A year-end story

As 2007 winds down, I decided to put down this story I heard about a couple, who are our friends.

Though both of them are the same vintage as I, they give one a complex with their constant drinking from the fountain of youth, and their refusal to reveal its location. Both of them probably have to literally look up to Sachin Tendulkar as well. Add to all this their charm, inquisitiveness and natural sense of wonderment and you have a couple who appear to have stopped their watches at the age of 14 or thereabouts.

If this is what they look like now, one can imagine what they must have looked like about 15 years ago, when they were just married and driving down to visit their relatives in one of the smaller towns. Just before reaching town, they thought it would be a good idea to freshen up and present themselves as the radiant, stunning couple they are. Finding reasonable hostelry - at Chinnakallupalli? Bodinayakanur? One of those quaintly pastoral towns, anyway - they left their luggage in the car and taking the bare essentials for dolling up, approached the inn-keeper. I wasn't told what he was like, but I can picture a crisp, spotless-white veshti, white mull shirt, a 'thundu' over his left shoulder, the typical 'ooruku periavar'. One look at the two of them approaching, dishevelled and dusty, his mind was made up. No rooms.

But the couple wasn't about to take that refusal lying down. Gentle persuation and pleading (I'm sure that's what they used, can't picture them ranting and raving) melted the heart that was surely whiter than the mull shirt. Reaching for the register with a smile, he inquired how long they needed the room for. "One hour", said they. That did it. "Out, out of here, before I call the police!" he fumed, indignant at such casualness.

Until today, no one has apparently had the heart to tell them that the inn-keeper was completely justified.

This one's for the birds!

If indifference is the first sign on the road to ruin, then Vedanthangal is probably headed there. Two years ago, there was a board on NH35 that clearly indicated where one had to turn off for the sanctuary. Expecting to see it this Sunday morning also, I casually dismissed the regular road sign that said "Vedanthangal > 12".


A debate on whether road signs like the one above should indicate the distance after the turn or the distance to the turn took up nearly 25 km. Thankfully, Vidya had the sense to suggest a direction check (or can I claim that I had the sense to spot it was time to accept that suggestion?). And we reached the sanctuary at 7.30 am, only about 45 minutes after our estimated arrival time.


The Forest Department person insisted that the board was still up there on the "main road". He was so politely insistent, so we let his word win the day!

History!

TNGF Cosmo Golf Course, Hole 4, 135 yards, par 3.

A nice 5-iron on to the green for a birdie putt. Am glad I didn't muff par!!

A matter of faith

Who do you worship? The Holy Trinity or the sell-out/wash-off duo of Judas & Pilate? In essence, that’s the question David Kottarathil (or DK, played by Mammooty) poses. The answer is obvious, and smoothens the difficult-to-swallow reformation of the top cop, SP Rajagopalan (Lalu Alex), as part of a rushed wrap up to ‘Nasrani’. The question itself is voiced to M.C.Paul (Vijayaraghavan), a ruthless politician who will stoop to anything to remain in power; but when his younger son, Dr Benny Paul (Arun) is murdered, how will the dice roll? Has his elder son, Xavier Paul (Biju Menon) inherited the father’s political acumen and ruthlessness? Like that shown by M.C. Paul, years ago, in allowing his friend John (Capt. Raju) to be imprisoned for a murder that was only an accident?

Faith is again a central theme, one that keeps the lead pair betrothed for over 10 years. The accident that sent John to prison set back his son’s marriage to Sara (Vimala Raman); Sara, whose mother still believes that John was the one who encouraged her husband to take on a paramour and later, killed him in a manic scuffle. Whose is the stronger faith, here? No prizes for guessing. Thankfully, reconciliation is given short shrift, and we don’t have to sit through tales twice-told. But the DK-Sara romance goes on strong; he tells her that he’d pick her up after college – and all the students cheer as their teacher runs to the helicopter that her boyfriend comes in to pick her up! Nice entry for Mammukka and for the helicopter too – that comes in handy later, when DK thumbs his nose at the SP and rescues Sara’s half-sister Annie (Muktha George), who’s being framed for Benny’s murder.

