The Story telling Workshop

Saturday morning turned out to be quite unexpected for us. As we dropped our daughter  to school for a story telling session, little did we know that the workshop was actually for us and not just for the children. We had an elaborate plan of sending a courier, going to a dress boutique and generally conquering the whole world as our daughter attends the session. We were swooped in for this wonderful experience with Sowmya Srinivas, who is heading Pre Primary in Sri Chaitanya Techno school and an artist in All India Radio. She has a neat way of telling stories through sound, expressions and gestures and she also sings.

The session started with some activities for parents. For example, we had to draw our child’s favorite thing or person and then enact or tell a story on that drawing. We drew a Lotus (Daughter’s favorite flower) in a pond and Sun and my wife thoughtfully named them as Kamal and Suraj and that the story is about their deep friendship. As we went on, Sowmya enacted how a story can be told with deep, long, loud expressive voices, facial expressions and hand gestures with rhyming jingles. The story was about the Monkey and the Crocodile. It reminded me of my Hindi teacher who took us this lesson – “Magar aur Bandar” and how he pronounced Magar (crocodile) as Maagarrrrrrrr, which earned him the name Magarji. There was then a touching story of a boy who lost his mother and then considered his teacher to be his mother. She showed how flashcards might also be a good aid in telling stories, probably just like the story books filled with pictures. Lastly we had a small activity of enacting an animal without narration by 4 different teams. We did the peacock with one of us as the dancing peacock and the rest of us making the sound of rain and hand gestures of rain falling from the top.

It was a day when we loosened up a bit for our children. Adults in their late 20’s and early 30’s were turning themselves into 5 year olds and learning the art of having and spreading fun. It also helped us to see how the teachers of our children turn themselves into 5 year olds to teach our children, as they participated along with us. Lastly as we had a brief chat with Sowmya, She reminded us where we actually heard stories from, our grand parents. I heard stories from my Grandma, My daughter hears stories of MGR killing the pirates from my father and other mythological stories from my in laws. Perhaps when we become Grandparents we will have stories of Rajinikanth to tell our Grandchildren. It becomes so, that as we age, as we go through our life, we finally learn the value of Fun, the fun that we can have with our Grand children. We remain busy until then taking care of the life.

Ultimately, be it a simple story telling session or playing a video game on a phone, we fail to recognize that it is Fun that we are actually having and not the object of Fun. Objects change, but Fun remains the same. Hopefully, we will get to this inner realization as we age.

Until then, Just have Fun!

Strategic Child

A Clean white Hyundai Verna was parking on a cold early morning and out came a man in his mid 30’s. He looked sophisticated with his eye glasses, a clean dark brown leather jacket and a blue jeans with sports shoe. One can tell from the looks that he is modern and was tasting the great material life. He then remote locked the tangy looking white car under the tungsten street light. Just then, he picked up his cell phone and began speaking to someone in Hindi as he walked out with a book in his hand.

His walk showed he was in a hurry, probably speaking to the person who he was going to receive from the train. Upon a closer look I found he was carrying a book named Think strategically. Definitely he must be a person of higher class and working in a higher position in his company, probably even an MBA. It was getting more complicated as I observed him from a few feet walking along behind him.

The walkway turned narrow and there came a slightly elevated side rail on the platform. Just then I witnessed this. The cultured sophisticated gentleman carrying a strategic thinking book, walked on the rail and did a balancing act without his knowledge, still speaking on the cell phone. It brought a little smile on my face. His costume of high looks and a high lifestyle did not change his basic nature, a nature of a child who would enjoy with what comes in the way. He just didn’t realize that or had less time to notice that.

Perhaps all that we do to earn to live a luxurious lifestyle, to get all those sophisticated dresses, gadgets and cars is simply to satisfy the child in us, albeit in a “Strategic” way. With a smile on my face still stuck, I walked to the platform and continued my wait for the arrival of the train, to receive my brother. I stood for a moment and I saw this picture.

Station lights

Shuffling on the iPod

As I woke up at 5AM today with a hot cup of Ginger tea, I was getting ready to go get my dad and in-laws from Bangalore Cantonment railway station. After a half hour drive through partially lit roads, still dark, I reached the station only to find out the train has stopped in Byappanahalli for crossing. The arrival time was moved from 6.10 to 6.35. It gave me sometime to get a copy of Bangalore Mirror and read some interesting bits of news on the last page. It was interesting to read about a small community in a village in UK trying to keep a very old family shop alive, about 350 years old. The small newspaper shop in the station also sold board games and I got Angry birds for my daughter.

Pacing up and down, reading the paper, I finally saw the announcement come through for the arrival by about 6.45. It was unusually 45 minutes late and usually we get out before dawn. But today, I saw the train come through mild bluish sky of the early morning from a distance with the deep running track giving a nice perspective of the arriving train. I wish I had my camera for a perfect wide angle shot.

By the time we got out and into the car it was about 7AM. This is when I connected my iPod shuffle to the Car Aux Audio. This one is a flashy blue clip iPod shuffle from 2007 and it started playing a Tamil classical instrumental. A nice melodious way to start the morning. My dad and in laws were probably wondering why I would listen to this, but they were in for a different surprise. The surprise that a shuffle brings. As we crossed Shivaji Nagar, MG Road and through the old madras road with bumpy roads and erratic signals, the song changed to Anbin vasalile from Kadal, a Christian prayer song from the upcoming Manirathnam Movie – Kadal. Now this was a new song, and I am guessing they were wondering how come I have classical and Christian gospel playing one after the other.

As we approached the KR Puram station crossing the numerous bumpy and potholed roads from Byappanahalli, the song changed to Susanna from The Art Company, a song that was copied by Deva in the movie Vaali as “O Sona” for “Susanna”. Classical to Gospel and now an 80’s pop, they were now probably thinking I am crazy. After we crossed a horrible traffic in  KR Puram junction at around 7.30, we got closer to home and the iPod shuffled to “Vanam Mella” from Nee Thaane en pon vasantham. By now I thought, my aged shuffle has got really wonderful in keeping me surprised.

