet, for a second i felt like sachin...i saw the ball early, my front foot moved in line with the ball, my bat came down with a flourish and the ball hit the sweet spot, my follow-thru and back foot movement wuz perfect...it wuz unforgettable. But then came the nasty bouncer and I fended it away clumsily to slips and walked back dejected to the same guys who cheered a second earlier, now cursing me under their breath for giving away a fine start. Oh! how I wish nowadays I got a second chance that day.
Oct, 2001 - The time to plan ahead after 3 years of fun and frolic arrived, I distanced myself from friends which made them sad, picked up my Barrons and did a wordlist a day in bus to college and another one on the way back, besides finally paying attention in classes...everyone thought I had gone nuts or wuz tryin to show off...those 45 days were the only time in life I wuz systematic and methodical and the GRE ended up too tame a beast to kill. I still dont know why i never tried to bell the CAT, another road not taken...
Feb, 2002 - The only regret I wuz about to take out of college was my inability to imitate my dad in becoming a student leader. But this incident changed all that...and justified my decision to enjoy those years rather than spend in hatred, colluding and scheming against a bunch of losers. Ever since, I developed a deep distaste for the mallu tendency to politicise issues for scoring brownie points.
Mar, 2002 - I realized the golden years that began in my eleventh all the way thru the eighth sem were well past me...bid a tearful farewell to college and classmates who were by then more like brothers and sisters to me.
June, 2002 - Within a months time, trivandrum suddenly became an empty place with most of my school and college mates leaving, made some blunders...I fled India...and instead of seething optimism arrived a dejected, weary soul in america to make my "riches".
Aug, 2002 - MS started, I realized for a change I had to do some things I wasnt used to...studying and that too countless back-to-back nightouts, work for a living and with the little money i made then, having to budget for rent, food, clothes and a little fun...those were the days of living precariously from paycheck to paycheck...my motivation levels have been so low since then...dunno what gives me the strength to plow ahead, but made a few good friends who to this day...I believe would walk an extra mile to bail me out of any difficulty i fell into.
May, 2004 - The proudest moment of my academic life...recieving the Masters' diploma...with my parents brimming with tears of joy and clapping wildly. Two years of toil, sweat and hunger wuz rewarded, but my carefree spirit and working life have forever since found it hard to co-exist.
Oct, 2004 - No job, no money, no friends, piling debt, all hope lost...i sign up with blogger and 40-odd posts later...thru all i have written I have relived my entire life, expounded a lot of my viewpoints on society and politics, made some friends whose writings I could closely relate with...truely another important milestone in life.
May, 2005 - No job for 2 months,then a job, fired in 7 days, and then a dream job in a week's time....it all happened in one month...got my first proper full paycheck after a year of working and 3 failures.
Last 4 months I have made more money than I ever dreamt of, but I am loosing my soul...I havent found the gratification I expected...the ways of my mind are beyond my own comprehension. So many miracles have happened in my life...HIS gifts have largely gone unthanked for...i have always been like a child who gets bored with a new toy after a few days...thats all the soul-searching i wanna do for now. More than 3 years of shani gets over on sep 27th and my shukran starts according to Pops, I wonder what crazy things will happen now...I am weary at looking to the future, thats why the past seemed more apt to write about on this day.
May 6, 1983 - The only person who to this day has shared in all my happiness and sorrows comes along...I feel the time running out on what has been a long journey of comic sibling rivalry, acrimonious fights, and of being each others confidante, best friend, philosopher and guide...I wonder how I'll cope when she leaves.
May, 1984 - I walk into the hallowed campus of loyola not knowing even for a second the ways it wud mould my life later on. An article The Wall Comes Tumbling Down written by my classmate Krishnachandran, says it all...from the viewpoint of a senior of ours at school by two years, but who passed out with us, a python, truely signifies the impact the great institution will forever have on me...
May, 1990 - My first academic success...i manage a first class...for the first time I brought my report card home without my knees shivering.
Aug, 1992 - The caning i'll never forget for a lifetime...eager to watch the sunday evening film, "Mimics Parade" on doordarshan...i rush home too impatient to wait for my dad to pick me up after tuition as he promised...got flogged almost a 50 times till my grandpa stood between us and bailed me out...i guess i'll realize how much pops worried that day about my missing, only when i have a kid.
May, 1993 - I qualify for the icse section in school...fr.pulickal, i know definitely had a hand in getting me thru as except for english and history i fared poorly in everything else.
Oct, 1993 - I am vice-captain of the school mini-basketball team and selected to the trivandrum district team...my mom refuses to let me go for the camp as i wuz on the verge of flunking my exams...in hindsight i think she decided wisely as always, but i gave up the dear sport for almost 3 years in disappointment.
Sep, 1994 - My first and last article to appear on print, got published in The Loyolite, our school magazine. It wuz titled Efficiency, India's Deficiency. Again somewhere down the line I lost the confidence to write for a long long time.
Oct 14, 1994 - Experienced the first death in my family...my maternal grandfather who doted on me more than all his other perakuttis. Sadly the night b4 he wuz felled by a stroke and fell into a coma for 10 days, we quarelled and i have ever since lived to regret that act and with it a realization of never ever leaving an apology, thanks or expressing my affection or appreciation left unsaid for another day. To this day, I believe Appachan and Fr.Pulickal have been steadfast guardian angels, watching over me...every step of the way.
May, 1995 - I am selected best camper at camp india, a summer camp for kids. unfortunately the confidence from that never rubbed off on me in school amidst my super-talented classmates.
Jun, 1996 - In a class of 44, 43 of us pass our 10th with distinction equalling a long-standing school record...it marked the turnaround in my life...never again in life did I worry or cry about academics.
Oct, 1996 - I head out for an iit contact class in cochin with thomman, muthu and ponnan. those were the days these 3 guys were the top rogues in class and i wuz the puny, silent introvert but they graciously took me along. when i returned it wuz like i picked up some of thommans daredevilry and all his high spirits, a slice of muthu's tongue and ponnan and i were deskmates for the rest of school life. Most of what i am today happened in those 3 days spent with these guys and since then i have forever looked up to life, never ever had to look back in regret, look down in shame or look on in silence.
Jun, 1998 - Despite my teachers hounding me and fearing for the worst, i surprise them all with a distinction for isc. the boy who scraped into loyola by the skin of his teeth with a provisional 89th seat in ukg walked out with his head held high and a 16th rank in the 12th. my dad told me that day, except for him everyone else including my mom thought i wud end up a pazham...for me, coming from him that wuz the sweetest praise i ever got.
Sep, 1998 - I write my SAT and get admission into Johns Hopkins and Kansas State Univ but unexpectedly clear my Kerala Entrance and choose home and a Comp Engg seat in SCT over a Mech Engg seat in CET where almost 20 of my ex-classmates had joined. That vacation we all travelled abroad for the first time, to the US and Italy...all I thought the USA wud be over the years swelled up into a great disappointment but somehow I knew I was fated to come back. Italy will stay in mind forever...seeing the saintly Pope John Paul at close quarters and the divine touch of Michelangelo's paintbrush in the Sistine Chapel.
Feb, 1999 - Barely a week after learning to drive an 800, we headed for my cousin's wedding at Kottayam on our uncle's Tata Estate chaffeured by his driver. My parents left for Velankanni, and ammachi, jish and me headed back to tvm but the driver stopped at one of our relatives' bar for a free booze, gets too much to drink and almost got us into two accidents. By then at my wits end and my sis crying about her exam next day and in pouring rain and a bleak night I take over the wheels of the Estate, unsure of the roads to take, abt controlling the huge car and my sheer inexperience, with ammachi praying calmly and not even closing her eyes even for a second...to keep me company, and with a lot of "help" from the driver totally fit and ranting and raving...nobody cud believe the tale we had to tell back home but since that day, for everyone it wuz almost like i cud do no wrong!
Mar, 1999 - Just a month after chastising the driver I take up my first beer and i have never felt more of a hypocrite than at that moment! The 8 guys i identified to let into my heart as friends soon became like brothers to me. I coined the name of our gang, Savages from the first phonetic of each of our names and soon to everyone, classmates, teachers and collegemates we were known under that identity. We shared so much together and achieved so much with our unity...my confidence and zest for life was at its zenith in those years.
Nov, 2000 - Every day in college wud have been worth to mark down here as a milestone but for a few seconds i achieved sheer nirvana...on the cricketing field. We were playing the best team in college and I came in at 0/3 and the first three balls i faced wud forever remain etched in memory. I straight-drove the first ball thru the on-side, and the next, again a straight drive thru the off-side and now with men at mid-off and mid-on I again hit a much straighter one beating both these fielders. The sound of my pals lustily cheering me and the opposition clapping sounded so sweet, for a second i felt like sachin...i saw the ball early, my front foot moved in line with the ball, my bat came down with a flourish and the ball hit the sweet spot, my follow-thru and back foot movement wuz perfect...it wuz unforgettable. But then came the nasty bouncer and I fended it away clumsily to slips and walked back dejected to the same guys who cheered a second earlier, now cursing me under their breath for giving away a fine start. Oh! how I wish nowadays I got a second chance that day.
