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

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...

Some Onam Movies, A Little Nostalgia, An Odd Thought...

Once upon a time, there was a certain excitement, which drove us, crazed college boys to the theatres...we loved the thrill of bunking class, having a quick beer, pushing and shoving other ruffians like us out of the way to the front of the ticket couter, cheering for our favorite actors, and at the end coming out satisfied at having "studied" another day in college, outside the rusted gates! These days cars have replaced bikes and buses as our means of transport, a hot tea /coffee is preferred to a visit to the bar, we huff and puff our way to the same old theatres, scowling at the rogues who wont stay in line while taking tickets, passing harsh stares to guys who whistle and etc, etc, etc. I guess we come here nowadays for the love of movies, for finding something of the old days in the new. Its funny, my approach to movies has changed, though only subtlely, i still go there deciding i am here for timepass and i wont come out irritated, however horrible the movie is...but nowadays i try to observe the screenplay, the camera panning in and out from the actors faces and visualizing how the script has translated to celluloid...oops wonder if that made sense!!

Keerthichakra didnt disappoint. An average though elegantly made film(discounting mohanlal's tummy) without all the masala that ruins war movies. What we call average movies in kerala these days invariably becomes moneyspinners...that better than anything else signifies the depths to which we have plunged. Mohanlal's dialogues have a punch that gives you goosebumps, Jeeva proves to be a very lively actor, the melodious songs come alive in beautiful picturisations of kashmir and kerala, the movie races to the interval but thereafter the director, Major Ravi loses his grip on the script for a while, before turning on the intensity with a violent climax.

Moonamathoral - Its a pity keralites have turned their backs on a very talented director who dares to be different. V.K.Prakash who debuted with that brilliant movie, Punaradhivasam gets the cold shoulder again. Malayalam cinema's first complete digital movie, stands out for awesome technical perfection, the camera, editing and sound design at par with the best, the rest of India can offer...but as usual our superstar crazy people stayed away. A horror movie, the first half kept us on tenterhooks, i tried to figure out all along which hollywood movie was being adapted here, but failed...the story seemed original though i am still not sure. What lets the movie down, are the two songs carelessly placed in the 2nd half that kills the suspense and damages the script beyond repair!

Classmates - If Vadakkumnathan was a great movie-going experience in May, this movie by Lal Jose, is my favorite this Onam by miles and miles. It is a must watch for all you people who studied in the tension-ridden atmosphere of Kerala's colleges and student politics and have suffered and enjoyed from it, if you have written loveletters to your sweethearts or to help out your friends, if you have called your best friends "aliya" and last-bit-not-the-least been part of college intrigues. It is also a must-watch for all you people who are looking for a well-crafted film with a riveting climax, with a script which irradiates freshness and stands out different from the cliched campus movies of our age. If Prithviraj isnt accepted as a good actor by malayalis even after this movie, I give up on him...he has given a superlative performances as a fiery student leader. The supporting cast of Indrajith whose comic timing is a revelation, Sunil who plays a crucial role in the film, Jayasurya in a surprisingly subdued comic avatar besides Kavya Madhavan and a whole lot of other actors, wonderfully cast for their bit roles...this movie sure is going to be the big hit this Onam. Just like me, I was sure Shan and Anoop must have been flooded by memories of our eventful college life, watching this movie...i had to drag them out of their homes to watch this one, but the grateful look on their faces when we came out of the marquee, was worth the nagging!

I dont even think Mammootty's Bhargavacharitam, Lal's Mahasamudram, Dileep's Don and Suresh Gopi's Pathaka deserve to find mention here...malayalam cinema's curse today are directors, scriptwriters and actors who are past their creative best but yet refuse to yield ground to a new generation, those who steal from others like Sreenivasan does in Bhargavacharitham, or repackage their old films like Shaji Kailas seems to have done in Don(seeing the trailer reminded me of Aaraam Thampuraan).

To wind up this post on movies, i picked up what i thought is an integral part of the indian male psyche while watching kabhi alvida...I was amused at how viciously people have badmouthed the movie coz i thought it was a decent effort...in it i found a karan johar having a keen insight into human emotions, his only fault lay in taking up an issue still taboo to most indians and trying to present it in the by-now-beaten-to-death romantic formula that DDLJ introduced in India. The friends I went to watch it with, came out with ghastly faces, telling others this was a movie about adultery(i certainly felt johar deserved more sensitivity than being called an adultery-panderer), they couldnt understand how people could cheat in their relationships...i asked them, dont you think this can happen to you too, dont you think even your marriages can fail? What i said must have shocked them...most Indian men, seem to think they they are infallible in life...if something unfortunate like this happens in their lives god forbid, i wondered how unprepared these people are for countering that situation and how wrongly they will analyze their position. Most chillingly, I realized I wasnt too different from the people above, until a couple of years back...well enough of my crappy hypothesis...wish all you readers a Happy Onam!!

One Last Travel Diary???