We reached home at 7.45 and the iPod finally shuffled back to another Tamil classical. I got out of the car and wondered if it was just the iPod that shuffled or the whole of this morning with a delayed train and driving through unexpected traffic and some bumpy bad roads. May be the bumpy road made the iPod to shuffle crazy.

Happy New year to all ! I have also been posting some of my photographs in my Photo blog at Classicframes.

Kali Shila

It was a majestic Rock at the edge of a cliff somehow seemingly carved with grooves that made it look like a Sri Chakra Yantra. An Arduous 7 hours of trekking later what we saw was completely not what we had imagined. The place had a traditional temple of the Devi, but a few steps from below the temple, the path lead us to the Kali Shila.

Shila, which is the Hindi name of Rock, was standing there in all its glory with absolutely no boundary on 3 of its sides and completely sliding off into the valley. The Rock was inclined at about 45 degrees and we had to crawl on our four limbs to get to the centre. I got to the centre of the Rock with great difficulty and battling with some fear.

Standing by the flag in the centre, I witnessed the magnificent. Heaven on earth, the continuous range of the Himalayas, infinite and kissing the sky. This is probably the most beautiful that I have ever seen. It was fulfilling and extremely Joyful. The Brahmachari who walked with us shouted in a high pitch voice:

“Visangam Darshan! Ultimate View, Anand! Paramanand!”

From here I could see how our path that took us 8 hours to walk, looked so tiny and insignificant. It exhausted us, but all was forgotten after witnessing the view of a lifetime.

Our walk started at 8AM in the morning from the foothills of Madhmaheswar. It seemed difficult in the beginning, going up the steep stone walkways. We had to climb several slippery paths where the land had sliding soil with no rocks to grip. Our first hill was quite a challenge. The Local village guide was a young girl who was agile and always playful. She laughed at us struggling to climb. But was very considerate throughout the trip and got us sticks to balance our climb.

As we walked, our second hill was a little easier as it was full of villages and fields on the way. But it was still a long way. Atleast I could take a lot of photographs on the way as it was not as much of a steep climb but with stone steps and flat ground for the walk. We stopped by a place to fill our water bottles in a tap. I asked the villager if it is safe to drink this water. He smiled and exclaimed “Mountain water, this is better than your bottled water as it has all the herbs”. It was indeed refreshing.

We got to meet some interesting villagers on the way. Our local guide spoke with them in Pahadi Language (mountain language), it was just a stretchy version of Hindi, localized, slanged and villagized. It sort of sounded like Hindi Beverly hillbillies. We caught up with a primary school on the way. Smiling kids and giggling with all their teeth for my camera. They were all outside the school, may be it was lunch time. But we didn’t stop by to eat. We just had water and some sugary candies and kept walking.

The Third hill was the toughest. It was as though beginning to feel tougher and tougher as we approached. There were not many homes and villages now, it was all rocky and path went through the jungle. The last of the civilization was left behind in the second hill which had a distinct tall Airtel cellphone tower. It was all jungle after that. When we got close, we saw the Kali Shila, just hanging in balance from the edge of the cliff and we wondered how to get there, but there we were finally by 3.00PM.

As I stood there by the flag, I could only think one thing. I had no idea how I walked all the way long. From that point, I had to crawl to a small creak on the rock which had the naturally formed Kali’s feet inscription below. Carefully climbed down and what we saw was nothing ordinary.The Rock had the feet of Kali inscribed as though she came and stepped on it. Besides that was a Sanskrit Akshara that was formed in a naturally embossed way. We stood there, with the wind blowing heavily and getting chillier as the time went, had the best of our times doing Puja. It was said that Brahma, Vishnu and Siva descended down to worship Kali before fighting the Demons to save the Devas.

Another Brahmachari who accompanied us, did the Puja and went into circumambulation by crawling around the rock like Tom Cruise in MI 2. Our jaws dropped and had a shock offear go up our spine. We didn’t do that, it was impossible for him and completely not possible for us.

When we finished it all and started our return walk, it was 6.00PM in the evening already. With torches and sticks we found our way in the dark and reached our base camp by midnight, with Dinner thereafter. This was probably the most adventurous and yet the most spiritual trip we ever had in our life.

Kali Shila, is not for the ordinary tourist. We were gifted to be able to go to this place. We were all gratitude to our Guruji and Devi for taking us there and make us blessed.

Map of Puketopia

WARNING: Do not read this post, when you eat. It is ok for Pregnant women to read this post as they are used to vomiting.

This is an incident involving a few of my friends but unfortunately I wasn’t present in this situation when it happened. So I am narrating it from a third person who heared it from the friend’s cousin perspective.

It was a fine evening in Chennai. An evening that could have been spent relaxing at the beach or playing in the nearby ground, but they decided to spend the time boozing at a local bar. This local bar is of the local kind which people in Tamil Nadu call it as “Wine shop” and pronounce is as “Voyin shaap”. It is all driven by the economics. Depending on how much money they can pool in they go to a 3 star hotel pub like the Tinto at Residency inn or a decent pub or a billiards club and if the money is tight they end up in this particular Wine Shop. There is no preference or differentiation of class when it comes to boozing. After all we were in college and we had only so many things to think about – booze, girls, more booze.

So on this fine evening my friends started their pooja (code word for boozing) in one such local wine shop. Just like the wheels on the bus go round and round and the Cycle of life goes round and round, glasses of whiskey and vodka go round and round, sometimes mixed with pepsi, sometimes with coke, sometimes with water from water packet, sometimes in RAW Format (not the Camera RAW), and in some weird times it can go around with Orange Juice, especially if you are in USA and you have exhausted your supply of soda cans and you have no other choice but do the mixing with Breakfast items!

And as it settles and goes, the first round is usually an initial slight jolt. It warms up everyone, relaxes them. It puts them in a mood of laughter and it slowly increases the steam and volume of their voice. After the second round, people forget the count. They can no longer keep track of the rounds and hence after Round 2, the count never goes up. It’s like those film actresses who celebrate their 28th birthday for 20 times.