Oct, 2001 - The time to plan ahead after 3 years of fun and frolic arrived, I distanced myself from friends which made them sad, picked up my Barrons and did a wordlist a day in bus to college and another one on the way back, besides finally paying attention in classes...everyone thought I had gone nuts or wuz tryin to show off...those 45 days were the only time in life I wuz systematic and methodical and the GRE ended up too tame a beast to kill. I still dont know why i never tried to bell the CAT, another road not taken...
Feb, 2002 - The only regret I wuz about to take out of college was my inability to imitate my dad in becoming a student leader. But this incident changed all that...and justified my decision to enjoy those years rather than spend in hatred, colluding and scheming against a bunch of losers. Ever since, I developed a deep distaste for the mallu tendency to politicise issues for scoring brownie points.
Mar, 2002 - I realized the golden years that began in my eleventh all the way thru the eighth sem were well past me...bid a tearful farewell to college and classmates who were by then more like brothers and sisters to me.
June, 2002 - Within a months time, trivandrum suddenly became an empty place with most of my school and college mates leaving, made some blunders...I fled India...and instead of seething optimism arrived a dejected, weary soul in america to make my "riches".
Aug, 2002 - MS started, I realized for a change I had to do some things I wasnt used to...studying and that too countless back-to-back nightouts, work for a living and with the little money i made then, having to budget for rent, food, clothes and a little fun...those were the days of living precariously from paycheck to paycheck...my motivation levels have been so low since then...dunno what gives me the strength to plow ahead, but made a few good friends who to this day...I believe would walk an extra mile to bail me out of any difficulty i fell into.
May, 2004 - The proudest moment of my academic life...recieving the Masters' diploma...with my parents brimming with tears of joy and clapping wildly. Two years of toil, sweat and hunger wuz rewarded, but my carefree spirit and working life have forever since found it hard to co-exist.
Oct, 2004 - No job, no money, no friends, piling debt, all hope lost...i sign up with blogger and 40-odd posts later...thru all i have written I have relived my entire life, expounded a lot of my viewpoints on society and politics, made some friends whose writings I could closely relate with...truely another important milestone in life.
May, 2005 - No job for 2 months,then a job, fired in 7 days, and then a dream job in a week's time....it all happened in one month...got my first proper full paycheck after a year of working and 3 failures.
Last 4 months I have made more money than I ever dreamt of, but I am loosing my soul...I havent found the gratification I expected...the ways of my mind are beyond my own comprehension. So many miracles have happened in my life...HIS gifts have largely gone unthanked for...i have always been like a child who gets bored with a new toy after a few days...thats all the soul-searching i wanna do for now. More than 3 years of shani gets over on sep 27th and my shukran starts according to Pops, I wonder what crazy things will happen now...I am weary at looking to the future, thats why the past seemed more apt to write about on this day.
Saturday, July 30, 2005
Chiriyo Chiri....
CAUTION...this is painfully long. My bud Arun, has paid a glowing tribute to our college life through his blog. He has written so well I have wondered what way I could contribute...so here it comes. A compilation of all the anecdotes I remember that happened in those four funny years on a semester-by-semester break-up. Like old wine, many of these jokes get better and better and so worth remembering for a lifetime! I wish I could do justice to each of these incidents...each of our savages had their own style of talking, their own way of exclaiming and emoting and the comic timing that resulted from our amazing cameraderie which grew with each semester wuz just a treat and a pain in the ass for the classmates and teachers who spent 4 years of their life with us.Thank You guys for all the times you made me laugh day-in and day-out from Nov'98 to May'02 and for every moment I think abt you all that never fails to bring a wry smile to my face and evokes such sweet remembrances of life in Trivandrum that I will forever miss.
S1-S2:
Sabu Sir is teaching abt cell phones during his Basic Electronics class. Shan takes out his fathers old first generation gamandan cellphone flashes it at Sabu Sir and said to the poor, dumbstruck man, "Sir, saarinte notes vechundaakkiya cell phone aanu….pakshe work cheyyunnilla".
Viswan at the first day, first show screening of Usthad says ‘Enthaade aarkum ore ulsaham illaaathe, lalettante padam alle”…and shouts “Bolo, Bhaaaratha Mohanlal Ki Jai”….the locals and fans association members who made the bulk of the crowd started laughing at us!!!
Sheenu on loosing her black hero pen writes on the blackboard:
"LOST: Sheenu's Black Hero" to which an overjoyed Sooraj Thankappan who calls himself “Born in Africa…Lost in India” shouts out : "Yehhhhhhh"!!!Can never forget Sheenu scrambling desperately for the blackboard to rub off all she wrote.
We planned to spend the day at Neyyar Dam and everyone except for me wuz able to bunk class saying some reason or the other…fretting at my misfortune I jump out of the class throught the back windows onto the sunshade while the sir had turned towards the blackboard…finally find an empty classroom…to get off the sunshade and search all over campus for my mates…somebody tells me that having not seen me the trip wuz cancelled and the guys had headed back to the class…having nothing to do I walk into class and at the door the sir stares at me as though he wuz seeing a ghost…only a few minutes back he had looked at me…thankfully he didn’t check the attendance register!
During workshop class, Jessen asked by Foundry instructor to hand him a cleaner very intelligently gives him a rag of cotton wool. The cleaner actually happened to be a steel rod much unlike its name to jessen’s dismay, the sir's disgust and our unbridled laughter.
S-3:
During S-3 excursion we were passing through a junction just outside Ooty. Shinoj put his head outside the bus and was greeted by faces of some thamizhan locals.As it comes naturally to him, he wagged his middle finger at the unsuspecting guys. Just 10 metres on, the bus screeched to a halt due to traffic. We all waited breathlessly for the locals to come at us. Luckily the bus took off and we all put our heads out again. Guess what the name of the place was: Moonchikkal Junction!!!
During Logic Systems Design class Manoj Sir hauls up a noisy Shan and asks him: If you want a GATE(IC chip) at a shop how should u ask for it: Shan without any qualms answers: "I want a GATE".
Our last DMS class with Sreenivasan Sir,we all shouted,"Sir,Wish you a Happy Onam and a Happy Married Life" to which he replied ”Same to you all also" only to walk out of the class chammufied by our laughter at his gaffe.
There was a convent adjacent to Viswan’s house and Arun Hari wuz waiting for him to come and leaning against the wall having nothing better to do starts enticing a cat on the convent property with meows and other sounds. Suddenly a nun who wuz taking a shower in an outside bathroom on the property comes out and stares at Arun…fearing she had misunderstood him….he runs for his life leaving his bike behind!
S-4:
We planned a trip to Veli beach and as we went to buy the booze viswan obstinately declares there is a bar at Veli and we neednt take the trouble of buying in advance. Believing his words we reach Veli….guess wht the bar he referred to said…COOL BAR…selling soft drinks!!! Eduthitte thalli avane…
That same trip while walking on the beach Shan has a sudden desire to ride one of the horses there. He pays the guy, gets on the horse and tugs at the reins…the horse ambles ahead at a slow pace…shan turns to the guy and asks….”enthe anna, oru speed illaathe ee kuthirakke”….and the owner cracks his whip sending the horse racing ahead….shan is taken aback and is fearful….struggling to keep his balance grabs the kuthira’s mane which made it even more mad and it starts galloping faster…we fell over each other laughing with shan shouting out….”anna enne rekshikke”!!!
The savages were hanging outside one of our earliest joints, the LMS hostel compund wall by the junction. Suddenly anoop alerts the group that the warden is around and lower our voices….kiran as always busy on two things at the same time remarks…”aaraada ee warden”. He intended to ask it in the proper way but in the bonhomie that our group imparts it took a menacing “aaraada ee warden” tone. The warden overheard that, walked upto kiran and said in an equally menacing tone, “njaanaada ee warden”. Kiran wuz almost on his knees trying to apologize to the unheeding man while we didn’t know whether to laugh or to help Anoop and Kevin carry out their stuff if they got thrown out.
S-5:
Chakka walks into Café Magnet and tells the waiter…”10 barotta, 2 chilli gobis”…immediately the waiter asks “parcel aano sir” to which an embarrassed kiran replies in the negative.
This is my favorite Kevin goal. We took a hotel room at Kovalam once, and viswan while signing the register pens his name in there as Shaju Cherian. Kevin watching him intently immediately asks aloud ‘eda nee Viswanath Prasad alle?”. The receptionist having seen bigger thappaana’s than us thankfully ignored it…. Its strange really how a brilliant guy like him can be absolutely absent-minded at times.
Viswan is caught by his dad for drinking and he gets into trouble big time! Next day we spent an anxious time at college waiting for our heads to burst as his parents decide to conduct a Shatrusamhara Pooja to destroy all the evils afflicting their aruma santhanam!