Shan, one of my dearest buddies, took one hell of a risk...he travelled all the way from kerala to join me(i actually lied to him i had all things planned!) on one last adventure to see a part of India, we knew till then only from textbooks. The beauty of our trip was that it was unplanned, we barely knew where we were going, if we realized a jeep was going close to our destination, we would hop in, hoping that another vehicle would take us from there closer and closer to yamunotri. When nothing came our way we hiked, the rain-gods seemed intent on accompanying us for the whole trip and ruining it, the cold fear at seeing landslides on every curve wondering which one would take us away, the happiness at seeing a hotel to rest our tired bodies for the night(there were many, thanks to the Garhwal Mandal Vikas Nigam Ltd(GMVN), and having a few pegs of whiskey to call it a day. I know the fotos we have here are not the best...i'll need to start a flickr site to upload the scenic ones...here we are the protagonists and our faces had to feature in the snaps...eitherways we both kept squabbling all thru the trip on who was the worser photographer...compressed these pics 20 times over to get it to 50kb!!!

Through Haridwar we reached Rishikesh and the faint beginnings of the Himalayas showed, besides for the first time in my life I set eyes on the Ganga. So majestic from afar, enjoying a position of superiority amongst all the rivers of India, but cursed with a people intent on destroying its aura. The sight of human refuse at the Triveni Ghat which looked so clean in the movies was jarring, the brown colour of the water was disconcerting...just for the sake of it we dipped our hands and feet...will that suffice for my sins to be forgiven?

From Rishikesh, we took a jeep to Dharasu, 100 kms away. The road here diverges into two...one to Uttarkashi, Gangotri and the other to Yamunotri. From Dharasu we get a mini-bus which dropped us at Barkot, the last village/town where civilization as you and i know it sort of ends. From there another mini-bus took us to Hanumanchatti, 80kms away where we decided to cool our heels for the night at a GMVN inn.The snap is from there.

We begin our trek from Hanumanchatti to Janakichatti, 9 kms away hoping a jeep wud pass-by. The scenery from here-on is absolutely breath-taking...the snap here shows Shan all-edgy, next to a cliff, with the Yamuna beneath in all raging fury, with me fumbling with the camera as always. We pass by several locals...all very people, infact we noticed all through uttaranchal the women were hard at work while men mostly hang around tea stalls.

We had walked 2kms and not a single vehicle was stopping for us. The place where we took this snap looked eerily similar to the ones in Yodha. We threw our bags to the floor here and decided to wait for a lift. I saw some kids hard at work here...we had not seen a single school for about 75 kms. Would people in Kerala be able to associate with something like that!

And Behold!...along comes a tractor and the good man in the pic takes us along. It must have been the bumpiest ride of our lives...but we enjoyed it immensely. After all, how many people get to travel on tractors when they are on vacation! The man wouldnt take any money from us...in contrast the rich jeepvalas where charging Rs.15 per head for traversing just 3-4 kms. He lets us off with a warning to watch out for stray rocks falling from above.

Shan mournfully mulls wetting his brand new sneakers...what the hell did he expect...a tarred road!!! The whole place was littered with marble rocks that came down in previous landslides. In that part of the Garhwal, the pavements and milestones are in marble...i sincerely hope quarrying is banned there knowing how expensive marble is elsewhere.

We reach Janakichatti where the road ends, and began a 5km grinding trek to Yamunotri. We huffed and puffed our way up in 3 1/2 hours upto what was a height of 5000mts. Yamunotri is for all purposes a pilgrimage, we had to keep greeting pilgrims with Jai Mata Di, Jai Yamuna Mata, and i forget the other slogans. Young men were taking pilgrims up on their shoulders, on palanquins and ponies which made us trekkers real miserable. The air was thin, we struggled to breathe, the temp must have been 2-5degs, the rain continued to irritate us and foiled our plans to trek further to SaptarishiKund 14 kms away where the actual glacier that feeds the Yamuna and overlooking a beautiful valley of flowers where a mysterious BrahmaKamal flower which has an intoxicating smell and in which Saraswati Devi supposedly resides. We stayed that night at the Kalindi Ashram hotel at Yamunotri and started our return journey the next morning.

If Yamunotri symbolized what must be the most beautiful creation of Nature we set our eyes on, we headed out next to Agra and the Taj where Shah Jahan gave expression to human creativity at its zenith, the sight of which totally blew us away. We were speechless, just gaping at the magnificence in front of our eyes, amazed at the power and the riches the Great Mughals commanded over India...Shan vowed that when he would marry, he would bring his wife here and promise her that he would build her a Taj in 10 years time! I was amused coz my dad used the same line with my mom when he built our home.

The Agra Fort was equally grand, and obviously more subjected to the ravages of consequent invaders like the Afghans, Marathas and the British. Agra was my opportunity to download all my history knowledge on poor Shan, and the good sport he is, was all ears to my chance to show-off! I was dejected to hear that Fatehpur-Sikri the ill-fated capital of Akbar was 80kms away...another place i will have to put off to visit for some other day.

At the end of the trip, the poor guy had lost several kilos, missed his mummy and her food, had got severely tanned, was so sick of roti, sabji and daal and kept muttering he wanted chicken and was crying at the kolam he had become...i was really amused with his woes because i never felt any of it...wandering through so many places and situations, the last many years, had hardened me. I dont know when i'll venture out like this again...so many places still out there that entice me, so many years of life left, yet so little time for things like these. Pops calls me up a few weeks back and jokes..."i tell folks who inquire about you...avan civil service paditham onnumalla, Discovery of India ilaanu"!!!