The topic of discussion changes from politics to Internal Affairs. People start speaking their mind out. The family, the girl next door, the girl in the opposite door, the girl who closes the door, the girl who never opens the door, the girl who slapped him (twice), the girl who gave him halwa (and he gave Mixture (pronounced as Mikchar) in return), in short the discussion of Internal Affairs has always been about girls and how the guy loves her so much or how he lost her to another guy who had a car. While some of them come only to drink with no Internal Affairs to discuss, others come only to eat side dishes. They are designated Side dish eaters, Like me. Hey, I was a good boy, I can’t publicly tarnish my own image or risk going back home with “Boozer” written on my forehead.

So, as the rounds went by, with people losing count and not knowing when the barrel becomes full, one of them stops talking. No speech, closed mouth, eyes looking at the top and head slowly whirling. At this point he slowly points his hand to the fan and requests it to be turned on. People around him ask what happened, and why is he pointing to the fan as it was already on and running fine. In the next second, his mouth blasts open and a huge map of the motherland is laid out on the table with puke.

The waiter comes and calmly cleans the mess, they are used to it. But after the cleaning he doesn’t move.

“Oh, here is 20 Rupees!” hands out one of the Side dish eater.

“Saar, extra give saar!” asks the waiter politely.

“En paa?” (Why man?)

“Saar, Vaanthi perusa irunthichu saar!” (The Vomit was big)

Another side dish only eater hands out 10 more rupees and makes him happy. But just as he is about to leave, he calls him back and says

“Hey, you cleaned up the Map of India, but you missed Sri Lanka!” pointing to a small portion of puke left out on the table.

Atleast they got something out of the extra money that they gave and hence the Map of Puketopia was drawn and withdrawn.

MORAL OF THE STORY: When you do something, do it completely. Never leave a residue.

Indian Companies, Raiders of the Lost Chair

Long Long ago there was a Chair in a busy IT office, brimming with people. There were just too many people in the building that there was limited room for breathing. They called it the boom, every single maintenance work was getting outsourced to India and the executives called it “Strategic Outsourcing”. No one even imagined the magnitude of growth and hence people were hired by putting fliers on the trees on the roads (Which were later cut by the corporation to build a Metro rail).

Coming back to the chair, this was one special kind of chair. It had a really soft cushion with adjustable height and nice tilting push back. The texture of the fabric was nice and smooth and one could really sink into it after lunch for a nice afternoon siesta, I mean a productive coding session. This chair was really unique, but the office was full of this unique chair. In fact there was one chair like this for every desk. But during boom time, people come in faster than buildings can rise and/or be leased. So people had to double up in cubes/desks/conference rooms/empty dining halls in cafeterias, lonely table by the restroom (which could seat atleast 3, with monitors positioned like the lions in our Indian Emblem on One Rupee coins and oh by the way the Emblem has 4 lions even though you can only see 3. You can’t see the 4th lion because it is a Tenderloin).

They wanted more and more people, but they didn’t have enough chairs. As a result, chairs were stolen from conference rooms which began to look like a big pool table room with no chairs. But that wasn’t sufficient, so chairs were put on Time sharing mode until new chairs slowly arrived and unbundled. In any case, the number of new people coming in out numbered the pace at which they could buy the chair because of all the process involved in procurement and number of signatures needed to buy one chair was equal to the number of people working in one floor.

During conferences with the onsite team, the offshore team usually 10 to 20 in number (or in some case 20 to 40) gang up on that one speaker phone in the conference room with no chair. The American on the other side speaks in his stylish English and the team standing offshore stare at each other, while the Team lead says yes, without knowing that he was answering a question, “Can you participate in a Rodeo contest next week?”.

Chairs were stolen, because people couldn’t understand a thing that the customer sitting onsite said without grounding their asses on the chairs. It didn’t matter whose chair it was, it was vandalised. You could go to the restroom for a 2 minute break but you will be back to no chair to sit on. Heck, you could even get up to connect that PS2 mouse port to the back of the Pentium II desktop, suffering loose contact, and you may sit down and fall to the ground, because that was enough interval time for your chair to be whisked away. “No Mercy”, they shouted and continued “Give us chairs or we will steal it!”. For sometime, it became the motto of the company, I mean not the company just the employees of the company. The shareholders had nice chairs at their home, except those poor souls who bought employee stock with no chair to sit on at work and with no idea that the bubble would burst in 2 years.

Chairs were shuffled, you never sat on the same chair once. So, the chairs were always showered with variable aroma of farts by multiple unrelated employees, whose only connection was eating the food served in the cafeteria.

There was only one way out of this misery. Onsite. People wanted to go onsite because they didn’t have a chair to sit on, while the management keeps taking surveys over survey trying to find the real reason behind people wanting to go onsite (which actually yielded “Disneyland” as the answer), they never knew that it was the chairs. Sometimes, even the employees didn’t know why they were frustrated and unhappy over their career. They kept insisting it was their career, but no it was just their carrier, the chair! All they needed was a chair that can be raised and not a raise.

But then the bubble burst. Everything slowed down. New buildings were leased, unfortunately when people were laid off or when the CEO gets involved in a huge conspiracy, and now there is more space than people. There are more chairs now than people. It can be so unpredictable that between the time interval that the chair is adjusted the person would be sent home. The companies were cutting costs by cutting projects. They were laying off the Developers and restructuring the management during touch economical conditions. It was quite logical. With no work to do, they had to lay off Developers because they were the only ones who did the actual work. Management is quite essential to the company because they had to run the company and they were the only ones who had the power to lay off, so unless every single developer was laid off there was no way that the management could be laid off. Besides it is cheaper to lay off a Developer when you think about the severance package that needs to be given in millions for an executive and in thousands for the ordinary Developer. It all makes sense.