S-6:
The guys are cutting class and playing cards at kevins lodge room. Kevin goes out, reappers and folding his fingers into a concave shape indicating a snake says “porathe oru aana”…and then makes a noise “meow”. the guys run out to see wht it is and all they see is the elephant and no sign of any cat or snake!
This is an unbelievable Kevin goal. We have to submit lab records at the end of the semester and all the guys are busy copying from the gals. After all the donkey’s work is done we start working on the Index page with the date and the name of the experiment done. Kevin writes all the names first and in one stretch starts filling in the dates.He goes 3/16/2001, 3/23/2001,3/30/2001,3/37/2001, 3/44/2001 and 3/51/2001!!! One of the gals helping us out peeks over his shoulder and catches the blunder! Kevin’s response...an unforgettably typical squeak…"Oh Njyo"!!!!!!
One day in class we get an emergency request for blood donation. Only Viswan’s and Anoop’s blood type matched and they headed out. On returning they said it was for a close relative of Seeja Teacher, enfant terrible to us. Sometime soon after, all the savages got hauled up in class by her for alambs…Immediately Anoop and Viswan start rubbing their hands in agony where the blood wuz taken….an embarrassed Seeja Teacher tells the two of them to sit while the rest of us remained standing for the rest of the class fuming at the two of them and baying for their blood.
Viswan and Arun decide to start working out at Power Gym at Palayam. Chakka frantically tells them Power is not good, and it’s a fucked up place and Viswan and Arun decide not to go. Next morning however they change their mind and the first sight they see at the gym…Kiran struggling with dumbbells!!!...and on seeing them gives the most chammufied look ever. We later found out he had been at it for more than a month while all the time claiming he wuz headed for some naturopathy treatment for weight loss.
Jayasudha Teacher realized one day that guys were bunking class while she wuz teaching. She says, "Aarokkeya chaadi poyothe enne njan kandupidikkum"...and she looks to the nice, studious folks in the class for assistance. Krishnakumar, our rank-holder's response leaves her stunned..."teacher, namukke dummy itte nokaam"!!!
S-7:
Viswan asked by Rajeev,SFI leader to join in a fight against some
ABVP guys tells him,Eda njan innale gym il randu dumbbell
pokkiyappazhathekku biceps sprain cheythu.che,sorry
eda, allengil.........
The convent adjacent to Viswan’s house had begun to double up as a Ladies Hostel too and suddenly every evening all the guys wud arrive after class to play cricket with a punctuality that seemed odd. Everybody was playing their best shots, bowling bouncers, taking sharp catches amidst taking a peak back at the gals spying on us from their rooms which seemed all too suspicious to Viswan’s watchman who ensured another interesting pastime got nipped in the bud.
In S-4 Viswan(Viswanath Prasad) had bought a thin, frail dog and called him Dexter. It wuz fun watching him trying to train the dog who all he did was bark and eat. In two years time Dexter had become a fat, huge dog while Viswan had lost a lot of weight. We started joking all the food cooked in his home wuz meant for Dexter and that he wuz almost like a brother to Viswan now and we started calling Dexter, Dexter Prasad.
(Courtesy:Arun Hari) Place: sandy/kevins house in pappanamcode. lunch time.and the servant there prepares some real good food...and there are 4-5 ppl apart from sandy/kevin who stay there...so the food is meant for all...so its lunch time and our dear chakka decides to dig in on a light snack...apparently he likes the food so much that he takes helping after helping....all the while, sandy is looking with horror at the carnage...and cant say anything as chakka is understandably enjoying himself without realising other hungry ppl will come in a short whileand beat up poor sandy n kevin for missing food....here goes the killer punch...chakka goes upto sandy (very seriously) and says...."ninte ee jolikkari kollamallodey....adipoli food...njanoru karyam cheyyam...i will give a fixed amount of money additional and she can cook for me also"...that was the last straw on poor sandy's back...he shoots back with desperation and suppressed anger...."EE veettil oru kalame ollu"!!!!.....and we all burst at our seams laughing.
S-8:
Exam time. I walk past kevin shoving away a branch of a small tree under which we were all huddled. The branch recoils and hits Kevin who is deep in last-minute study and thinking somebody hits him turns around and shouts “eda patti” and grabs hold of the person who hit him…and is shocked to see the branch in his hands wondering how it cud ever do that to him!!!
We were out all night plastering the walls of trivandrum with our dishaa’ 02 posters. By 4 am we were famished and drove all around the city trying to find a thattukada. We rejoiced upon stumbling upon one at pattom and what followed was a plunder. Dosa upon dosa, countless omlettes and beef were dispatched away in minutes. The owner told us ningal ellaam theerthu but kiran so engrossed in eating never heard that and asks..”ineem enthe onde anna”…and the guy shot back “ineem ee kadayum koode olle”! Man I never laughed that loud at 4:30 in the morning.
Kevin was told to book tickets for our train journey to Bangalore to appear for an MBA entrance exam. On the appointed day our guys board the train at thampanoor…everyone is as usual in high spirits…on boarding the train chakka is more gregarious than normal and says…”ningal enne thettidharikkalle…apparthe compartmentil neena cherian(ex-vj-suryatv) onde…we are acquaintances…ningalude koode ethra neram irikkaan pattum enne ariyilla”…and on making the way to their seats finds a man perched there…chakka immediately…”plaze daant misunderstand…this is our seat” and the man a bit shaken at this 100+ kg guy talking like this to him says meekly…”ithente seat aanu…enikke ticket onde”. Chakka not in a mood to let it go throws his ticket towards the man who carefully looks at it and then fighting hard to suppress a smile of victory tells chakka to look at the date more carefully. Instead of jan 14 kevin had taken the tickets for feb 14 and there wuz an exam to be written!!! Somehow the guys frantically manage to find space on a bus headed to blore and the guys were angrily waiting to give an earful to Kevin who wuz to board at the kollam railway station and calls him up…explaining to him his abadham amidst therivilis and their plan to travel by bus…they totally loose their composure when an unrepentant Kevin says…”enikke businte middle seat thanne venam”!!!
P.S - Long back when we were bidding farewell to college I wrote an autograph for every person who studied with me during those four glorious years. A character sketch of the many protagonists who lighted up this post can be found here in alphabetic order.
S1-S2:
Sabu Sir is teaching abt cell phones during his Basic Electronics class. Shan takes out his fathers old first generation gamandan cellphone flashes it at Sabu Sir and said to the poor, dumbstruck man, "Sir, saarinte notes vechundaakkiya cell phone aanu….pakshe work cheyyunnilla".
Viswan at the first day, first show screening of Usthad says ‘Enthaade aarkum ore ulsaham illaaathe, lalettante padam alle”…and shouts “Bolo, Bhaaaratha Mohanlal Ki Jai”….the locals and fans association members who made the bulk of the crowd started laughing at us!!!
Sheenu on loosing her black hero pen writes on the blackboard:
"LOST: Sheenu's Black Hero" to which an overjoyed Sooraj Thankappan who calls himself “Born in Africa…Lost in India” shouts out : "Yehhhhhhh"!!!Can never forget Sheenu scrambling desperately for the blackboard to rub off all she wrote.
We planned to spend the day at Neyyar Dam and everyone except for me wuz able to bunk class saying some reason or the other…fretting at my misfortune I jump out of the class throught the back windows onto the sunshade while the sir had turned towards the blackboard…finally find an empty classroom…to get off the sunshade and search all over campus for my mates…somebody tells me that having not seen me the trip wuz cancelled and the guys had headed back to the class…having nothing to do I walk into class and at the door the sir stares at me as though he wuz seeing a ghost…only a few minutes back he had looked at me…thankfully he didn’t check the attendance register!
During workshop class, Jessen asked by Foundry instructor to hand him a cleaner very intelligently gives him a rag of cotton wool. The cleaner actually happened to be a steel rod much unlike its name to jessen’s dismay, the sir's disgust and our unbridled laughter.
S-3:
During S-3 excursion we were passing through a junction just outside Ooty. Shinoj put his head outside the bus and was greeted by faces of some thamizhan locals.As it comes naturally to him, he wagged his middle finger at the unsuspecting guys. Just 10 metres on, the bus screeched to a halt due to traffic. We all waited breathlessly for the locals to come at us. Luckily the bus took off and we all put our heads out again. Guess what the name of the place was: Moonchikkal Junction!!!
During Logic Systems Design class Manoj Sir hauls up a noisy Shan and asks him: If you want a GATE(IC chip) at a shop how should u ask for it: Shan without any qualms answers: "I want a GATE".
Our last DMS class with Sreenivasan Sir,we all shouted,"Sir,Wish you a Happy Onam and a Happy Married Life" to which he replied ”Same to you all also" only to walk out of the class chammufied by our laughter at his gaffe.
There was a convent adjacent to Viswan’s house and Arun Hari wuz waiting for him to come and leaning against the wall having nothing better to do starts enticing a cat on the convent property with meows and other sounds. Suddenly a nun who wuz taking a shower in an outside bathroom on the property comes out and stares at Arun…fearing she had misunderstood him….he runs for his life leaving his bike behind!