A Vagabond Comes Home...

Every time I decide to let the blogging habit die in me old friends, family or casual acquaintances show concern that leaves me a little perplexed! I have fed everyone with so much juicy details of my life that its become hard for them to detach from me and even harder for me to forsake one more reason to keep blogging. So I guess its fare enough to blog down both the good and the bad bad days.

A Summer of Discontent, And...
When I reached home, I peaked into my spotlessly clean bathroom, the first thought that struck me was what a fine place it would make to sleep unlike my 8ft by 6ft dinghy that served as my room in Delhi made worse by 8 hour blackouts that killed the zest for sleep and aggravated by rains that raised the humidity rather than dipping the mercury. Playing hop-skip-jump on cow-dung littered streets and developing batman like skills to traverse those same streets at night, flea infested bylanes, an array of colds, throat infections and dysentry's that kept dogging me and my friends. It helped though...the dissatisfaction with my surroundings fuelled the interest to venture out to the world around. Delhi's ancient wonders, Agra, Yamunotri, Rishikesh, Haridwar, Dehradun, Mussorie, Haryana, Nainital and Mukteshwar...some of the many places I have dreamt of visiting ever since I was a kid...lay conquered at my feet. The trek to Yamunotri was an adventure to paradise...a picture post is on the way!

A Sabbattical at 25
Exactly 12 hours since I am at home. The sights on the train right from the Konkan Coast upto Veli Lake have been so beautiful...no colour in the world makes me so happy as green, The weather in tvm is so pleasant, so balmy...i just love this place. Well, Almost!!! What are your plans...enthaanu ninte future plans...i keep getting the same question from everyone except my parents who have continued to be so wonderful and supportive though i just dont deserve it. Everyone wants to discuss with me, help me out, talk me into a firm decision...i dont blame them, the jiby most of them knew was never like this...noone realizes I just cant be helped. I wonder if i should go back to coding, i wonder if i should go back to the US, i wonder if i should continue with this mockery of a civil service prep that I've lost interest in, i wonder what to do next and all i have is a curious optimism that i will somehow strike a path...an absolute vacuum stares me...but i am oddly happy...i realize this is the hard path to maturity...its sad, everybody would have loved my story to end up like Swades but its turning out all like Varavelpu and I have only my personal failings to blame.

Some New Beginnings...
25 years on earth...yet this fine dawn when i should have have been cozy in bed i woke up to a new resolution...to win back my health. The few earlybirds must have wondered why a 55kilo crackpot needs to jog but man i feel so good now...i barely could run the 1/2 km to Pattom Junction and struggle back today, but in a month by Sep 15 I will be running all the way to Kawadiar Palace and back. The 6km trek up Yamunotri when we were humbled by several oldies was a wake-up-call as we struggled to catch our breaths and egg our tired bodies on...i realized my body had aged almost 20 years over the last few years of inexercise, poor sleeping habits and irregular diets. The hard part is to win back all the pounds I lost in Delhi...

Books, Movies...and Guilt
I am so in love with reading again. On the two days in train I lapped up The Alchemist and Five Point Someone, both books which had a distant echo of similarities to my personal life. Today I have picked up my uncles novel and am just breezing through it...I need to put up a review on the blog and try to get more of you to read it if it releases in India...problem is i am so proud of his work i wonder if i can be objective...he seems to have kicked up some controversy in the US Church but I think its high time more reforms came up there! Today i wandered around tvm and picked up a jhumpa lahiri and tolstoy from roadside vendors. So many good movies too coming up this Onam. Man i really am having fun...oh shit, the last thing i want to feel is guilt...its odd...peer pressure never bothered me all these years in life but now I think of my friends hard at work and here I am lazing away in the comforts of home. Dang! I am seriously messed up or what.

Whats Cooking, Mom???

Picked this tag up from Silverine. Many years back some regular refrains my mom had to bear with from me was, "ithrem currykale ollo", "inne erachiyum meenum onnum ille". My mom would throw her arms up in the air and remark, "ivaneyokke hostelil vitte padippikkaathathinte doshamaanu"!! Cut to these days, every time I land in tvm, as usual she cooks her best stuff, but i just dont have the stomach to eat all that anymore...i try explaining how i need to return to despair-inspiring food and that too just two times a day and how eating all this would upset my carefully calculated rhythm. But who was I trying to explain to 'Her Eminence'...afterall she is the BOSS in tvm. Over to the 10 best dishes she and my ammachi makes.

1. Cashewnut Curry - It is 4-5 years since I've eaten this one. It is so yummy...i would sacrifice chicken for 6 months if i can get to eat this once more. In the 90's before the Technopark started progressively eating into the Kerala University Karyavattom campus the place was full of cashews and my dad would being sackloads home in summer. One lingering memory is my poor moms fingers which would keep burning for a week with all the "kara" from the cashew.

2. Karimeen Fry - Just once or if we are lucky twice a year we used to get to eat the Karimeen Pollichathu of Karimpankala near Changanasseri but moms decided she needed to end our fascination with the place and soon we were enjoying the same delicious stuff at home instead of drooling over the next trip to that shappu! This time I went home I had Karimeen for one month continuously. She had taught our servant how to cook it before leaving and finally beg with the lady to stop making me anymore karimeen.