But the employees are now happy because they have more chairs. They can sit on one chair everyday and it will still be enough for the whole year. Heck, they can now fill every chair with the sweet aroma of the fart every single day and not having to sit on the same chair again.

The chairs got back at their theives. They finally got their justice, but they still get farted on.

A Foreign Language Irony

As I hold out a copy of the latest India Today (Ok, I was really reading Anantha Vikatan) and counting down the minutes for the arrival of Bangalore Express, My “then fiance, now Wife” (TFNW) reminds me I have to get Idlis from Murugan Idli shop for dinner. It was one of my several trips to Madurai a few years back to see my TFNW. The Railway department even went to the length of tracking me down and sending me a qualifying letter for getting a Season pass from Bangalore to Madurai (Ok, I made this up!). Those were the times when whoever bought shares of Bharti Airtel became millionares simply because of the talk time I spent with my TFNW.

Coming back to the story, I had about 45 minutes before the train arrived. I worked my way through the crowd at the Platform, accidentally hitting people like a snooker ball on rebound, reached the station side Murugan Idli shop and was ready to order, what else, Idlis. Along came a Woman from the other side to the shop. She was tall, fair and definitely didn’t look local, and didn’t look Tamil, and didn’t look Indian either. She was a Foreigner, was a tourist. Here is my chance to provide the utmost hospitality to a tourist who was kind enough to visit my hometown. I was brimming with a sense of helpfulness and I wanted to give the best explanation possible and help her order the dinner that she will love.

We both got close to the counter. I opened my mouth to start my train of Peter English, just when the shopkeeper tried to utter something in his own English, and the dear lady from a foreign country without pausing for a moment and without directly interrupting us, simply placed the order in Pure Tamil.

“Oru Dosa, Oru set Idli, Sambar Vendam, Chutney neraiya venum!”

Three Mosquitoes, Five flies and a Cockroach made its way in and out of my Mouth as I kept it wide open watching the foreign lady utter the purest form of Tamil. She wasn’t Foreign anymore. I exchanged a few more bewildered look with the foreign lady and the shopkeeper’s half petrified half clueless eyes and place my order for idlis and went back to reading the jokes in Anantha Vikatan.

Tamil Thai (Mother) was dancing disco in the tongues of an English Madam. I bowed to her sense of respect to the language I had lived in, picked up my order and walked away expecting no more surprises for the day.

Read one more interesting Irony here.

You and me Locked up in a Room

This is how a famous Bollywood song goes:

Hum tum ek kamre mein bandh ho, aur chaabi kho jaay!

Such an ambiguous song it is. You and Me locked up in a room – which one? Bedroom or bathroom or the Kitchen or the store room? and the Keys are lost, what keys? You have keys for rooms? is it the House Key or is it your Car keys? or is it even your key! With so much ambiguity in the song, the Guy must be an idiot to expect romance from the girl and the girl must be “idioter” to romance him anyway!

But this is not the point of the post, this is just a pointless introduction of this pointless post.

People have weird experiences when they shop in weird Indian stores in US. Let me assure you that the Indian stores in India are a 100 times better than the Indian stores in US.

This particular Indian store is more like a Godown or a storage room. Seriously, I have stopped going there as I had a few bad experiences with Billing and Customer service. There are other Indian stores here that are not weird, packed with nice friendly people and a neat place. Coming back to this one weird store, it was sometime last year when I went there for regular weekend Grocery. My job as a husband was simple, drive the family to the store, hold the then 1.5 years old daughter in the arms and just randomly move around the store.

I like random, you can be at your will. You can have a sense of freedom. But in this particular store, there is only a few ways of being random. There are only 3 aisles with each aisle enough for just one half of a skinny person to move freely and that half is his lateral section and not his cross section. On the extreme left there will be a lot of varieties of bags of Rice and wheat stacked like a mountain. You will see people desperately trying to pull out a bag of rice, without impacting the balance of the bags placed one over the other. If you walk through this aisle, there are chances of bags accidentally falling on you. Perhaps they should have a sign that says “Falling Bags” like the ones you will find on the freeways through mountains that says “Falling Rocks”.

The walkways between the aisles are not left alone. They are stacked with more stuff that can be sold. It is a marketing technique. People don’t look down, so what happens is they very likely stumble upon the stuff on the floor and fall flat. Then all they have to do was see a nice shiny glowing Potato and go “Wow!” and then grab a pound or two of it. Trust me, it really works, even though you will see more people falling than walking, it is more business this way than having less stuff stacked around.

The best way to stock up the merchandise is during the peak hours of people shopping. How else you will see the store’s stock person goes around the aisle arranging and stacking up new merchandise. It is like the Old Hutch cellphone ad – wherever you go we follow. This guy is just like that, he will be there whereever you go, he is omnipresent. He can shout at the top of his pitch to the cashier when the cashier asks him the price of a certain item. He is usually a Middle aged Indian Uncle who is a partner in that store business, with neatly Dabur amla oiled hair, a belly with the shirt unable to cover it fully.

Sometimes it can be a check mate with all the stuff lying around. As I was trying to work my way randomly through these flow restricted aisles, I entered an aisle to look for some ready to eat stuff. It was a trap, I couldn’t get out of it one way as the stock person had left a bunch of items there blocking the way. He then walks through me literally and begins stocking things in the freezer on my other side. So you see now I am in a check mate position and I can’t move out of the aisle until he finishes stocking, and I am left there reading the expired expiry dates of freshly stacked Ready to eat items.

My worst nightmare came true. The stock person sang the famous ambiguous Bollywood song -

“Hum tum ek kamre mein bandh ho, aur chaabi kho jaay!”

This time, it wasn’t ambiguous. It was straight on. I started sweating profusely and was about to faint but my love for my 1.5 year old daughter held me up on my feet and reminded me that there is still room for hope in life. I looked around and I saw there was not even room for placing one bag of chips around me with all the things lying around, where would I keep hope. Besides, the Stock man was insisting on singing the next lines of the song.