S-4:
We planned a trip to Veli beach and as we went to buy the booze viswan obstinately declares there is a bar at Veli and we neednt take the trouble of buying in advance. Believing his words we reach Veli….guess wht the bar he referred to said…COOL BAR…selling soft drinks!!! Eduthitte thalli avane…
That same trip while walking on the beach Shan has a sudden desire to ride one of the horses there. He pays the guy, gets on the horse and tugs at the reins…the horse ambles ahead at a slow pace…shan turns to the guy and asks….”enthe anna, oru speed illaathe ee kuthirakke”….and the owner cracks his whip sending the horse racing ahead….shan is taken aback and is fearful….struggling to keep his balance grabs the kuthira’s mane which made it even more mad and it starts galloping faster…we fell over each other laughing with shan shouting out….”anna enne rekshikke”!!!
The savages were hanging outside one of our earliest joints, the LMS hostel compund wall by the junction. Suddenly anoop alerts the group that the warden is around and lower our voices….kiran as always busy on two things at the same time remarks…”aaraada ee warden”. He intended to ask it in the proper way but in the bonhomie that our group imparts it took a menacing “aaraada ee warden” tone. The warden overheard that, walked upto kiran and said in an equally menacing tone, “njaanaada ee warden”. Kiran wuz almost on his knees trying to apologize to the unheeding man while we didn’t know whether to laugh or to help Anoop and Kevin carry out their stuff if they got thrown out.
S-5:
Chakka walks into Café Magnet and tells the waiter…”10 barotta, 2 chilli gobis”…immediately the waiter asks “parcel aano sir” to which an embarrassed kiran replies in the negative.
This is my favorite Kevin goal. We took a hotel room at Kovalam once, and viswan while signing the register pens his name in there as Shaju Cherian. Kevin watching him intently immediately asks aloud ‘eda nee Viswanath Prasad alle?”. The receptionist having seen bigger thappaana’s than us thankfully ignored it…. Its strange really how a brilliant guy like him can be absolutely absent-minded at times.
Viswan is caught by his dad for drinking and he gets into trouble big time! Next day we spent an anxious time at college waiting for our heads to burst as his parents decide to conduct a Shatrusamhara Pooja to destroy all the evils afflicting their aruma santhanam!
S-6:
The guys are cutting class and playing cards at kevins lodge room. Kevin goes out, reappers and folding his fingers into a concave shape indicating a snake says “porathe oru aana”…and then makes a noise “meow”. the guys run out to see wht it is and all they see is the elephant and no sign of any cat or snake!
This is an unbelievable Kevin goal. We have to submit lab records at the end of the semester and all the guys are busy copying from the gals. After all the donkey’s work is done we start working on the Index page with the date and the name of the experiment done. Kevin writes all the names first and in one stretch starts filling in the dates.He goes 3/16/2001, 3/23/2001,3/30/2001,3/37/2001, 3/44/2001 and 3/51/2001!!! One of the gals helping us out peeks over his shoulder and catches the blunder! Kevin’s response...an unforgettably typical squeak…"Oh Njyo"!!!!!!
One day in class we get an emergency request for blood donation. Only Viswan’s and Anoop’s blood type matched and they headed out. On returning they said it was for a close relative of Seeja Teacher, enfant terrible to us. Sometime soon after, all the savages got hauled up in class by her for alambs…Immediately Anoop and Viswan start rubbing their hands in agony where the blood wuz taken….an embarrassed Seeja Teacher tells the two of them to sit while the rest of us remained standing for the rest of the class fuming at the two of them and baying for their blood.
Viswan and Arun decide to start working out at Power Gym at Palayam. Chakka frantically tells them Power is not good, and it’s a fucked up place and Viswan and Arun decide not to go. Next morning however they change their mind and the first sight they see at the gym…Kiran struggling with dumbbells!!!...and on seeing them gives the most chammufied look ever. We later found out he had been at it for more than a month while all the time claiming he wuz headed for some naturopathy treatment for weight loss.
Jayasudha Teacher realized one day that guys were bunking class while she wuz teaching. She says, "Aarokkeya chaadi poyothe enne njan kandupidikkum"...and she looks to the nice, studious folks in the class for assistance. Krishnakumar, our rank-holder's response leaves her stunned..."teacher, namukke dummy itte nokaam"!!!
S-7:
Viswan asked by Rajeev,SFI leader to join in a fight against some
ABVP guys tells him,Eda njan innale gym il randu dumbbell
pokkiyappazhathekku biceps sprain cheythu.che,sorry
eda, allengil.........
The convent adjacent to Viswan’s house had begun to double up as a Ladies Hostel too and suddenly every evening all the guys wud arrive after class to play cricket with a punctuality that seemed odd. Everybody was playing their best shots, bowling bouncers, taking sharp catches amidst taking a peak back at the gals spying on us from their rooms which seemed all too suspicious to Viswan’s watchman who ensured another interesting pastime got nipped in the bud.
In S-4 Viswan(Viswanath Prasad) had bought a thin, frail dog and called him Dexter. It wuz fun watching him trying to train the dog who all he did was bark and eat. In two years time Dexter had become a fat, huge dog while Viswan had lost a lot of weight. We started joking all the food cooked in his home wuz meant for Dexter and that he wuz almost like a brother to Viswan now and we started calling Dexter, Dexter Prasad.
(Courtesy:Arun Hari) Place: sandy/kevins house in pappanamcode. lunch time.and the servant there prepares some real good food...and there are 4-5 ppl apart from sandy/kevin who stay there...so the food is meant for all...so its lunch time and our dear chakka decides to dig in on a light snack...apparently he likes the food so much that he takes helping after helping....all the while, sandy is looking with horror at the carnage...and cant say anything as chakka is understandably enjoying himself without realising other hungry ppl will come in a short whileand beat up poor sandy n kevin for missing food....here goes the killer punch...chakka goes upto sandy (very seriously) and says...."ninte ee jolikkari kollamallodey....adipoli food...njanoru karyam cheyyam...i will give a fixed amount of money additional and she can cook for me also"...that was the last straw on poor sandy's back...he shoots back with desperation and suppressed anger...."EE veettil oru kalame ollu"!!!!.....and we all burst at our seams laughing.
S-8:
Exam time. I walk past kevin shoving away a branch of a small tree under which we were all huddled. The branch recoils and hits Kevin who is deep in last-minute study and thinking somebody hits him turns around and shouts “eda patti” and grabs hold of the person who hit him…and is shocked to see the branch in his hands wondering how it cud ever do that to him!!!
We were out all night plastering the walls of trivandrum with our dishaa’ 02 posters. By 4 am we were famished and drove all around the city trying to find a thattukada. We rejoiced upon stumbling upon one at pattom and what followed was a plunder. Dosa upon dosa, countless omlettes and beef were dispatched away in minutes. The owner told us ningal ellaam theerthu but kiran so engrossed in eating never heard that and asks..”ineem enthe onde anna”…and the guy shot back “ineem ee kadayum koode olle”! Man I never laughed that loud at 4:30 in the morning.
Kevin was told to book tickets for our train journey to Bangalore to appear for an MBA entrance exam. On the appointed day our guys board the train at thampanoor…everyone is as usual in high spirits…on boarding the train chakka is more gregarious than normal and says…”ningal enne thettidharikkalle…apparthe compartmentil neena cherian(ex-vj-suryatv) onde…we are acquaintances…ningalude koode ethra neram irikkaan pattum enne ariyilla”…and on making the way to their seats finds a man perched there…chakka immediately…”plaze daant misunderstand…this is our seat” and the man a bit shaken at this 100+ kg guy talking like this to him says meekly…”ithente seat aanu…enikke ticket onde”. Chakka not in a mood to let it go throws his ticket towards the man who carefully looks at it and then fighting hard to suppress a smile of victory tells chakka to look at the date more carefully. Instead of jan 14 kevin had taken the tickets for feb 14 and there wuz an exam to be written!!! Somehow the guys frantically manage to find space on a bus headed to blore and the guys were angrily waiting to give an earful to Kevin who wuz to board at the kollam railway station and calls him up…explaining to him his abadham amidst therivilis and their plan to travel by bus…they totally loose their composure when an unrepentant Kevin says…”enikke businte middle seat thanne venam”!!!
P.S - Long back when we were bidding farewell to college I wrote an autograph for every person who studied with me during those four glorious years. A character sketch of the many protagonists who lighted up this post can be found here in alphabetic order.
Friday, July 08, 2005
The Lighter Side of American Life...
Its not often we get to laugh a lot in America but when things happens it becomes the stuff of folklore for us. Dunno how funny these will turn out in writing but when these incidents came to light we laughed days on end abt them.
Mithun calls up Jacob, our Loyola classmate who is an executive at Asian Paints one day and says, "Is this Jacob? I want to place a large order". Jaru licks his lips in anticipation and tells him to go on. "Well, I want some kummayam to whitewash the White House"...leaving the first of our IIMians flummoxed!