But who has killed Benny? The disgruntled ex-MLA Ummachhan (Jagathy Sreekumar), who had to vacate his seat for Benny? Thamban (Devan), the leader of a rival party? Armchair detection – with the occasional beating up of select villains, of course – takes DK to the truth, and his own way of bringing it to the open.

The armchairs are good, at the Cosmopolitan Club in Kottayam, and DK’s friends (Bharat Gopi, Manianpilla Raju, Janardanan, Baburaj) swap tales of their glory days while waiting for DK and his factotum Suku (Kalabhavan Mani) to do their detecting and beating up. And when you add on several other usual suspects, such as Innocent, Risabava, Bheeman Raghu, KPAC Lalitha, Sukumari, Bindu Panikker…. you start wondering if Mamooty’s superstar status requires so much of scaffolding!

Think ‘Kottayam Kunjachhan’. Don’t get analytical. You’ll then enjoy the movie, but you must have FAITH!

O-re!

This is not a commodity, it is a product.

Reddy's Global Industries is developing a solution that includes a mixer, a plastic (okay, okay, bio-degradable) cup and a touch of ooruga.

Not available in India yet (why not?); this is only for the local (Cameroun) market.

You can also keep track of exactly how much you have drunk. Oh, all right. Consumed.

Helps?

Nearly there

For the disbelievers; and for the one who wanted to know if it was an uphill task!

Is golf a call of nature?

Early morning is a good time. Doesn't matter if you're in bed or out, it is still a good time. Have known that for a long time, but laziness beats knowledge any day...

...until golf happened. A couple of months ago. And Sriram has been the drill sergeant, making sure that I wake up at 5, so that we arrive at the range well in time to take our places at the head of the queue that builds up until the factories in Sriperumbudur blow their first shift sirens.

And it has been good, largely. Sleep deprivation hasn't happened. Hands and shoulders are now pretty friendly with the general ache. The back has held up. And these days, every shot seems to have 'Hole-in-One' written on it when it starts off; most end up in the general direction they were intended to go. The others - well, let's just say I'd have been proud of them on a cricket ground.

Sriram (yes, that's him with the hot-dog sock puppet) says I need to pay more attention to the coach. Maybe, but when the morning is fresh, there're many other things creeping or peeping through the white-sheet grass that I can't help looking at them. Like this Giant African Snail: many years ago I'd seen such snails in Palakkad. Someone had brought a couple over, as pets and they’d multiplied like – rabbits? They were all over the place, huge guys, much bigger than this little fellow here, getting people all worked up over them. When I saw this chappie, I realized that it has been years since I've seen his friends. Where did they all go to? Hope they haven’t got on to any conservation red alert.

The snail was one of the larger distractions on the range. Check out the spider, just beginning to weave its web under a flower. Ah, there you have me. We call it a dandelion, my son and I, because of the way its seeds fly out when the flower dries up. But I haven’t been able to find out what its common name is. I do not know the spider’s antecedents, either. That doesn’t matter; such delicate engineering effort was worth pausing for. Unfortunately, I couldn’t find the spot again, so my ‘start-middle-end spider web’ series stops where it started.



But I ended up finding a patch of some other flowers, which were just waking up. And so, the two pictures, as the flower opens out and preens itself in the baby sunlight of the morning. Never been introduced to this flower either, so I just nod at it and walk away, feeling abashed at not being able to find a name for it!


More active was this black and white beetle – what’s it, a ladybird in disguise? This was the best picture I could get, but I’m glad I got this one at least! Amazing speed on the ground and with the sun just coming up, the beetle was looking for the shadiest spots around. Managed to catch it just as it crawled into a hole in the ground – leaving me far away from any of the other holes on the range! No wonder my golf game sucks.

Finally, here’s the shy one. A rare sighting too, I can’t remember when I had last seen touch-me-nots in the city. They were always a summer vacation special and brought back a holiday season feel to the day. There were two patches on the range the day I took the photograph, but a couple of days later, one of them had been crushed by a road to bring in building material for the new ITC Hotel. The other, for now, survives.