I was saved by a ray of hope. Some guy walked from the side where he was stocking in the freezer and said “Ekskuse me” in a thick North Indian Accent. That’s it, the gap was made. It was enough for me to sneak through and get to the other side, like the South Indians who sneak through in the Tirumala Tirupathi queue for Dharshan of the deity.

Perhaps Clint Eastwood should make a movie with this “Escape from Indian Store”.

PS: “Dimple Kapadia” is in the tag list, just to increase the marketing value of this post.

Buckles of Belt

As a young boy once I had fascination towards various styles of Belt Buckles. Big Oval ones, Shiny big rectangle ones I have tried all sorts of gaudy belt buckles before. But Time (thankfully) helps us mature and grow out of this Gaudy Belt Buckle syndrome (BBS). I can safely wash off my past and say that I have grown out of it. I had realized that the special kinds of Belt Buckles are only supposed to be worn by Bobby Deol and once that moment of self realization set in, I not only gave up the Gaudy buckles but developed hatred towards it.

I now prefer to wear plain simple formal belts for work and a slightly wider brown leather belt with the jeans. I have simplified my belt choices to these 2 and am not planning to look back.

The prejudice in this is that you would expect anyone in your age range or higher to follow this same simple principle. How wrong I was. It disturbs me to notice the Gaudy belt buckle syndrome from someone who definitely looks much older than you. I can forgive every single annoying thing done by anyone, but wearing a huge eagle Belt buckle is simply a no no. For a moment I would have pulled my eyeballs out, but wanted to keep it to see the other pleasant things in the world. It was one of the WTF moments that haunts you throughout your work day.

I may have to give them a “Wearing a decent belt 101″ lesson which will really consist of just 2 points – simple 1 inch black for formals, simple 1.5 inch brown for jeans.

It is ok if you have a small crocodile on the buckle as long as it comes from Lacoste. But if you really want to wear a belt with a crocodile on the buckle, please make sure the crocodile logo is not inverted, otherwise I will find you, tilt you upside down and make you walk on your hands!

Rasam-a-Touille

“Why do we have to eat in a Random Restaurant everyday?” asked my friend S.

“Yes, I agree. Why don’t we cook?” I said, as I set out a stream of hysterical laughter around my room mates.

When you come out to live on your own and when there is no Hostel mess to feed you everyday as you had in College, it is hard to believe that you will be able to cook. It is actually hard to even consider cooking, never mind being able to. So the natural reaction among the gang for cooking was a simple no. Other than me and S there was no one in the crowd, who were excited about the idea of cooking.

We made a few random jokes about the new Woman training staff and made abusive remarks on the male training staff and went back to sleep.

“Anyone can cook Anyway!” said my Grandmother.

“Grandma … What are you doing here?” I tried to whisper hoping not to wake up the roomies.

Grandma: “You were talking about cooking and I thought I might help you”

Me: “But how will you? Hey wait … How do you speak English? I thought you didn’t know English!”

Grandma: “Well this is your dream and I am the figment of your imagination. So that’s how I know English. But anyway, tomorrow being a weekend why don’t you try and make Rasam and Rice. It is very simple!”

I heard Grandma talk some weird Rasam Recipe – Mix a Chameleon Juice in a Glass jar and then slice a pumpkin peel into 10 exact pieces, then cut a cactus into exactly two halves and put them all in a container. After that you pee on it.

“What! Pee on it???” That’s when I woke up and realized it was 7:30 AM and I really had to pee. We lazed around the morning reading the paper and munching some bread with Amul butter and Kissan fruit jam for breakfast. I hit the conversation with S.

Me: “So what do you think about cooking? Do you think we can really do it?”

S: “Yes definitely, I think Anyone can cook Anyway he/she wants”

It was the same words from Grandma from last night’s dream. Am I halucinating? Is the bread gone bad? I pinched myself and it pained. It wasn’t a dream.

Me: “So what are you waiting for then, let’s cook something for lunch. What do you think of Rasam and Rice?”

We set out to buy a single burner portable gas stove. It was something we could quickly buy to experiment what we were going to do. The rest of the gang spent the morning completely disinterested having no idea of what we were doing. It was like we were invisible to them. Even AS, who was food lover, wasn’t caring even a little bit about what was going on. AS can taste food very well and can be a harsh critic of food. In one bite he can quickly write off the restaurant, and so we were daring to give our food to him for feedback.

It was risky. Rasam and Rice was a very ordinary dish. He can easily reject it. But we wanted to try our best.

S: “So where shall we start first!”

Me: “We need chameleon juice”

S: “What?”

Me: “Sorry, I think I need to pee, I feel nervous about doing this. Let me relieve myself of some tension and come back in a few min”

After few minutes we were off to chop the Tomatoes, Onions and using a vessel we mixed tamarind paste, Rasam powder and added Tomatoes to it. We realized Onion is not an ingredient of Rasam and had to keep it aside, perhaps use it as a side dish. The ready made Rasam powder that we had bought smelled very good so we kept stirring the contents for a while and then let it boil. We then added Cilantro as the final touch and let it simmer for a bit and took it off the stove finally.

Making Rice is a piece of Rice Cake. Yet we managed to over cook it a little bit and made it softer. Overall, the meal wasn’t anything brilliant. Rice and Rasam was ready. We put a small serving in a plate and gave it to AS for his review. Our limbs were trembling out of fear. This time S had to pee, we waited for him.

Here came the moment. AS took the plate from us and grabbed a nice big amounts of Rasam Rice in his right hand. He then put it in his mouth with a slurping noise and sat there stunned. The camera zoomed into his face and went through his eyes into a flash back, in which Young Boy AS was having a plate full of Rasam Rice and Chips in his home.

Young Boy AS said “I love Mom’s Rasam Rice!”

The Camera came back to the Young Man AS who said “Super da! Sign me up, I am joining the Cooking club”.

We smelled our victory in the form of a great Rasam. We won, we started cooking our own food and we never turned back. We loved the food, whatever we cooked. It was a very satisfying meal everytime.