Muthu is an expert at telling tall tales...he punctuates it with wild gesticulaions, eyes that light up like a thousand suns, a flair for talking that wud make a sreekantan nair of asianet's nammal thammil fame proud...for years he has given our batch wholesome entertainment of the highest order...and once he visted viswan at new york and there he held his audience of other mallus speechless in rapt attention with his stories. That was when he told them of his friend who had come onsite and was arrested by the FBI for taking fotos of the american embassy in Washington D.C. Unfortunately for him one of the guys was sharp enuf and asked,"americayil evidayaada american embassy"! and they were all like "eeshwara ivan ithreyum neram nammalode paranjathellaam odukkathe vedikalaayirunnallo"!
Muthu did an internship last summer for a chain of Burger King stores in Chicago to suggest cost-cutting measures and on the first day his manager suggested he sit in the store to observe their operations. Having nothing better to do he starts munching on french fries cooked for the customers...after watching this for an hour a malayali working there comes to him and says..."ithaanalle cost cutting"!
One day in between my job search I tell muthu I am goin to apply for a teaching job at the LA County School. "Dey, nee veruthe nadakkunna paavam karamban payyanmaarude thokkine paniyondaakale"...i had turned to him in search of support but his cruel reply made sure a glorious career in teaching got cut short even b4 it started.
Viswan was visiting california for our xmas vacations in 2002. it wuz nitetime and we were walking like in india...our bodies grazing, an occasional arm thrown over the shoulder and like. A homeless kallu passes by us...then turns around and remarks.....'hey u guys gay???"....we were embarassed and moved apart....we thought that wuz the end of it but his next line totally floored us... "brothers u dont know what ur missing"!
Viswan is on a flight and an airhostess accidentally trips and falls on him. She apologizes profusely to which the demo mannan's reply was..."No worries...It was my pleasure".
Back home for our summer vacation in 2003...first thing viswan who reached a few days earlier did when i arrived was give a call to my home. As soon as he hears the hello on the other end he lets out a blood-curling "Aliyaaaaa".My dad had answered the fone...all he said was "hold cheyye, aliyane njan ippam fone kodukkkaam" leaving viswan chammufied.
Abhijith did his schooling in england before moving to kerala. His malayalam is weaker than the rest and one day one of our guys at usc kept making fun of him continuously. Not being able to take it any further Abhi says, "Dude,either on the ashaan's chest, or outside the kalari"!
We always take the liberty of talking malayalam in public since noone around understands.But once at the indian theater we were at the restroom during the interval of a malayalam film. My leak done and abt to leave mathew asks me "theateril keruvano" to which i inopportunely said "illa illa cinema thodangeete kerunnolle...chicks okke veleela" only to see almost a dozen heads pop up to take a look at the culprits. everyone around were mallus! i ran out leaving mathew still peeing away, helplessly and embarassed, amidst uncles who chuckled at his discomfiture.
A usc senior got caught for jaywalking at midnight...and rather than keeping quiet tells the LAPD officer..."Is this the only crime happening here"...and the officer promptly pulls out his ledger and writes him a ticket for $100 and tells him..."I wuz just abt to let u off when u opened ur mouth!"
Abhi also racked up a ticket for jaywalking and he calls his mom and mournfully tells her,"amma, enikke jaywalkingine ticket kitti". Immediately she asks..."athenthada, avide aanungalude koode nadakkunnathu illegal aano?".Either the poor aunty had heard it as gaywalking or as we frequently tell him even she has her doubts abt Abhi!
Once I called my mom, and excitedly tells her I got an interview coming up with Boeing. She immediately asks, "Etha mone, Boeing Boeing aano?"
Mathew and I were doing an assignment at the library. I get a drawing wrong and turns to the gori next to me, "Excuse me, do you have a rubber"...She shouts out "WHAT??!!" leaving me frozen for a few seconds and mathew jumps right in and says, "he meant do you have an eraser" and apologizes.Dang...I wish I had watched American Desi earlier.
Pappanabhan's full name is ananthapadmanabhan karthikeyan sulekha. All the situations a name like that cud do in a country like this is just outright hilarious.
-Once he applied for a credit card and it had only enuf space for his middle and last name and coz of that the credit card got rejected.
-On doing an immigration verification the INS had no record of his entry into the US bcoz the computer wouldnt allow more than 30 characters.
-Making calls to call-centers is the worst part.Pronouncing his name doesnt work and so he has to spell each letter out. Once I went to take a shower and he took my cellfone promising to make a quick support call. Half an hour later I got out, and there he was still spelling out his name and all parties concerned in the call are at their wits end as they got alphabets wrong somewhere in the middle and were still trying to sort out the mess that I didnt know whether to be angry at his wasting my daytime minutes or to laugh out at the comic interaction btw the hapless puppy and the frustrated gal on the other end. Every customer support call he makes is preceded by a short prayer to have it routed to india!
Finally he arrived at a solution for his name bug...started calling himself Andy Padman!
Mathew and me took a break from studies and headed out for our first baseball match. usc wuz playing stanford. we didnt know much abt the game and were totally lost. suddenly a usc batter struck a powerful shot and started running. mathew wuz up in a second and lustily cheering. i decided to do my bit and whistled. Suddenly we realized the crowd had turned towards us and wuz giving hostile glares....we hadnt noticed that a catch was taken...filled with shame and fear of an adi, we ran for our life.
A professor is holding forte in class.Suddenly we hear one of our classmates,a desi call him sir. The professors response wuz unforgettable..."I have not yet been knighted by the English Queen, so until that day comes you can address me as Professor or by my first name"!
Coming to the US...at the Tokyo International Airport I realized I had a Japanese version of my name....everywhere kept being called Mr.Kattakama.
Once, mathew was working early mornings at his campus job office when he heard a gal scream. he ran to her side and starts comforting the hot babe but she shakes him off and points in the direction of the corridor and tells him to catch the thief who took her money.Our chivalrous hero confidently moved to the corridor and he sees the assailant,a 6'5" hefty kallu walking away coolly.The guy turns back and stares menacingly at mathaichan.The gal yells at mathew "catch him, catch him"...mathew takes a few hesitant steps towards the man...and slowly tells him without the gori hearing..."run away, please run away".Luckily for him the guy starts running and the gal thanks him for being a "big help"!
vikas my usc roomie had this habit of talking on the fone to his bhayya at nite on the road in front of our apt. our area wuz notorious for crimes as we were close to the LA ghettos. one day a kallu crept up beside him on a cycle tapped him on his shoulder and rasped..."gimme all ur money or i will shoot u"...having only his dear fone and nothing else...all he cud plead wuz...'u want my money...u want my money??" and gave the kallu the last thing he wud ever expect from a desi....a resounding kick on his balls! the kallu left his cycle behind and ran for his life. that day on vikas became a symbol of pride and courage among our desi community while vikas shivers to think wht wud have happened if the guy really had a gun on him as he had boasted!!!
Anyways most of us are past the fresh of the boat stage and there are fewer anecdotes to recite each time we all meet up...all our guys are slowly getting smug and comfortable with life in america...its true whether in movies or in life...the best comedy happens when we are in the struggling phase. Tomorrow viswan is coming to LA for the weekend, we meet after 6 months...deyvame enthokke prashnangalilaanontho chenne chadaan pokunna ineem!
Mithun calls up Jacob, our Loyola classmate who is an executive at Asian Paints one day and says, "Is this Jacob? I want to place a large order". Jaru licks his lips in anticipation and tells him to go on. "Well, I want some kummayam to whitewash the White House"...leaving the first of our IIMians flummoxed!
Muthu is an expert at telling tall tales...he punctuates it with wild gesticulaions, eyes that light up like a thousand suns, a flair for talking that wud make a sreekantan nair of asianet's nammal thammil fame proud...for years he has given our batch wholesome entertainment of the highest order...and once he visted viswan at new york and there he held his audience of other mallus speechless in rapt attention with his stories. That was when he told them of his friend who had come onsite and was arrested by the FBI for taking fotos of the american embassy in Washington D.C. Unfortunately for him one of the guys was sharp enuf and asked,"americayil evidayaada american embassy"! and they were all like "eeshwara ivan ithreyum neram nammalode paranjathellaam odukkathe vedikalaayirunnallo"!
Muthu did an internship last summer for a chain of Burger King stores in Chicago to suggest cost-cutting measures and on the first day his manager suggested he sit in the store to observe their operations. Having nothing better to do he starts munching on french fries cooked for the customers...after watching this for an hour a malayali working there comes to him and says..."ithaanalle cost cutting"!
One day in between my job search I tell muthu I am goin to apply for a teaching job at the LA County School. "Dey, nee veruthe nadakkunna paavam karamban payyanmaarude thokkine paniyondaakale"...i had turned to him in search of support but his cruel reply made sure a glorious career in teaching got cut short even b4 it started.