3. Chicken Cutlet - Cutlets used to be a horror story till my mom discovered the trick of adding a topping of ruskcrumbs with the egg-white and this became the bofors in her armory. Last year one of my classmates and his wife was visiting us, after eating dinner, i was amused seeing him plead with his wife to learn to make the cutlet.

4. Chicken Biryani - The story of my mom's "CB" includes a fascinating competition she had with her brother who is an excellent cook too and is even vain about it. They both made their biryanis and looked to us, to say whose was better. Finally both of them, had to grudgingly agree they were equally good.

5. Chocolate Cake - It takes a few weeks of pepping up my mom to get her to bake us a cake. So what she does is make a week's stock to shut our mouths for some time. What begins is a game of one-upmanship between my sis and I in raiding the pantry. Very rarely have the cakes survived to see a 3rd day.

6. Crab Curry - One of my favorites for all time. Ofcourse I get the fleshy body parts and leave the limbs to my parents. Last year we were in Baltimore with my cousins and our aunt cooked a huge quantity of crabs and laid it out the patio for us to attack. It was such a wonderful family moment...all of us together and we guys getting to be kids again as we feasted on the crabs...no talk of marriages, careers and ageing!

7. Putte, Payar & Pappadam - Until this combo came into my life, Putte and Kadala was my favorite dish. The first time my mom laid this out for breakfast I gave a look of horror...wondering how on earth i could mix these seemeingy total opposites together! And thanks to a hereditery gas trouble...i have given kadala goodbyes!!!


My Ammachi's Cooking
1. Kumbalappam, Elayappam, Kozhikotta - Before ammachi came to live with us in 1990, famished evenings after school was all about eating biscuits, fruit bread or some other crap. Kumbalappam is the most delicious thing i have ever eaten in my life. The flavour that the leaf imparts on this cone-shaped appam is one of life's most pleasing aroma's too. Grandpa planted that at one of our properties in tvm long back...i am amazed at the foresight of these kaaravanmaar. The Elayappam and Kozhikotta was almost a daily affair until we started goin to college and both taste so good...hot and cold!


2. Banana Chips - Everytime I look back at one of my most memorable academic achievements, the 12th public exams...the taste of my grandma's freshly fried banana chips and the sweet sound of her snippets of naadan pattukal she would breathe into my ears to keep me awake makes me so nostalgic.

3. ChakkaVazhattiyathu - This takes a painful long time to make, but what a labour of love this thing is. Its irreverently called "jackfruit jam" but i love to eat this to the point of indigestion!!!

Ooh I am fighting hard not to salivate by now!!! Ultimately more than all these the rice, morre curry , a fish fry and a payar thorran are all i need my mom to cook to make me happy...day in and day out!!! Mummykuttiye, thanks so much for overcoming all that stress from work, clients and frequent guests to cook what ever we greedily wanted me to eat. I would have loved to add more fotos...but blogger is crapping up on me. Many thanks to my buddy Rajay from whose forward i lifted the fotos above! And most of my blogpals havent taken up this tag yet. So comeon...Thanu, Sarah, Pappanabhan, Neil, Arun Hari, Jofu ... give this a shot!

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.
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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!

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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!

Lets Beat The Block!!!

This Wikipedia link mentions how to evade the block http://censorship.wikia.com/wiki/Bypassing_The_Ban You guys cud use these proxy servers too www.shadowsurf.com www.hidemyass.com www.shysurfer.com www.daveproxy.co.uk www.ninjaproxy.com We were born free! Lets not yield to these bastards!

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.

Getting Personal...

Been tagged by Silverine...and i just love to take up tags...nothing better to lighten the mood at this dreary blog of mine.

My Accent - I believe its neutral but I think I have a little South-Indian tinge to it...but not the mallu version of it.

Booze - Was initially a hard-core drunkard. Restricted myself to beer in later college life. Took to Chabillis and Merlot first and then Scotch with a vengeance in the US. Nowadays its beer once a month. If I didnt keep running into old friends still, would have given it up for good.

Chore I Hate - Cooking! I'd rather be washing dishes or sweeping the floor than cooking. Was the source of several tiffs with my roomies and then my sis!

Dog or Cat - Neither. Infact I am scared of all animals!

Essential Electronics - Nothing these days. I am learning to keep life simple these days...wud have given up my fone if not for parents and friends.

Perfume - lol...not the rite question for me...caught in the sweat and toil of india...my natural body odour most of the time...but if ur already letting out a yuckkk...I take 3 baths a day to compensate!!

Gold or Silver - I hate both...my mom makes me wear a gold chain...i comfort myself that it'll be the first thing i pawn when i get into financial trouble!!! But speaking of others, gals certainly look good with a lil gold on them...thats the old-fashioned mallu in me talking!!!

Home - At Pattom in Trivandrum...the place has been my home forever. Its exactly 4 years and one day since i left the cool comforts of my home to make my life...these days i feel like a guest there if not for my ammachi...my sis has left and taken my mom along and dad is always travelling...my bedroom is twice as big as the rooms i have lived in over the last 4 years and i just cant get used to it!!!

Insomnia - I can stay up all night at will and go to sleep too with the same ease if i choose. But insomnia scares the shit out of me...it wud be really dreadful to be afflicted.

