The Sinful Penance

A major slice of my life was spent in a factory colony. The person with the highest resident post on campus was that of the Joint Vice President, held by an obese gentleman named Bordia. He was know to indulge in the most unhealthy of habits and hence the couple of extra kilos.
At a certain time of the year, anually, he took a ritualistic fast. It was supposed to be a religious affair, to wash him of all his past sins, which I suppose he really did need.
During the two week period he only had water and lemon juice to drink and a diet of dried grapes, almonds, walnuts, pistachio, cashews and exotic fruits and nuts which would surely make him a bit more ship shape.
We always knew when his fasting began, because precisely at that moment, the factory provision stores were in short supply of all the available fruits and nuts they kept. The big man is going on a fast was the rumor. I guess that period of sacrifice did him a lot of good and extended his blessed life for a few more years.
Once the fast was over he went back to his usual ways until the period of cleansing the next year!

Digested, Discarded....

Just a little time back a small news item made its way into local magazines. Reader's Digest was filing for bankruptcy and was on the verge of closure. It just made my eyebrows a little but I was not really surprised. Read it here.
Reader's Digest was my favorite reading material for a long time. It always motivated you, inspired you and made you think. It was not exactly a self help mag but what could rather be called a reality guide. It didn't ask you to do things to do better in life or even live a happier life, but told inspiring stories of those people who fought impossible odds and achieved all these.
I was so fanatic about RD that when I was in college I collected all past issues of RD dating back to the 60's from roadside book stalls selling second hand books. And I didn't regret spending my meagre pocket money on that.
Once I got hold of a copy there was no putting it down till I was through. The stories of other people in far away lands seemed to happen right in front of my eyes, so mesmerising the language was.
There were stories of people who had insufferable physical disabilities and how they beat the odds, ordinary people who achieved great feats or performed amazing tasks with just hidden inner strength as armor. There was entertainment too, with lots of word games, quizzes and puzzles and the inevitable jokes sections.
If anyone of you is/was a fan of RD I need not describe more.
Then I sensed the quality of RD declining. It was as if there was nothing more for them to write, or as if all the good writers had left RD lock, stock and barrel. The only stories they ever told was of people lost in some blizzard or some person fighting some animal in the Arctic wilderness, or surviving a dangerous avalanche or snowstorm. These stories I could not relate to, but RD kept repeating the theme again and again till you got dead bored.
I have never seen snow in my life and I could not visualize what agonies some person was undergoing in sub zero temperature. But what piqued me was that RD started having little variety from then on.
Late into my twenties I stopped reading RD completedy save for a copy or two a year, and even then I felt I was not missing anything much. RD had already dug its own grave.
And finally came the story of the collapse of the great RD.

Serpentine Tales

My Dad has been catching snakes for as long as I know. Not the usual snakes, but the more venomous types like the Krait, Viper and the occasional Cobra.
If you think he's the equivalent of the typical village snake catcher who is called when a snake is spotted in the village, then you are wrong. With a Masters in Zoology he knows the in and out of snakes, or for that matter most animals, birds, flora and fauna found in the Indian wilderness.
I remember during my childhood, his field trips to the jungles with school students whom he taught and I was totally awed when he returned with a catch of a venomous snake at times.
The unfortunate reptile would then most probably end up preserved in formalin solution, its jaws kept wide open with a pair of clips exposing evil fangs; or be skinned of its shiny hide and stretched out on pins hammered into a wooden plank.
He caught a lot of snakes, and surprisingly was never bitten by one.
Fearing that I too might have the idea of following his footsteps, he told me once, to never attempt to try to catch a snake, venomous or not.
As for me I am frightened of snakes, to tell the truth. The sight of a mere rat snake sends shivers through my spine and I can't distinguish a rat snake from a cobra!
Snake catchers are rare, and the fame of my Dad's snake catching skills spread far and wide wherever we stayed especially since we lived in snake infested areas. He was on call whenever a snake was spotted, but Dad only watched out for the poisonous sort. Armed with just sticks, he would incapacitate a snake with one hit behind the head and with another stick kept the snake's tail from flailing back at him in a whip like action.
Though I watched him several times doing this(mostly in semi darkness), the action was too quick for my eyes to discern so I cannot divulge the exact snake catching technique to would-be snake catchers who might be encouraged.
Once I had a talk with Dad about this snake catching business. I told him that snakes, venomous or not never attacked unless provoked (which was of course what I learnt from my schoolbooks :-D ). But Dad was adamant about one thing: snakes were not welcome where humans dwelled; they had to be got rid off.
One hilarious occasion occured on a Nag panchami day. This is the day when snakes are worshipped in many parts of North India and some parts of the South.
A King Cobra was spotted near the front door of our local Doctor's residence. My Dad was on a visit to a nearby house and on coming to know of the perilous discovery, prepared himself for one more serpentine encounter.
When he reached the doctor's house, a strange sight met his eyes. The Doctor's wife (who was also a teacher at the local school) was standing in front of the upright cobra, her hands folded in prayer, and a platter with vermillion and milk on the ready. No, she told my Dad, she wouldn't allow him to catch or kill the snake. It was Nag Panchami day and the appearance of the snake was a miracle!
Later, Dad told this story many a time to his friends,and us, and had a good laugh at the poor lady's expense. Superstition still held, even though the person was a teacher, and that too a Doctor's wife!