Viswan was visiting california for our xmas vacations in 2002. it wuz nitetime and we were walking like in india...our bodies grazing, an occasional arm thrown over the shoulder and like. A homeless kallu passes by us...then turns around and remarks.....'hey u guys gay???"....we were embarassed and moved apart....we thought that wuz the end of it but his next line totally floored us... "brothers u dont know what ur missing"!
Viswan is on a flight and an airhostess accidentally trips and falls on him. She apologizes profusely to which the demo mannan's reply was..."No worries...It was my pleasure".
Back home for our summer vacation in 2003...first thing viswan who reached a few days earlier did when i arrived was give a call to my home. As soon as he hears the hello on the other end he lets out a blood-curling "Aliyaaaaa".My dad had answered the fone...all he said was "hold cheyye, aliyane njan ippam fone kodukkkaam" leaving viswan chammufied.
Abhijith did his schooling in england before moving to kerala. His malayalam is weaker than the rest and one day one of our guys at usc kept making fun of him continuously. Not being able to take it any further Abhi says, "Dude,either on the ashaan's chest, or outside the kalari"!
We always take the liberty of talking malayalam in public since noone around understands.But once at the indian theater we were at the restroom during the interval of a malayalam film. My leak done and abt to leave mathew asks me "theateril keruvano" to which i inopportunely said "illa illa cinema thodangeete kerunnolle...chicks okke veleela" only to see almost a dozen heads pop up to take a look at the culprits. everyone around were mallus! i ran out leaving mathew still peeing away, helplessly and embarassed, amidst uncles who chuckled at his discomfiture.
A usc senior got caught for jaywalking at midnight...and rather than keeping quiet tells the LAPD officer..."Is this the only crime happening here"...and the officer promptly pulls out his ledger and writes him a ticket for $100 and tells him..."I wuz just abt to let u off when u opened ur mouth!"
Abhi also racked up a ticket for jaywalking and he calls his mom and mournfully tells her,"amma, enikke jaywalkingine ticket kitti". Immediately she asks..."athenthada, avide aanungalude koode nadakkunnathu illegal aano?".Either the poor aunty had heard it as gaywalking or as we frequently tell him even she has her doubts abt Abhi!
Once I called my mom, and excitedly tells her I got an interview coming up with Boeing. She immediately asks, "Etha mone, Boeing Boeing aano?"
Mathew and I were doing an assignment at the library. I get a drawing wrong and turns to the gori next to me, "Excuse me, do you have a rubber"...She shouts out "WHAT??!!" leaving me frozen for a few seconds and mathew jumps right in and says, "he meant do you have an eraser" and apologizes.Dang...I wish I had watched American Desi earlier.
Pappanabhan's full name is ananthapadmanabhan karthikeyan sulekha. All the situations a name like that cud do in a country like this is just outright hilarious.
-Once he applied for a credit card and it had only enuf space for his middle and last name and coz of that the credit card got rejected.
-On doing an immigration verification the INS had no record of his entry into the US bcoz the computer wouldnt allow more than 30 characters.
-Making calls to call-centers is the worst part.Pronouncing his name doesnt work and so he has to spell each letter out. Once I went to take a shower and he took my cellfone promising to make a quick support call. Half an hour later I got out, and there he was still spelling out his name and all parties concerned in the call are at their wits end as they got alphabets wrong somewhere in the middle and were still trying to sort out the mess that I didnt know whether to be angry at his wasting my daytime minutes or to laugh out at the comic interaction btw the hapless puppy and the frustrated gal on the other end. Every customer support call he makes is preceded by a short prayer to have it routed to india!
Finally he arrived at a solution for his name bug...started calling himself Andy Padman!
Mathew and me took a break from studies and headed out for our first baseball match. usc wuz playing stanford. we didnt know much abt the game and were totally lost. suddenly a usc batter struck a powerful shot and started running. mathew wuz up in a second and lustily cheering. i decided to do my bit and whistled. Suddenly we realized the crowd had turned towards us and wuz giving hostile glares....we hadnt noticed that a catch was taken...filled with shame and fear of an adi, we ran for our life.
A professor is holding forte in class.Suddenly we hear one of our classmates,a desi call him sir. The professors response wuz unforgettable..."I have not yet been knighted by the English Queen, so until that day comes you can address me as Professor or by my first name"!
Coming to the US...at the Tokyo International Airport I realized I had a Japanese version of my name....everywhere kept being called Mr.Kattakama.
Once, mathew was working early mornings at his campus job office when he heard a gal scream. he ran to her side and starts comforting the hot babe but she shakes him off and points in the direction of the corridor and tells him to catch the thief who took her money.Our chivalrous hero confidently moved to the corridor and he sees the assailant,a 6'5" hefty kallu walking away coolly.The guy turns back and stares menacingly at mathaichan.The gal yells at mathew "catch him, catch him"...mathew takes a few hesitant steps towards the man...and slowly tells him without the gori hearing..."run away, please run away".Luckily for him the guy starts running and the gal thanks him for being a "big help"!
vikas my usc roomie had this habit of talking on the fone to his bhayya at nite on the road in front of our apt. our area wuz notorious for crimes as we were close to the LA ghettos. one day a kallu crept up beside him on a cycle tapped him on his shoulder and rasped..."gimme all ur money or i will shoot u"...having only his dear fone and nothing else...all he cud plead wuz...'u want my money...u want my money??" and gave the kallu the last thing he wud ever expect from a desi....a resounding kick on his balls! the kallu left his cycle behind and ran for his life. that day on vikas became a symbol of pride and courage among our desi community while vikas shivers to think wht wud have happened if the guy really had a gun on him as he had boasted!!!
Anyways most of us are past the fresh of the boat stage and there are fewer anecdotes to recite each time we all meet up...all our guys are slowly getting smug and comfortable with life in america...its true whether in movies or in life...the best comedy happens when we are in the struggling phase. Tomorrow viswan is coming to LA for the weekend, we meet after 6 months...deyvame enthokke prashnangalilaanontho chenne chadaan pokunna ineem!
Friday, June 24, 2005
When Dreams Take Wings...
Well, time to write abt people of mine who keep doing things out of the ordinary. The last few weeks were a struggle to blog...every new post i created ended in fatigue and the writer's block...i even stayed off my favorite blogs out of sheer envy for those superbly prolific writers until today when Arun Hari emailed us this thought-provoking graduation speech by Steve Jobs at Stanford...and this fantastic para lit the spark in me. (Quoting from it - "Your time is limited, so don't waste it living someone else's life. Don't be trapped by dogma - which is living with the results of other people's thinking. Don't let the noise of other's opinions drown out your own inner voice. And most important, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition. They somehow already know what you truly want to become. Everything else is secondary.").I couldnt become a sociologist, a journalist or become involved in filmmaking. I really shouldnt be complaining bcoz everyone comforts me saying being a techie has gotten me money quicker while all these dream careers need years of struggle by which time our youth is over. But the ordinary men i write abt below keep proving to me that the only factor that restricts me from doing all I want to do is myself...they may not be blazing the trail yet...they may not be rich or famous yet...but their courage to walk off the oft-trodden path greatly inspires me.
Shan and Anoop, my classmates and fellow-savages in college gave up the opportunity to work with all the tech-majors and did the unthinkable...opened a software firm...in of all places...kerala! Its been 3 years since their momentous decision and three years since they have continually laid low all our apprehensions of them not making the grade or giving up and its hard not to feel proud about them. In the first year when the going was tough they slogged on(though i wuz alarmed at the number of bottles that piled up at their house then on my visit to india!!!), completed projects keeping the billing rate low, built strong relationsips with their clients and today their company, Neologix is among the top BPO firms developing ColdFusion applications and have clients in 5 countries...us, japan, australia, uk and india. Besides employing 8 people, and continually streamlining their processes, they are learning to live the good life...finding time to go trekking, roadtrips to goa, blore and many more places! Way to go guys!!!!
My uncle, Issac Karoor is a priest and he once took to writing to overcome a difficult phase in his life. He ended up writing a book on St.Luke with more than 10 years of research going into it and what followed that was many years of searching for a publisher....now finally he has not one, but four of them lining up at his door and they are even negotitating for movie rights! With each passing day as I get more and more engrossed in my work...it has become a himalayan task carrying my blogging habit forward...i think i wud have given up on doing some serious writing ever if not for this feat of his!
My classmate from school, Rajakrishnan decided enuf wuz enuf after 4 years of industrial engg, studied MA in linguistics at JNU, wrote a seminal paper on some extinct language in the North-East, prompting a professor from some American university to go down to Delhi to meet him personally,later became a UGC scholar and finally seems to have pooh-poohed an offer from Cornell University for a fully funded Ph.D with travel grants. Meanwhile he made a one-hour amateur film on kerala's suicide phenomenon!!! Another pal, Thomman, my only friend I see as a hero, quit his engineering studies midway to join the Indian Army. After distinguishing himself at the National Defense Academy and Indian Military Academy he is now serving in Kashmir and has been promoted to Captain. A fearless and born leader of men, I wouldnt be surprised if he ends his career as General.Ninan Thomas.