Job Title - IAS "Aspirant" ...hehe

Living Arrangements - Now...dont make me cry!

Most Admirable Traits - I love kids and am always a big hit with them...yeah I am really proud of that fact...nowadays i wonder if thats my only talent!!! And I make sincere efforts to keep my friends in touch with each other...wherever I am. This website and many of the posts in my blog are dedicated to the fond memories they have given me over the years.

Number of Sexual Partners - I am a "loser" in that department. Blame it on years of male bonding and lovable rogues who have orbitted my life thats ensured i never felt discontented and incomplete.

Number of Times in Hospital - Quite a few times. Once for a bike accident and the rest for fevers.

Phobias - Vertigo!!!

Quote - Kittiyaal Ooty Allengil Chatti

Religion - Catholic

Siblings - One Sister...she is stupid but she's still the BEST!(u reading this jish?...hehe...cudnt resist choriyufying)

Time I Wake Up - 10:30am - 12:30 am now that i dont have to work.

Unusual Talent or Skill - Flatter to Decieve!

Vegetable I Love - Cabbage(Thorran)...Infact I am beginning to like all vegetables except pavakka...talk abt getting older!!!

Worst Habit - I am too restless...i think it reflects in everything i do.

X-Rays - Once!

Yummy Food I Make - Though I hate to cook, I make excellent Chicken Curry/Fry. And in university, I once made a sizzling Chilli Gobi by accident, this inspired my friends who joined in to cook their specialities and finally we all had a surprise feast, one night...good days come unplanned!

Zodiac Sign - Virgo/Libra Cusp

People I Tag - Reji, Thanu, Geo, Sarah, Anand.K and all my blogpals if u guys are interested.

Wanderlust Uncorked...

Just back from another typical adventure...typical coz of all the bottlenecks along the way. The opportunity to break free arrived sooner than expected...no classes...i announced my decision to travel...3 pals joined in...the places shortlisted were Nainital, Badarinath and Yamunotri...we decided on Nainital and Mukteshwar. Huffed and puffed our way to catch the last bus leaving for Nainital that night on crammed backseats that screwed our plans to get a decent nap.

Saturday: The morning brought us 4 tired folks to the main junction by the lakeside in Nainital and welcoming us was a steady shower and over-priced hotel rooms. Despondently we looked at our options aka wallets and left for Bhawali, a village-town 12kms away in the hope of finding accomodation. We wandered abt till lady-luck took us to an Uttaranchal Govt Tourist resthouse where they had a dormitory available. This was the beginning of an odd experience as we found ourselves in a room with no matresses on the bed, a hotel without enuf buckets for their bathrooms, hopelessy incapable staff and to make it worse taps that wud spit out only air and my thoughts went to the cash-laden KTDC. My pals were getting angry by the second and my efforts at cooling them down succeeded but not before they had given an earful to the hapless manager. We decided to give the lake, the waterfall, zoo, suicide point, etc which were tame affairs meant for family folks and had become cliched sights at hill-stations, as we knew the only outing that could satiisfy us was a grinding trek and so we headed to China Peak, 10kms away from Nainital on a taxi followed by a 4km trek up a jungle trail.

100 mts up the hill, the 4 of us, threw ourselves at the forest floor, breathing heavily, listening to our pounding heartbeats, staring at each other as we wondered who would be the first to get a cardiac arrest. We decided to carry on, and fortunately for us, were soon distracted from from the physical exhaustion by amazing views of the Nainital Valley, steep gorges on both our sides and the flush forest cover. At the end of it all China Peak lay conqured, it was a supremely solitary spot, far away from the madding crowd, very few of them would be able to make it up here thankfully, and we sat there like in a trance for almost 2 hours and to finally top it all a canteen at the peak, provided us with a much-needed refreshing tea and cream-biscuits. The 4 km trek up had taken us almost 1.5-2 hours but with dusk approaching we virtually jogged our way down unmindful of the slippery rocks or the steep fall on either side. At base-camp, we found to our disgust the last taxi had left and we began a tired walk to the nearest point in civilization...5kms away, the High Court where to our disappintment we learnt that the Mall Road was closed for pedestrian traffic and after another 2kms and our whole body crying out for a much-deserved repreive after a 15km exercise i slept like i had been knockedout!!!

Sunday: The next morning brought abt a dilemma of another kind. One of us wanted to head back to Delhi while I was intent on staying another day. The 2 fence-sitters decided to stay on and coz of our bone-crunching adenture yesterday we rented a cab and visited the same "tame" places we had derided yesterday like the waterfall, suicide point, etc and what a sham all these places turned out to be and what a miss for the 98% tourist crowd here who would never be able to trek their way up China Peak

Monday: By afternoon we left for Mukteshwar which we found to our surprise to be just a sleepy village with a few expensive resorts and a Shiva Temple with an enchanting suicide point with rocks jutting out into mid-air being the only sights here much to our disappointment. By 3 we came down, waited for a jeep until we finally got one at 4:30 to anther junction Bhattalia, 7 kms away where we were alarmed to find no jeep/bus going to Bhawali until next morning and we had a bus to catch at 7:00pm. We decided to bail out of this gudham and took a jeep to Dhanachuly, an even more remote village tucked away in the hills. The people here were real poor and just when we figured our luck had runout and were gettiung desperate a taxi came by at 6pm willing to take us to Nainital. He raced thru the hills like a madman almost going over a few gorges until a road-tarring derailed the cliffhanger ride and our effort to catch the bus.