The Birthday

Many years ago, when I was close to browsing about “75% of the Internet” (Equbeer Bedi, where are you?), I had come upon an audio file that I thought could make a gem of quiz question – the only condition being that the quiz had to happen today. Today.

That audio file was dutifully saved. And after the past 8-9 years, I remembered my gem. But over many changes involving computing equipment, nations, residential shelters and breadwinning establishments, I am unable to find that audio file. (Google, how’s that door-to-door search thingamajig coming along?). There is nothing to do for it, but to get back on the ‘Net. In the meantime, all those chappies have figured out that there’s money in them thar binaries; couldn’t find a way to get that audio file into my machine. And today’s the key day: so, let a blog post stand in for a quiz.

If you’ve got this far, you’ve a pretty good idea of what I’m talking about. Yes, it IS my wife’s birthday today. But no, I don’t trawl the net to find audio files featuring her. I get to hear her often enough otherwise, thank you. And anyway, I’m talking about something that happened long, long before Vidya came into this world.

I had found this great site that let me download a transmission from outer space – oooh, what a lovely quiz question, play those noises like many bugs in disharmony and watch the teams work it out! What a grand feeling it would have been, to be able to understand man’s first blabber from outer space!! Hear it for yourselves.

http://history.nasa.gov/sputnik/sputnik.wav

But my wife thinks I’ve forgotten HER day. No way, lady! Let’s go, it’s time for the grand dinner!!

Long live the Queen - in the Gelf, especially

Not that this blog was meant to be mallu-centric, but I couldn't resist this one!

http://www.indianpad.com/story/86694

Enjoy!

Jamshedpur's Century

I didn’t believe that my grandfather knew of any place further away than he could travel on his cycle. Yeah, sure, he’d told us stories of his trips to various places: countries, provinces, but they were just that – stories. Right?

So, a couple of decades ago, I didn’t expect him to know much about small town I was going to. I got ready to explain to him; “Hmmm… I’ve got my admission to XLRI”. Casual opening, like. You know. Whatever.

“XLRI?” cries the old man. “Jamshedpur? Bihar? Thugs! Rapists! Murderers! What do you want to go there for?”

Obviously, he was expecting to see the reaction that he did; he was rocking with laughter the next second. “Got you! Congratulations, of course, but remember where the institute is; Jamshedpur will be spotless, but Bihar waits just outside”. Too true. Bihar waited just metres from the gates of Tata Steel, where the smooth road of Jamshedpur crumbled into lawless rocky paths.

The simple explanation is that Bihar* is thousands of years old, but Jamshedpur is new. Just a hundred years old, now, in 2007. When I saw it for the first time, it was much younger, of course and I believe, not as well known as it is today. And I say that with conviction, because, during the first 15 years of my life, Jamshedpur came to my attention for just a couple of reasons. Keenan Stadium and Gerald Durell. It was Durell who caught my attention first: for a boy, Corfu and Jamshedpur were but a couple of pages away from each other. It must have been a great city, Jamshedpur, if a kid born there could get to find and keep such exotic wild animals!!

But then, it must have been a small city too; proof in the way Gordon Greendige and Sir Vivian Richards baptized its cute little cricket stadium with a blaze of 4s and 6s. No big city would dare have the revenge-seeking West Indies play in a stadium that seemed to be built for friendly matches between local school teams.

As I grew up, Jamshedpur grew, too. The animals went away and were replaced by images of molten steel being beaten into the shape of trucks, under the hungry eyes of wannabe managers. But when the Bokaro Steel City Express from Madras stopped at the Tatanagar Junction on a wet July day, all images were mixed up together, wild animals, towering sixers, steel rods, trucks and entrance-exam flash cards.

On the way from the station to XL, new images slotted in; a sign saying ‘Hotel Boulevard – Sunset Bar’, followed immediately by one opposite saying ‘AT Daw & Co., Gunmakers’. My grandfather’s words came rushing back. Such things! Right on the main road!! But then, all those thoughts were wiped away in the thrill of meeting new people. Those insouciant worldly-wise Bombaywallahs, the brash, loudmouthed Delhiites, the snooty Calcuttans sniffing disdain at those of lower intellect….. In the middle of all that, one thought. “Jampot has brought us together”.