My life in America has infact gotten better which i once never thought possible...i have a job that is finally challenging(hope i survive!) and in a team of great people, my bank account is no more in single and double digits, my little sis cooks the best food i have had in years, i have reconnected with old mallu friends at my alma mater USC and a weekend is too little time to do all the things i want to...travelling to the east coast to see my extended family or the 20-odd ex-classmates from school and college-despite so much of talking on the fone or even manage to drink to the night with my buds here...i guess all these simple desires of the mind need to be brushed aside as we age or i need to just make that one spur of the moment decision(my trip to india this december is one i am expecting to make in a second of madness sometime soon...in the summer of '03 a casual fonecall btw viswan and me somehow ended up with us booking flight tickets 4 back home without even getting vacation sanctioned!). The pattalam i wrote abt above once wound up an inter-school cultural festival,LaFest that our class single-handedly organized by telling the assembled crowd of youngsters from the top schools in kerala saying..."If you can dream it...You can do it". Ultimately all our dreams boils down to having faith in oneself...and I guess that is why Shan, Anoop, Achachan, Thomman and Khaja are all role-models for me and the many who know them. Cheers to all of you and one day i hope to slot myself in the genre you guys fall into!
Shan and Anoop, my classmates and fellow-savages in college gave up the opportunity to work with all the tech-majors and did the unthinkable...opened a software firm...in of all places...kerala! Its been 3 years since their momentous decision and three years since they have continually laid low all our apprehensions of them not making the grade or giving up and its hard not to feel proud about them. In the first year when the going was tough they slogged on(though i wuz alarmed at the number of bottles that piled up at their house then on my visit to india!!!), completed projects keeping the billing rate low, built strong relationsips with their clients and today their company, Neologix is among the top BPO firms developing ColdFusion applications and have clients in 5 countries...us, japan, australia, uk and india. Besides employing 8 people, and continually streamlining their processes, they are learning to live the good life...finding time to go trekking, roadtrips to goa, blore and many more places! Way to go guys!!!!
My uncle, Issac Karoor is a priest and he once took to writing to overcome a difficult phase in his life. He ended up writing a book on St.Luke with more than 10 years of research going into it and what followed that was many years of searching for a publisher....now finally he has not one, but four of them lining up at his door and they are even negotitating for movie rights! With each passing day as I get more and more engrossed in my work...it has become a himalayan task carrying my blogging habit forward...i think i wud have given up on doing some serious writing ever if not for this feat of his!
My classmate from school, Rajakrishnan decided enuf wuz enuf after 4 years of industrial engg, studied MA in linguistics at JNU, wrote a seminal paper on some extinct language in the North-East, prompting a professor from some American university to go down to Delhi to meet him personally,later became a UGC scholar and finally seems to have pooh-poohed an offer from Cornell University for a fully funded Ph.D with travel grants. Meanwhile he made a one-hour amateur film on kerala's suicide phenomenon!!! Another pal, Thomman, my only friend I see as a hero, quit his engineering studies midway to join the Indian Army. After distinguishing himself at the National Defense Academy and Indian Military Academy he is now serving in Kashmir and has been promoted to Captain. A fearless and born leader of men, I wouldnt be surprised if he ends his career as General.Ninan Thomas.
My life in America has infact gotten better which i once never thought possible...i have a job that is finally challenging(hope i survive!) and in a team of great people, my bank account is no more in single and double digits, my little sis cooks the best food i have had in years, i have reconnected with old mallu friends at my alma mater USC and a weekend is too little time to do all the things i want to...travelling to the east coast to see my extended family or the 20-odd ex-classmates from school and college-despite so much of talking on the fone or even manage to drink to the night with my buds here...i guess all these simple desires of the mind need to be brushed aside as we age or i need to just make that one spur of the moment decision(my trip to india this december is one i am expecting to make in a second of madness sometime soon...in the summer of '03 a casual fonecall btw viswan and me somehow ended up with us booking flight tickets 4 back home without even getting vacation sanctioned!). The pattalam i wrote abt above once wound up an inter-school cultural festival,LaFest that our class single-handedly organized by telling the assembled crowd of youngsters from the top schools in kerala saying..."If you can dream it...You can do it". Ultimately all our dreams boils down to having faith in oneself...and I guess that is why Shan, Anoop, Achachan, Thomman and Khaja are all role-models for me and the many who know them. Cheers to all of you and one day i hope to slot myself in the genre you guys fall into!
Tuesday, May 31, 2005
Oh! For A Team Worth Cheering For...
What sucks big time about these days is the lack of a sport I can follow with passion and emotional attachment. There used to be cricket once but it no longer gets the adrenalin going as it did once. Before that there used to be basketball and man..wuz i witness to some of the most spirited battles on a basketball court...in sleepy, little trivandrum! Like Rugby, the famous English public school which was the setting for Thomas Hughes classic novel, Tom Brown's Schooldays in which he memorialized several rugby and cricket matches, Loyola has had a basketball tradition dating back to the 60's when the school started and the men who proudly wore the school jersey were immortalized as heroes in the countless tales juniors of all batches would live to tell, of their exploits on the court. I used to be an average player myself but realizing that my slim physique and unwillingness to exert myself phsically wud stand in the way my dreams of becoming a school team member ended prematurely. The first school match I recollect seeing was in 1987 as a 3rd grader and even today I remember the electrifying atmosphere that pervaded our quadrangle as the whole school looked on in amazement as a tall, lanky player named unnikrishnan single-handedly led an amost impossible fightback against sarvodaya. The next few years were equally thrilling with loyola, st.thomas, st.joseph's and sarvodaya producing teams that kept our hearts beating hard till the last whistle.
And then in 1991 loyola produced the dream-team...one year before the americans decided to make theirs for the olympics. The team of Randeep Hari, Eapen T. Joseph, Jayant Shankar, Bimal John and Tojo Eapen wove magic on the court. Eapen played like the ball was glued to his hands...he was unstoppable, randeep was fast and dangerous, bimal must have shot more 3-pointers than any loyolite...he seldom missed, tall tojo was the center...inside the circle a tojo in possesion of the ball was a sure basket while jayant was an all-rounder and then there was our cheering...opposing teams wud always complain that our lung-power scared their players and upset their rhythm.With slogans like "Whisky Brandy Soda Pop we want loyola on the top" and "V-I-C-T-O-R-Y...that is Loyola's Battle Cry" and many more which i forget now and some borrowed ones like "veer bahadur ladke kaun...loyola loyola" and a 500 young spirits with their achillean lungs, baying for blood with dustbins stolen from the classrooms to be used as drums...we were one fierce band of brothers! I still remember how 50 of us shouted down the whole of St.Thomas at the finals of the St.Thomas Trophy and though we lost that year we still proudly sang our School Anthem and walked away with our sworn enemy giving us a grudging ovation! After Eapen, '93 produced Vipin K. Varkey who though never succeeded in winning the Loyola Cup during his time and even breaking down in tears for not having lived up to his illustrious predecessors, but had the last laugh...he heroically scored a last-second 3 pointer to win the first St.Thomas Cup. Vipin's bad luck continued the next year with another of my school heroes...the late Vivek Rajendran, an all-rounder in everything he did as he failed in winning back the Loyola Cup but beat the same men to the 1st Arya Cup. In '94 we had a team that symbolised what makes basketball such an effective team sport...Akhilesh, Anil, Arun, Bejoy, Vivek and Karthik were a coach's dream with their selfless game and team spirit. They didnt have even a single player who cud turn the tide of the match but as a team of 5 their strength was their coordination...they had a tight defence and superb passing skills and with such strong basics they brought the Cup back to Loyola.
And then came our time...1995-97. We had a great team in Shenoi, Aravind, Mahesh, Mathew and Agil. Sheni was a superb dribbler, KP(mahesh) was a fighter and though short at 5'6" cud leap into the air and stay there for ages, ara was a good shooter and quick on his feet while ichayan(mathew) had the best defense loyola ever saw and ammavan(agil) was a very graceful player. Man to man we cud be termed as next only to the legendary team of 91-92 but we were up against a school whose basketballing prowess was at its peak...St.Josephs with several state players and hours and hours of practise to boast. Despite a spirited effort from our boys and frenzied, desperate cheering from our quadrangle steps we were bested. i still remember the score...57-52. Can never forget the teary-eyed faces as we headed for our excursion where we ironically had hoped to celebrate this victory!We won the St. Thomas trophy that year and the next but were trounced for the loyola cup in 96..the only one that mattered for our boys. and finally we were in the 12th...aravind and agil were no longer in the team, faheem, the 6'2" junior from 10th, came in as the center, harish was the new feeder...we were the seniors...and we still had the loyola cup to bag to be counted among the hallowed batches our great school had produced.