Grandma appeared in my dream again “See I told you, Anyone can cook Anyway”

Dressing with Ghaghra Choli

Consider the following statements:

1. It looks cute when a full sized adult dress is miniaturized for 1 to 2 years old and so a Ghaghra Choli for 2 years old is very cute.

2. When you dress for a party it takes the longest for the Woman in the family to get dressed.

These 2 points imply that the father in the family gets to dress his 23 months old daughter for the party. It takes longer for a Man to dress his toddler daughter than for this wife to dress herself up for the party. The challenge is not in just dressing but tackling the active toddler and then dressing at the same time. It is like trying to dress your bike in a pyjama while you are riding it with both the hands and the bike going in a random direction no matter how you hold the handle bar.

So It was a day of one of the parties at our friend’s place and I took the mission of dressing the daughter.

First, Undressing the daughter is very easy. You just have to pull the top upwards and in 3 seconds you will find the kid 3 meters away from you while you will be holding the top inside out. Same goes to the bottom, except she would have only reached 2 meters for that. After that you will need to perform 3 somersaults to change the diaper (perform 4 if you have the intentions of saving the nearby objects from being vandalised).

Now comes the tricky part. I made a few attempts at getting her dressed and here they are:

1. Is the top part called Choli? Assuming it is, I took the choli and put it on her left hand and then I put the other end on her right hand. During this time I didn’t notice that she took off her left hand from the choli. I went back and put the choli on the left hand and she cleverly undid the right side. The cycle continued for a while until I decided to go attempt 2.

2. Knowing that putting it one hand at a time is difficult, I tried to put it on both the hands from the front side at the same time. She bent down, got under me and ran away into the other room while I was sitting there with my both hands partially inserted into the choli. It took me a while to chase her down and clamp her to my lap before trying attempt 3.

3. This time I was very determined. I wasn’t budging, I wanted to be the one in control. I wanted to show her who the daddy is. So after a brief bit of wrestling with a combination of above 2 attempts, I finally got the choli on her and started to tie the knot. The knot was tied and She was dressed. There all done and neat. That’s when my wife came and looked at me with a stare.

Wife: What’s this?

Me: I dressed her, what else!

Wife: Is this how you dress Ghagra choli?

Me: I haven’t dressed myself in Ghagra choli in any way possible. So I don’t know.

Wife: Funny ha! Why is the knot on her front?

I didn’t realize as my daughter was turning and I was turning around to get into position I was off by 180 degrees. I had tied the knots that come on the back, to her front.

Me: Oh! You are right, was that supposed to be tied backwards. Let me try again.

Wife: (walking away) and Put her bottoms will you!

That must be the Ghagra I forgot and that was why I was wondering why the Ghagra looked exactly like her diaper. After a brief hunt, I found the Ghaghra barely hanging off from the ironing board.

All is well that ends well. I was finally able to dress her up for the party and we were ready to go. Just one thing was left. My wife adjusted the bottom by rotating it for 180 degrees.

Wife: “This is the correct side”

Me: How would I know? It looks the same on all sides!

Wife: Watch the label on the inside. It is the same way you wear your Banian.

Now we were definitely ready to go for the party, except I have to put the daughter’s shoes on! And there I went again!

Delicious Diwali

Diwali in US happens in a very simple way. Usually the closest weekend is taken up as Diwali and a party happens at someone’s place. The party involves some food, and more food and then a lot more food. So the Diwali party on Sunday at my friend’s place went by the same way.

There was a huge lineup of sweets – Bread Halwa, Wheat Halwa, Motichur Laddu, Jamun. Of all the sweets, the significant one was Halwa. Yes, this Diwali we were all given Halwa. The term “To give Halwa” is well known in Tamil Nadu for a different reason. Let me illustrate the second meaning of the phrase with a few examples.

1. When the gas prices shot up like the SLV rocket, the brilliant business minds put forward a deal to customers buying cars in US. You buy their car and they will give you guaranteed $3 Gas Price even if the prices go up. So the customers thinking that very soon the gas prices will go up to $10 per gallon, signed the deal for $3 gas and bought the cars. Unfortunately, gas prices have fallen down to about $2.15 now which means their $3 gas deal is worth nothing. In other terms these customers were given Halwa by the car dealers. I pity them really.

2. You go to a much promising multi starrer Bollywood movie – Hrithik, Abishek, Aish expecting it to be exactly like Dhoom. But it turns out to be a disaster and you come out with the same old comment “Sequels are not always good”. In this case, the Movie producers/directors have given Halwa to the Audience.

3. The classic case of giving Halwa is from the “Boy loving Girl, Girl loving another Boy” Love story. In fact, this is where the term Halwa is used a lot. Girl tells the Boy that she likes him very much. Boy replaces the word ‘like’ with ‘Love’ and dreams about her, makes love to her, marries her, has 10 kids and 38 grand kids all in one dream sequence. The next day the girl insists I like you very much, but I am in love with your hot hunky friend, can you help me get to him? In an audible distance, the bursting of a transformer sound is heard and the boy’s heart is broken into 1000 pieces. The Girl has successfully given Halwa to the Boy.

The following are the laws of Halwa:

1. If a person is vulnerable to be given Halwa, then he/she will definitely be given Halwa at some point of time.

2. For every Halwa given, there is no equal and opposite Halwa unfortunately. So there is no possibility of the affected, being able to give back the same Halwa to the Source. You can try a different one.

3. The system of Halwa giving and receiving is unaltered unless acted upon by an external force, which has to be another Halwa giver or receiver.

If you do not understand the above laws, then you are vulnerable to be given Halwa at some point of time, So please read carefully and mug up!

The main dish had a lot Chicken. Sorry, there were a lot chicken which had main dish in them. Chicken Biryani, Chicken Kuruma, Chicken Fry you name the dish it was there with Chicken. By the end of the party, I am sure the entire Chicken race should have been extinct. If you are still having chicken it is either the last batch or a new breed of teenage mutated ninja Chickens.