In the two decades since, Jamshedpur has become much more famous. As the staging ground for the takeover of Corus. As the birthplace of Maddy and Priyanka Chopra. As the latest destination for Air Deccan. For the only ODI that India has won at the Keenan. For continuing to keep the state outside its doors. For being South Asia’s representative in the Global Compact Cities programme. At least, now, there is no reason so trivial that it cannot catch my attention.

But above all that, there’s the one thought: “Jampot has brought us together”. And that’ll stay on for ever, Jamshedpur bringing together all those guys who spent just two years living there, but left their hearts behind for ever, for all the centuries to come!

[*Yes, yes, Jamshedpur is in Jharkhand. I know. But this was a couple of decades ago, remember? Not only has Jamshedpur grown up, it has grown out!]

The Dai Bus. Or, why Rowling must be a Malayali

"Edai!" - I heard the scream and felt the push and as I flew off the path, I saw a low-slung, pink contraption with bunny-ear-mirrors screeching to a halt exactly where I'd been standing. How could I have forgotten this modernised means of transport for the average Malayali? It has been a while, for sure, and now I couldn't resist.


Trying to retain stability, I hung on to the overhead handle with both hands. But my concept of stability did not account for differences in acceleration between the floor and the roof of Bunny-Ears. At start, my feet rushed ahead of the rest of me; a nice 40-degree angle between sole and crown poured out any feeling of dignity I had left. Thankfully, when the roof decided to catch up, I was somewhat ready for it and came back from about the 110-degree mark itself. Hmm, just slightly out of habit, that's all.


Yank!! 810 degrees round the middle. Or what used to be the middle, it seemed to be on multiple axes and multiple planes at the same time. Anyway, it wasn't a swerve I had experienced in any bus ride, anywhere, ever. No wonder the people of this region swing all possible ways, election-time or otherwise! I wasn't sure what was left of my right - or even where it was. And I'm the only one who is shaken up. My fellow passengers do not seem to realize they had come within 2 paint-coats thickness of being footnotes in a bus-collision report. Oooh, the driving! Wait a minute, I've seen something like this - Prisoner of Azkaban! Hold out your wand-hand, now!! But The Knight Bus, if you remember, changed its contours and Ernie had an easy time of it in his armchair, with no worries about actually pranging his vehicle.

However, this here isn't wizardry, just absolutely top-class driving skills. Skills that cannot be measured by any normal driving tests, but are unerringly spotted by every RTO in God’s Own Country; for without them, there will certainly be many more prangs than vehicles on road. Even so, getting off Bunny-Ears was a relief!

And oh, Joanne, a very Happy Onam to you, too!!

My sister, the President?

Hmmm... so it is Prathibha, after all. As Balakrishnan was swearing in, I was, like many others, swearing at.


Would have been foolish to have expected it to turn out otherwise; yet, one hoped. Now, the hope turns in another direction. I'm hoping that she doesn't take it to her head to visit a few places that she hasn't been to and demonstrate her unique conversational abilities. No, not even Africa, they won't be impressed with such tricks at all, their jujus are much more sophisticated, even technologically.

My mother, however, wants her to be well known. Her reasons are simple. If her daughter's name is popularised, then maybe they'd stop calling her Prat. But I secretly hope that if the former happens, the latter runs the other way! Prat the President!! Yay!!!

The Launch

Ah, well, that wasn't too difficult, the first few words.

Having used many free sites for many things over the years, I have developed the foresight to understand that the handle you pick stays with you for a long time. With this refined understanding, I thought that I had become a better handle-picker. Unfortunately, it appears that many other people also use the internet and their foresight appears to be twenty/20 times better. So, no more handles, only names.

And then that Aussie had to happen. No, not Greg Stephen, the other Greg, the Roberts chappie. Seems to be bent on popularising my name all over the world. Having Johnny Depp assist in this certainly helps. But then my niece had to say that she doesn't like Depp, what with his kajal-lined eyes and long skirts (? - but then she watches more movies than I), so now I'm wondering if I would indeed like such associations....

So much for this ramble. Will have to get back later.