At Nainital we heard of a bus leaving for Delhi from Ramwani, a town 35kms downhill at 10:30pm and a Tata Sumo was willing to take us and 3 other families there and so we all crowded inside and I found a little girl too on my lap. I was cold to her and treated her like a nuisance and she responded by a vomiting spree when the hairpins started but luckily she was a smart cookie and thrust her head outside and saved me a lot of trouble!!! Soon she fell asleep on my lap with her head resting on my arm and it felt real beautiful. The silly anger I felt earlier had dissolved...until then we were cracking wry jokes abt our misfortunes, money wasted in unneccessary taxi rides, our ill-planning, the difference between optimism and our idiotic optimism and that even if "aakasham idinje thalayil veenaalum we wud find a way to shake it off and keep living", etc, etc but this child bought such a peaceful change to my heart and spirits, i felt a magic i had never experienced earlier, in this stranger feeling so secure and cosy next to me. At Ramwani we parted from the child and her jovial family, and raced to the bus-stand were the bus was revving to leave.

Tuesday: Another difficult trip was over, many factors were beyond our control, it was impossible to plan considering our ignorance abt the scarcity of transport and like, but in the end we made a good trip out of it, by our cool and steady heads, good-natured acceptance of every adverse situation, the trademark indefatigable mallu sense of humour and an unanimous agreement that we had learnt more about our country, our people and their struggles to survive even at the expense of others and how to deal with that. It was saddening to see how places like Nainital were the last-surviving relics of natural beauty in an earth we ravish incessantly. The souring moment of the trip was at Delhi near Kashmiri Gate ...3 ragpicker girls running away without paying money for tea to a helplessly cursing poor tea-stall owner. There is no escaping the realities of India - whether at a hill-station or a metro-station!

**fotos on the way**

A Defeat, And Its Aftermath...

Tears welled up, threatening to roll down, as I tallied my right answers in the History paper with the sinking feeling building up every second from somewhere deep inside. I couldnt even count on my fingers the last time I cried over a poor exam. My above-par performance in the GS paper had come to zilch. I furtively looked up at my sir, expectantly looking on to see which of his students would raise their hands in success, while I buried mine in my face to choke the liquefied remnants of the 7-month long hardest-fought battle of my life. The moment passed, the tears receded somewhere back into my eyes...the disappointment lingered for a few more days...all that is left now is to log it down in this blog of mine...and get it out of my system totally...hopefully. Exactly two years since I walked out of university, brimming with optimism, 4 jobs that didnt work out, a migration, a gut-wrenching life-sapping effort for a job with a three-letter tag attached to your name...all to be rewound and begun again...its been a string of galling failures to make my education, jobs, inheritances, experiences and hard work all count.

I looked at the man seated opposite me, who I had hoped to avoid for a few months. The plush suite I found myself in, was in "stark" contrast to my Rs.1300 room in a rundown colony in North Delhi populated by a few struggling CS aspirants like me, hundreds of unskilled workers from kerala amidst decadent partition-era refugee Punjabi families still mourning their fall from riches. For a second I dreaded the thought of him suggesting a visit to my new place and searched for a suitable excuse. Like always he made suggestions for my future. Unlike always, this time I had no answer, no comment, to pass back. I could sense the disappointment my dad tried to hide despite his unconditional support for all my efforts. And the excuses he must be offering others, for my failure. Oh God, was I becoming an embarassment? The impasse that kept developing in my life in America and which I hoped to skirt through coming back to India had somehow inevitably arrived. Maybe it was inherent in my restless nature or overt idealism...maybe there will be a turnaround in my fortunes, or maybe not. I have chronicled the heroics of friends who utilized failures to achieve greater things in life, somehow I wonder if I am capable of replicating their efforts.

My blog took birth almost 2 years ago in my frustration but somehow every word that came out here looked to the sunny side of life. In every defeat, I saw positives and so spun them around here to boost myself and keep me going. This perhaps is the first time ever, a post appeared here tinged in negativity. What more can I write when the year holds nothing for me except studying more of the same thing...my sir says I am a sureshot for next year's attempt...but I am not so sure. I am tired...maybe when classes get over next month, I'll travel from Kashmir to Comorin, maybe like other plans even this wont materialise. This is me at this point in life...the journey continues...maybe I will come back some day and laugh at myself for writing this post...or I'll laugh at the astrologer who predicted in my jathakam that I would "prabhuthulyanaayi vaazhum".

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.

Vadakkumnathan Rocks, Mohanlal's Back!!!

The second-last day in tvm turned out to be a really memorable one finally. For lunch went out for something which simultaneous to this one is taking shape as a parallel post. In the afternoon I finally kept an old promise to my dear friends from college Shan, Anoop and their partner Jenu to take a class on DotNet programming for their employees to get them started on a new technology. After almost 4 1/2 years after my seminar in the final semester of college I took a sort of lecture and it was an immensely enjoyable exercise, though the only jarring problem was my memories of the language have turned rusty and have begun to fade. I sincerely hope I dont have to program another line of code in life again. It was funny...Shan, peaking into the conference room every half an hour with a muffled grin on his face and Anoop sitting thru the lecture asking questions like an obedient student which he never was in college and me, one of the Savages who made life hell for many a teacher at college, breathing a sigh of relief that the guys and gals seated in front of me were attentive and very disciplined kids unlike me and my friends in college.

