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!]