Finally, we were desserted with a new innovative way of turning you ‘over’overweight – Fried Banana Icecream. It was delicious and I couldn’t help myself having it the second time. It was basically Banana, fried with some flour and topped with a scoop of Vanilla Ice cream. Fried Banana Icecream Rocks! But it turned my (Relatively) Rock Hard (Six pack) abs into Flowery soft round Michelin tyre. Hence the following comic:

Picture of Surya – http://www.chennai365.com , Michelin Man – http://www.berrimilla.com

It will now take me a full year to go back to Six Pack Surya. But then there will be another Diwali and I will be back to Michelin Muniyandi in 1 day.

Diwali is always Delicious!

Diwali Dhamaka

Diwali, The Festival of lights has always been the best time of the year in India like how Christmas is in US. Twenty+ years back there were a lot of thatched roof houses in Madurai. We lived in one of those and as Kids the only thing that the word Diwali related to us was Fire Crackers. If we were asked to pick two of the best from the variety of crackers we would pick Bottle Bomb and Rockets.

BOTTLE BOMB

It is the loudest of the lot and once it goes off it usually takes 10 minutes for the ears to start hearing the natural ambient sound, until then all you will hear is the ……geennnnnnnn …the ringing sound. Sometimes the clay padding in the bottom can fly off in random directions and hit some objects in the vicinity. So one needs to run away to a strategically selected direction at the correct angle after detonating. Otherwise it might be possible that the clay would enter your mouth navigate through your digestive system and come shooting out of your rear and you might not even know it happened until you notice a small coin size hole in the back of your pant pocket. This is another reason you have to stand facing the bottle bomb, for you don’t want the clay to traverse in the reverse direction.

On a Diwali afternoon, with a packet of these fire crackers we decided to kill the afternoon by killing our ears bursting these tiny monstrosities. It was an uninhabited street as everyone were napping from the heavy lunch in the afternoon. Except, there was this one guy in a Mukka kai Banian (Inner T-shirt) and Lungi patiently cleaning his TVS-50. We being the dadas of that street walked down to him with our collars up on our dirty shirts and the theme of Good bad ugly playing in the background.

Us: Dude, do you mind taking you and your moped inside your house? We are bursting these!

Him: Can’t you see I am cleaning. Scram!

Us: Don’t come complaining to us if there is any damage!

That’s it we walked off after warning him and we started bursting the pack one by one. With our curiosity spiraling up after every burst, We improved the experience by bursting under cardboard boxes and watching it fly up. As we were doing that, one of us suggested we have to go more sophisticated. We should use a Coconut shell. Intrigued by the idea, We hid one under the shell and lighted it up.

Booooooommmmm …. It was wonderful to watch the coconut shell roll and fly up. Meanwhile, the clay from the bottle bomb flew off and hit the Moped’s head light. Did this happen because we used the coconut shell? No one waited there to research as we promptly ran away to the next street and continued our bursting there. We warned him, he didn’t listen and he had to spend some money to fix that light.

ROCKET

As the sun set and darkness was getting darker we transitioned to the crackers that we would burst at nights. Rockets were the fun part. The best way to fire up a Rocket is from your terrace, but we were from Thatched roof houses which had no terrace so we had to fire it in the streets. Any one who knows India will be able to tell at length(pun intended) about the numerous electric wires that go across poles in the streets. So when you place the Rocket you have to position it precisely so it won’t go hit it. But the electro magnetic field around the wires made sure that it attracted the rocket to it, no matter how precisely we try to position. And so, the following three things happened with our Rockets that we burst.

1. The first one we fired deflected as it launched and it went and hit the roof of our house, stayed there for a while as it burned the powder and then it burst. At this point we should have notified our parents and taken necessary action but we were little kids and we didn’t see any fire so we decided to set another one up.

2. The second one was a small replica of the SLV rocket. It was a bit thick, heavy and was able to stand on its own legs and hence it was also known as Stand Rocket. This time I saw the rocket take off a bit slowly (as it was heavy), watching from about 5 feet far. It pulled down due its weight and started moving on the ground, went between my legs and hit the barotta shop around the street corner and burst there. Thankfully there was no damage and the shop was observing a diwali holiday.

3. The third one we fired deflected and went into an open (on top) bathroom of the neighbor, stayed there for a few seconds and burst. No major damage done, except I remember hearing a person screaming – “Amma Ayyo!”, what felt like a cry of help by summoning the Mother and Wife of Lord Yama and running out of the bathroom, peeing all over the floor and the legs. Ok, I made up the peeing part, but running out of the bathroom crying for help, what else could happen.

We would have went on with our Rocket launches had our friend’s father not noticed the sight. Our operation was stopped, Rockets confiscated and we were taken inside home and handed down some simpler and less damageable fire crackers, like a Kitchen matchbox.

DO NOT TRY THESE AT HOME OR OUTSIDE HOME, ATLEAST NOT NEAR MY HOME

From this what I am trying to say is,

HAVE A HAPPY AND SAFE DIWALI !

PS: For those iPhone/iPod touch owners wanting to celebrate a virtual Diwali, there is an App called Sonic Boom.

The Shanghai Restaurant

“Where shall we eat today? I don’t want to go to the mess, it’s chappathi today and it is usually awful” I tell my friend N.

“Let’s go to Shanghai.” He says.

I was bewildered “Shanghai?”.

“There is this restaurant opposite to IIT. It tastes great and it is cheap too”

I liked the idea of a restaurant named Shanghai and walked on. I had never been to that restaurant and I was starting to imagine what they could be serving. A chinese place so definitely they ought to have great soups and manchurians. I will have chicken manchurian, yes definitely I thought so. Manchurians make my mouth water. I will probably start with a Hot and sour veg soup, it will be an absolute blast (atleast in the morning!). Veg Fried rice or an egg fried rice. I had almost decided what i was going to eat within the next 15 steps we took.

As we walk out of our rooms and go down to the door, we meet another of our friends S. We tell S that we are going to a place called Shanghai for our dinner. S wants to join and we agree.