I had resolved to see the movie, Vadakkumnathan for the last few days since it released but everyone discouraged me saying it was impossible to get a ticket for a mohanlal movie so early unless i heckled in the crowd. Tonight I decided to take my chance, and just as I was about to leave, the heaviest downpour since I landed, began. Already a bit despondent that I failed to gather any of my friends for company, I decided not to let it dampen my spirits and decided to take off. It was a big risk...watching a malayalam movie these days is a big gamble, i can name just 4-5 movies in as many years that I have loved but today I got the chance to add another one to the list. I came out gushing that the 80's style of filmmaking is not dead and people still appreciate it...a simple yet impressive story and script from first-timer Girish Puthencherry and wonderful direction from the until now considered "unlucky" Shajoon Karyal and brilliant camerawork by veteran S.Kumar and to cap it all, the most profound music recently coming out from our films by the late Ravindran Master with a Mohanlal who looked younger, fresh and with the kind of acting that made him our hearthrob coming in as a triple topping on a pizza/icing on a cake...whatever you wanna call it...I just loved every minute of this movie.

"Pandathe Kaamukanaayi Lalettan Veendum"...was a comment I heard from somebody coming out of the theater and it brought a smile to my face. I just cant believe Mohanlal didnt have faith in this movie and delayed its release by more than a year...but give him a strong script and a difficult character...the acting skills which we think have deserted him just flow back and keep us spellbound on the screen. Apart from all the people I mentioned above who made this film so special, Jesudas and his "Gange" song echoes your mind long after you come out of the movie...its so sad that people have to get old, its such a pity that suddenly you are seen as having a voice that isnt divine anymore and then out of the blue he has shamed all those people who predicted his end. I wonder if I've gone overboard in praising this film...but I really loved it and I believe so will you all...keep your expectations low, expect a movie which has malayalitham written all over it, a very subdued and life-like performance from lalettan where you get to see that same vulnerability in his expressions we missed lately in all his super-human performances and just go to the cinema hall and sit back and let it grip you.

The Waaanderer's Tag!!!

This is a long overdue tag...better late than never...i leave in 2 days...dont think i will be venturing outside often in Delhi to blog in this heat...it'll be almost 2 months b4 i lay my hands on my laptop.

5 people who top your sh1t list..... and why:

- Arjun Singh, for taking reservations to the realm of a new social injustice

- Arjun Singh...anyone wants a reason???

- Arjun Singh...my blood boils when i see his slippery face on TV!!!

- Arjun Singh...I am not against any of the reservations till date and pray that reservations be only for the poor in our society but he forgot he crossed a line...for the first time since independence, ordinary indians have raised their voices against our bastard politicians.

- A.K.Antony for wasting a gift-wrapped super mandate from the people of Kerala for developing the state


Close brushes with death/danger:

I never had a close shave with death yet...i guess God doesnt want me spoiling his party at heaven any time soon!!!

- A bike accident on Christmas Eve outside the Jimmy George Stadium...didnt even know what hit me...lost consciousness for a few hours and spent a precious night in a moota-infested medical college general ward observation room.

- Getting lost in the Agasthyakoodam
forest...we were scared shitless then, but now we laugh abt it like veterans who were out then for a casual stroll.


5 Modes of Suicide

What an irony that the guy I have found most easiest to unnerve, initiated the craziest of questions for a tag. well its not my idea of fun...so i move on!!!


5 Guilty pleasures:

- Chilled beer, a friend for company and a little sun and heat to go with the ambience

- At my native place, drinking kallu right off the palm trees.

- Chivas Regal, with 4 icecubes(my friends joke that ever since i took a liking to it, they never thought highly of it again!)...

- Amul Chocolate...you wont believe the reaction on my face, when I set eyes on it in a Delhi Bakery. Eating it after 16 years brought back so many sweet childhood memories...oh shit! i forgot to mention it in my Remembering the 80's post. I actualy bullied and tempted Pappanabhan, a frantic chocolate eater for a few days until i felt sorry and told him where to get it.

- well I criticize the Church a lot, and even feel at most times, that Christianity and religion arent important to me anymore(though God is), but yet on early sunday mornings being at a church and spending some quiet time there and attending mass makes me feel just great!


5 things you never want to forget:

- My grandma fainting the night i was leaving for the States

- The pride on my parents face when they saw me recieving the Master's diploma

- The first time my sister thrashed me...i was shellshocked...the thrash on my baCK erupted like a Deepavali cracker...since then she lost the surprise factor...but having got to taste blood whenever we quarrelled she would begin to cry unless I let her beat me atleast once.

- The only accident in my driving career - i had just finished learning to drive and my dad handed over his new Zen to me...trying to get on to the main road at a curve banged a boundary wall...the left rear door was a sight to behold...still can hear my dad's wild shriek ringing in my ears...the bill came to around 10000 bucks...but it was a lesson well learnt!