The Medicine Man

Venu was one of the three compounders of the hospital in the industrial colony where I spent most of my life. This unassuming guy had a very special skill when it came to medical knowledge. He knew exactly which medicine treated which ailment best; what could be the possible side effects; and his encyclopedic knowledge far exceeded those of any of the doctors who served at the hospital.
I would say his way with medicine and illness came from a gut instinct and not from any medical course of study since he was not even a matriculate.
It was rumored that he once practised as a "doctor" (cum midwife) in some remote village in the hinterlands and it was there he brushed up his medical skills to finesse.
Venu was also my close friend. By some strange coincidence he always happened to be on night duty at the hospital, the nights before I had my crucial graduate exams. Those days I used to stay up late at nights and to break the montony made a casual visit to the dispensary. Venu played the genial host by pilfering some of the resident doctor's imported filter tipped cigarettes from the locked drawer in the consultation room (which was a welcome change from my cheap filterless cigarettes that I offered him).
Once in a while, he brought out some antacid pep fizz from the dispensary store and we both had our equivalent of pepsi at hospital cost of course!
While we both puffed guiltily at the cigarette sticks, Venu, more at ease, would recount the latest rumor in the colony. Working in a colony hospital exposes you to all sorts of people and you get to hear the strangest tales from the myriad of people who come in daily. Many of those who reported ill were hypochondriacs. It seems their unhappiness with life gave them all kinds of imaginary ills ranging from stomachaches and backaches to chronic headaches, and Venu realised that rather than seeing a shrink they would feign physical ills. He would try to lighten their load asking some inquisitive question that he could later share with some other visitor for a few laughs. Most of these guys poured out the woes to the patient Venu; and the grouses they had against their superiors, their wives or the guy next door.
So Venu was a walking encyclopaedia of not only medicine, but the who's who and what and when of the colony!
The doctor who served at the hospital was one of the greedy types and he had a special arrangement with the private medical store that was just a short walk away from the hospital. The doc had a habit of prescribing costly antibiotics or anti-virals for the most common of ills, which would not be available at the dispensary and for which the poor patient would have to shell out a good amount of money at the medical store. Of course, it was Venu who spread the rumor(from reliable sources) that the good Doctor took heavy commissions from the medical store keeper in return for the favor. Venu even told patients to first see the doctor, then see him. He would then reduce the long list of medicines on the doctor's prescription to a shorter list and add some of his own. He sure had guts! But he was never wrong.
His treatment was highly effective and some of the patients came to the hospital only when Venu was around. Pregnant women made a beeline to him and he would dispense the best he knew of the do's and dont's of pregnancy.
For me, he was almost like the medicine men of lore for his treatment of illness had a magic touch to it. If it was just gut instinct, well then the voodoo men had that too!

Ulta Pulta Down South!