Even 30 years hence I will never forget that day...when we squared off against our same old enemy, St.Joseph's and boy what a match it was. As the seniors we led the cheering... at half-time we were trailing and if i remember rite two of our key players sheni and kp had developed cramps..yet bravely overcome the pain barrier and continued. Then ichayan too fell to cramps and he too shrugged away the agony and fought...we egged on our team lustily with noble leading the wolf-pack(he aptly picked up the nickname powerhouse for his enormous chestpower), prayed from the bottom of our hearts for a miracle and our boys rose up to the challenge. They took the fight right to the enemy,shook of their fatigue and fortune finally favored our braves...and a kid we always disparaged became the unlikely hero...harish haridas, two years our junior cooly dribbled the ball upto the opposition court took aim and realeased the ball to score a 3-pointer. That must have been the longest few seconds in all our short lives...and when the ball sailed smoothly into the basket our boys erupted in joy and happiness. For the first time in the match we had taken a lead and with only less than a minute left then for the whistle, the St.Josephian fightback got nipped in the bud as we scored another basket.If i remember rite the final scorecard read 52-49 but wht i can never forget is our invasion into the court to lift up our players and everyone falling to the floor in the melee and i remember gasping frantically for breath b4 somebody yanked me out of the mess. We all cried that day...it was one of the most memorable victories ever...there remained little else we needed to do to be a much talked about set of guys by future batches of loyolites...when sheni lifted the trophy we thought we had kept alive one of loyola's long-standing sporting traditions...but sadly the school never won the loyola cup since 1997...cricket did its share of damage to our school too as the stamina and skill needed for basketball ensured it found few takers henceforth...hope a day comes when loyolites can cheer for their baskeball team with the same fury and spirt that remains among some of the best memories that school life produced.
Today the guys who played the game in front of us with such splendor must be looking back at their deeds with pride and satisfaction...as for me I have always wondered why my voice goes hoarse if I give one loud shout but why that never happened while being in the midst of a match amongst my schoolmates...it must have something to do with the passion and spirit of the young days. Its been a tough two weeks at work...and it looked as though I wouldnt blog anytime soon as I virtually crashed into bed as soon as i got home. Until I feel fresh enough to write about things that require thought and insight, writing about the best years of our life...the school and college days looks like an attractive proposition. Whatever happens, i know for sure blogging is irrevocably a part of me now.
And then in 1991 loyola produced the dream-team...one year before the americans decided to make theirs for the olympics. The team of Randeep Hari, Eapen T. Joseph, Jayant Shankar, Bimal John and Tojo Eapen wove magic on the court. Eapen played like the ball was glued to his hands...he was unstoppable, randeep was fast and dangerous, bimal must have shot more 3-pointers than any loyolite...he seldom missed, tall tojo was the center...inside the circle a tojo in possesion of the ball was a sure basket while jayant was an all-rounder and then there was our cheering...opposing teams wud always complain that our lung-power scared their players and upset their rhythm.With slogans like "Whisky Brandy Soda Pop we want loyola on the top" and "V-I-C-T-O-R-Y...that is Loyola's Battle Cry" and many more which i forget now and some borrowed ones like "veer bahadur ladke kaun...loyola loyola" and a 500 young spirits with their achillean lungs, baying for blood with dustbins stolen from the classrooms to be used as drums...we were one fierce band of brothers! I still remember how 50 of us shouted down the whole of St.Thomas at the finals of the St.Thomas Trophy and though we lost that year we still proudly sang our School Anthem and walked away with our sworn enemy giving us a grudging ovation! After Eapen, '93 produced Vipin K. Varkey who though never succeeded in winning the Loyola Cup during his time and even breaking down in tears for not having lived up to his illustrious predecessors, but had the last laugh...he heroically scored a last-second 3 pointer to win the first St.Thomas Cup. Vipin's bad luck continued the next year with another of my school heroes...the late Vivek Rajendran, an all-rounder in everything he did as he failed in winning back the Loyola Cup but beat the same men to the 1st Arya Cup. In '94 we had a team that symbolised what makes basketball such an effective team sport...Akhilesh, Anil, Arun, Bejoy, Vivek and Karthik were a coach's dream with their selfless game and team spirit. They didnt have even a single player who cud turn the tide of the match but as a team of 5 their strength was their coordination...they had a tight defence and superb passing skills and with such strong basics they brought the Cup back to Loyola.
And then came our time...1995-97. We had a great team in Shenoi, Aravind, Mahesh, Mathew and Agil. Sheni was a superb dribbler, KP(mahesh) was a fighter and though short at 5'6" cud leap into the air and stay there for ages, ara was a good shooter and quick on his feet while ichayan(mathew) had the best defense loyola ever saw and ammavan(agil) was a very graceful player. Man to man we cud be termed as next only to the legendary team of 91-92 but we were up against a school whose basketballing prowess was at its peak...St.Josephs with several state players and hours and hours of practise to boast. Despite a spirited effort from our boys and frenzied, desperate cheering from our quadrangle steps we were bested. i still remember the score...57-52. Can never forget the teary-eyed faces as we headed for our excursion where we ironically had hoped to celebrate this victory!We won the St. Thomas trophy that year and the next but were trounced for the loyola cup in 96..the only one that mattered for our boys. and finally we were in the 12th...aravind and agil were no longer in the team, faheem, the 6'2" junior from 10th, came in as the center, harish was the new feeder...we were the seniors...and we still had the loyola cup to bag to be counted among the hallowed batches our great school had produced.
Even 30 years hence I will never forget that day...when we squared off against our same old enemy, St.Joseph's and boy what a match it was. As the seniors we led the cheering... at half-time we were trailing and if i remember rite two of our key players sheni and kp had developed cramps..yet bravely overcome the pain barrier and continued. Then ichayan too fell to cramps and he too shrugged away the agony and fought...we egged on our team lustily with noble leading the wolf-pack(he aptly picked up the nickname powerhouse for his enormous chestpower), prayed from the bottom of our hearts for a miracle and our boys rose up to the challenge. They took the fight right to the enemy,shook of their fatigue and fortune finally favored our braves...and a kid we always disparaged became the unlikely hero...harish haridas, two years our junior cooly dribbled the ball upto the opposition court took aim and realeased the ball to score a 3-pointer. That must have been the longest few seconds in all our short lives...and when the ball sailed smoothly into the basket our boys erupted in joy and happiness. For the first time in the match we had taken a lead and with only less than a minute left then for the whistle, the St.Josephian fightback got nipped in the bud as we scored another basket.If i remember rite the final scorecard read 52-49 but wht i can never forget is our invasion into the court to lift up our players and everyone falling to the floor in the melee and i remember gasping frantically for breath b4 somebody yanked me out of the mess. We all cried that day...it was one of the most memorable victories ever...there remained little else we needed to do to be a much talked about set of guys by future batches of loyolites...when sheni lifted the trophy we thought we had kept alive one of loyola's long-standing sporting traditions...but sadly the school never won the loyola cup since 1997...cricket did its share of damage to our school too as the stamina and skill needed for basketball ensured it found few takers henceforth...hope a day comes when loyolites can cheer for their baskeball team with the same fury and spirt that remains among some of the best memories that school life produced.
Today the guys who played the game in front of us with such splendor must be looking back at their deeds with pride and satisfaction...as for me I have always wondered why my voice goes hoarse if I give one loud shout but why that never happened while being in the midst of a match amongst my schoolmates...it must have something to do with the passion and spirit of the young days. Its been a tough two weeks at work...and it looked as though I wouldnt blog anytime soon as I virtually crashed into bed as soon as i got home. Until I feel fresh enough to write about things that require thought and insight, writing about the best years of our life...the school and college days looks like an attractive proposition. Whatever happens, i know for sure blogging is irrevocably a part of me now.
Tuesday, December 21, 2004
A Lesson Learnt...
Some of the most humbling moments in life come in our interactions with people who we see as less educated and hence less wiser than us. I was doing my Masters at USC and on my first day of work ever.The job I got was at a cafe and while my friends got jobs at the counter or cooking, I got a cleaning job.I was wondering whether I came all the way from India for doing this but i comforted myself by thinking "wht the hell..I wudnt need to depend on anyone for money".So I swept the floor and this one cent coin was lying on the ground...I kept sweeping it along not picking it up bcoz it was worthless until a young mexican guy i met earlier... a school dropout, came over to me, picked up the penny, put it in my pocket and said..."Bro when u see a penny lyin on the floor...pick it up...it will bring u good luck one day".I was totally ashamed of my conduct. In India I never gave a damn for all those 5 paise and 10 and 25 paise coins. But from that day on I picked up every penny lying on the floor or change from shopping and I put it in a box.I never used it and it just kept piling up.Two years later I was out of school, quit my job and hunting for the next one and 4 weeks on, my money was almost over and I kept going hungry. Then i remembered my penny box...took it to the change breaker machine at Ralph's at after all the coins that went in there....I got a "whopping" eight dollars...that meant atleast 6OO pennies were there in my box besides the few dimes and nickels. I thought about what to do with this money and decided the best way to make it worthwhile was to have a hearty dinner and walked in the direction of Pizza Hut................
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