- Having beer with my dad for 1st time. When I'd finished 3 he was struggling with his first...his question, "nee hot adikkumo"...my response, "illa hot enikkishtamilla, pinne friends nirbandhichaal oralpam...."...cant forget his sarcastic quip..."ho, ashvaasamaayi"


5 things you wish to forget:

- The first time i wore a mundu with my mom's help...in the 8th. Wore a bermuda under and a belt over the mundu as protection and i was sure i looked like a dork taking feeble steps...the comic relief was coming to class and guys who didnt dare to wear it from home coz of the crowded schoolbus begging me to help them tie theirs thinking i had wrapped mine single-handedly...i remember that whole day we were skipping from tree to tree, hiding & tightening the mundu when it loosened. We realized we couldnt get better at it unless we started wearing lungis at home.

- Last Labor Day weekend in Baltimore...my uncle had arranged a karioke party with all his mallu friends...we kids were by now given the license to drink...the uncles and aunties made me sing "Onnam Ragam Padi" in front of them...afterwards everybody had a huge grin on their faces.

- The onset of adoloscensce...wasted an entire pilgrimage trip to vellankanni meant for my 9th standard final exams on praying to god to find me a remedy to this illness!!! If I was an anonymous blogger I would have had so many anecdotes to share with the world on how a band of brothers bumbled their way to enlightenment!!! Much later in college, thanks to Arun Hari's loud tongue I realized to my dismay that the story had even travelled to the gals in the class.

- The first VAAL...had too much to drink on an excursion to Kodai...passed out, began a vomitspree, got dehydrated, hospitalised and much worse...became the laughing stock of the guys and had to suffer great indignities...anyways it saved me from becoming an alcoholic...i have mostly stuck to beer and scotch ever since!!

- Having the indistinction of being hit for last-ball sixes twice in schoollife...lost both the matches on account of my complacence...and that too to two tailenders who barely knew how to hold a bat...and at every reunion somebody brings it up to put me to shame....again and again!!!


5 really exotic dishes you have tried:

Have eaten a lot of cuisines of the world while in LA and San Diego...cuban, ethiopian, korean, lebanese, mexican, thai, etc, etc, etc...embarassingly enuf i still found some of our traditional mallu dishes more exotic as they were more rarer...but then i've always been like that!!

But dishes i really like and savour.

- The Kappa, Karimeen Pollichathu, thavala and Anthikallu at the Karimpankala Shappu near Chenganasseery

- Puttu, Payaru and Pappadam for Breakfast

- Any nonvegetarian dish my mom cooks...an amazingly capable woman the speed with which she cooks is a sight to behold...chicken curries, cutlets, karimeen varathathu, fish moily, prawn, crab, fish curry, parinjeel...its all part of her amazing oeuvre...i can never eat non-veg food at a hotel to my satisfaction coz of her...but i always tell her that like most xian women she sucks at vegetarian dishes.

- A dream meal for me wud be...rice, pulisseri, payar thorran, aviyal, pappadam and a fish fry

- The Dosa and Chicken combination we once tried at a small village kallu shappu near the Neyyar Dam while in college...its taste still lingers!!!


5 crushes/loves in your life... in chronological order

- if i was an anonymous blogger...first names would have sure made its way here...neways most of those gals are wives and even mothers now!!!

But lately - Ash Rai in the new Lux Ad just knocks me out of my senses every time i see that...the only words that escapes me for a few mins is..."Abhishek Bachchante times"!!!


Strangest dream you ever had:

- its a childhood nightmare. A snake chasing my sister and me thru the paddy fields in our native place and how i escape....BLACKOUT!!!
i cant recollect dreams/nightmares anymore.


5 most valued personal possessions:

- Except for my clothes all the other material possessions I acquired I have lost/given away...but then 4 other possessions wud be

- my family, they have been so understanding, so encouraging...yet i have never done justice to their love/affection...only time i wish i was a different person is when i think about them.

- strong friendships nurtured day by day, over the years...it is in moments of loneliness that you thank God for these people who by chance becomes part of your life.

- a wealth of experience/mistakes...wonder where i get to mortgage all that!!!

- my smile, its a personal ahangaaram...i have seen a smile melt hard-nosed interviewers, soften unrelenting cops, cool down agitated teachers about to take me to task and win friends by the dozen...its a genetic/acquired/studied trait from my dad who i have seen use it as an effective weapon with foes, strangers and friends alike.

...today all of my possessions are abstract at one level but more concrete/lasting than anything material at a higher plane.


5 favorite superheroes..... and why:

- I'd say I loved Giant Robot and Johnny Saco so much...I was heartbroken when GiantRobot got killed and the series ended...like Mohanlal in the the film Adhipan I wanted to dial Doordarshan Kendra and call the man-in-charge the only theri i knew...PODA PATTI!!!

- Inspector Garud of Balarama(heard Dileep is planning a movie on him...am sure it'll be a bigger hit than CID Moosa!)

- Mayavi and Luttappi(yeah!...luttapis face makes me laugh!) of Balarama

- He-Man...he certainly was a phenomenon in those days

- James Bond...for all the babes he beds...when i wuz younger he misled me to thinking women were easy prey!!!


To pass it on...I think everyone else except Arun Hari and Neil have done it...upto u guys then!!!