Me, N and S walk out of our hostel block and take the shortcut route passing by the LH (Ladies Hostel, and really it was a shortcut ok!).

I hope I can afford it though. I had 50 Rupees and I was hoping I can have the above listed items within my budget. Even if it costed 10 Rupees for the Soup, 15 for Manchurian and 15 for the rice I would be left with 10 extra rupees for a juice later or some other snack, assuming inflation doesn’t work in one night. I didn’t care to ask my friend what’s the price though as he already said it was cheap and I went on to set my own prices on the dishes. May be I can share the manchurian or the rice with my friend if it is not within the limit, or just open an account (a debt account which gets accumulated like the mortgage loans and then a bailout is done by opening account with another friend, who gets into a gutter after you borrow from him too much in which case you repeat the bailout again with a third friend. Bottomline, you need to have a lot of friends and make sure you don’t become a borrowee) with my friend.

On the way somewhere between our block and LH, A and J watch us walk and decide to join us for the dinner. I guess they knew about Shanghai already as they said “Oh! “Shanghai”ya? we will also come then!” That’s all the friends who came to Shanghai that day. Don’t worry I wasn’t planning to introduce all the alphabets as my friends.

The walk is a bit long and it felt longer as I imagined more about how this new place will be. Will it be a decent place? Clean tables, chairs, ambience? I was wondering! Nah, I thought! If it is cheap then it could be a little dirty. Atleast they would have clean plates, I hope. May be the place will have figures (good looking gals). Yes, it is all about figures. Any place you go you have to have figures for that place to be called as the “Happening” place. Otherwise it will be deemed boring or called a museum. In those years the only thing we did was figure watching, even if we were bored of figure watching we kill the boredom by figure watching. Too bad we couldn’t proceed beyond watching.

Picture: Chicken Manchurian – http://www.instructables.com

              Aishwarya Rai Bachchan – http://www.askmen.com

Me, N, S, A and J all walk together chit chatting and then we take another short cut through the sidewalk and jump over the compound wall to reach the main road.

My friend says “Ah, he is there today! good!”

It was a small hand driven push cart. A smell of steaming rice and frying pan with oily substances tore open our nostrils. The cart had a top cover and a name plate that read “Shanghai Restaurant”.

It was a WTF moment for me. All the while I kept imagining how great this place could be and walked with all the enthusiasm of avoiding the dreaded Chappathi in the mess and here I am standing before a push cart that served Fried rice for 8 rupees. There was no soup or manchurian but only fried items. Everything was fried, fried rice, fried chicken, fried everything. Figures? The only figure standing was a long pole with a poster of a political party stuck around it. You had all the ambience on earth, yes it was open air and you could hear the natural sounds of cars, bikes and Pallavan Buses. Note, no chairs, no stools, er where do we sit? the compound wall. We climb on top of it and he comes to us serving hot fried rice. Irony was staring at my face real hard and slapping me left right top and bottom and laughing at me so hard that I could hear it snort, belch and fart all at the same time. Mr. Irony had his day that day!

It was like you were taken up to an altitude of about 100 feet and let go for a free fall. In the end, no complaints though as the food was tasty. Shanghai lasted for a while and then it wasn’t seen around at all and we completely forgot about that little push cart restaurant.

The Battle of the Bathian Sea

Captain Shorty Pie is standing short in the Bathian Sea and this time she is surrounded by a multitude of sea creatures. One by one the creatures are floating towards her. A star fish, a sea horse, an octopus, a blue whale, a sea lion, a shark and a jelly fish all of them in every single direction, lay there waiting for her to make the next step. She is completely surrounded, she has nowhere to go. Oh god! this is the first time in the history of Sea creatures attacking a short Captain, that there are so many sea creatures attacking a short captain all at once.

The star fish is all orangey and ready to feast on the prey. The sea lion makes an echoing moo noise which is extremely devastating. The sea horse does the sea horse neigh and taking quick swim steps to get ready for the attack. The octopus waves all of its arms in every direction and makes its move slowly towards the captain and getting ready to embrace her in its venomous arms. The blue whale squirts out water from the top and opens its mouth wide open with the blue whale noise. The shark makes rapid swims and jumps with its fins and coming in closer. The jelly fish emanates its vicious jelly like substance that will get anyone who comes in its path.

Such was the situation, so dangerous and nowhere to go. But our captain has conquered the 7 seas. She has been there to every corner of the world and fought every creature in her way. She is no stranger to such situation. She can handle this with ease. Captain gets ready with her crouching stand with legs wide apart. It is the strongest of the stance and only experienced adventurers adapt it.

She quickly moves to the right and grabs the star fish with her palm and squeezes the juice out of it and throws it away. The rest of the creatures pause for a moment and get cautious. They come to know she is not an easy prey. She is a fighter and they have to beware. The sea horse quickly tries to make an attack from the back, but our captain is too smart. She grabs the sea horse by its stomach and squeezes its juice out of it and puts it in a container. The rest of the creatures are now really scared, they are not going to take the next step but will wait for her.

But she doesn’t wait, She has got into her stance and there is no turning back for her. She now grabs the blue whale with her right hand and the jelly fish by her left hand and squeezes them and extracts an ocean of juice from them in just a few seconds. She growls and makes an angry face when she does that. It scares the big juices out of the Octopus and the Shark, who are the only ones left in the battle. They are not sure if they are strong enough to fight the almighty captain. Shorty pie puts one step further towards the octopus. The shark takes one step back. The octopus tries to bow down to the incredible pie but it is not forgiven. The shark tries to give an attack from the side but she is too clever and moves away. The shark now goes to her left and watches the captain squeezing the last drops of juice from the octopus.

It is now a duel between the shark and the captain. The shark makes one final attempt to jump on the captain. The captain catches the shark and squeezes the juice out of it too. The shark screams in agony but that is masked completely by the arrogant growl of the juice squeezing captain. Captain Shorty Pie of the bathian sea once again smells victory.

And this is how I see, when my daughter plays with her squirt toys in the bath tub.