I copy below two separate snippets from two different female white bloggers on Kerala and its attire, that I chanced to come a long time ago, which I rediscovered today, which just proves how useful a photographic memory and GOOGLE can be! I apologise to these writers for anonymously harvesting their creativity but I am too greedy to let this opportunity pass :-)
The first one:

<chenoa>
I become more and more jealous of the men, who wear lungis, a long piece of cloth that is wrapped around the waist and worn as a long skirt. They usually fold up the bottom and tuck it into the waist, though, which provides a nice breeze. So while the women are wearing churidars (the pants and long shirts and shawls), the men wear lungis and show their legs. A bit different than the United States.
So have a good weekend and write if you have any questions!
</chenoa>


<sharell>
Ah, Kerala, the land of meeshas (moustaches) and mundus (sarong type cloth wrapped around the waist and worn like a skirt, similar to a dhoti).
The men of Kerala are constantly readjusting their mundus — folding them, draping them, and refolding them.
The mundu is particularly practical when walking through water during the monsoon season. No need to worry about getting the bottoms of your pants wet, just do a quick fold-up of the mundu, and you’re good to go!
However, in hot weather, the length of the mundu often becomes quite short, as the men folk aim to get some air flow to their nether regions.
While I was down Kerala way recently, I heard a joke. How do you know when the temperature is going to be extremely hot in Kerala? When the government issues a ban on the wearing of mundus. Hardy har har.
</sharell>

The original posts here, in case you are interested->

http://www.pcusa.org/missionconnections/letters/yav/yav_stockc_0411.htm
http://www.whiteindianhousewife.com/2009/06/india-photo-you-know-its-hot-in-kerala-when/

I would advise anybody to read the entire articles linked above, and yes, go through the commentary if you please!

Innocence Lost??

I always wondered what differentiates the offspring of Indian diaspora who opt to make a living in such far flung places as the Middle East; countries in unstable but oil rich countries in Africa such as Nigeria and Sierra Leone. I suspect one of the subconscious goals of expatriate Indians is to secure the future of their children.
Who else, but the son of an expatriate NRI can boast of driving an imported car by the time he is just out of his teens, or secure a prized seat in a prestigious college?
But what are the long term effects on the children? I don't think their parents gave much thought to this when they opted to fly off to alien lands.
The children confined to the airconditioned rooms of their flats miss out on the innocent pleasures of childhood. I know of children reared up in the middle east afraid of letting their feet touch sand! It is anathema to them, used as they are to the smooth floors of their dwellings, the carpeted cars that transport them to wherever they wish to and the marbled schooling institutions where they spend much of their time.
No playing with sand, no experiments with water and clay, no breath of fresh air outside their confined spaces!
Innocence lost!
Everyman poses an interesting observation - one he made on his sojourn to Saudi Arabia a few years back-
<quote>
The times arent changing, we are just getting smarter at an earlier age. But would that make us duller at an earlier age too? I wonder...
</quote>
The full post here
http://everymansdiary.blogspot.com/2007/02/just-kidding.html

Validating the sex field- FUN at work

It was a boring day at the office. We were doing some validation stuff on a couple of web pages. The team clown was doing some UI work on a page that had a textfield asking the user to enter his/ her sex. The valid options were Male, Female, Not Applicable.
The validation stuff done, the clown was trying to come up with an error message to display to the user on invalid entry.
"Sex is required", he muttered to himself.
The team wit laughed out loud and repeated, "Of course, SEX is required!".
The clown then said, how about "Sex is mandatory?"
"Yeah", echoed the wit, "SEX is mandatory."
Now we were all in splits.
Suddenly the team whiz came running into the cubicle with breaking news. "The requirements have changed. Sex is no longer mandatory, it is optional."
We all cried out loud in unision. "Of course, SEX is not required, it is optional."
So much for boring work hours.

Passport to Gaol

It was during my last month at my gig in Germany that I got an urgent mail from my brother saying that my father wanted to talk to me on an important issue.
A bit puzzled, I called India after work, from the office phone (the money for phone calls was deducted from my salary by the shrewd German overseer).
The first thing my father wanted to know was whether I had applied for my passport twice. I was bewildered. No, I replied. My father went on to inform me that the local police had come a-visting twice to my home in Kerala wanting to know whether I had committed the crime of applying twice for a passport.
I didn't take the matter too seriously at that moment. I was convinced it was a routine blunder by the police which they are so bound to make. I told my father I was sure this was some bureaucratic blunder and would sort itself out.
When I returned home to India, the police came visiting again. I was not at home. They informed my father that I had applied for a passport twice and they wanted to investigate. My father called me on my mobile and I talked to the police person who quizzed me on my passport number and other details. With a straight face I told him all I could. Then, a bit annoyed, I retorted, saying they were the people who had my passport details on their records and that I found it strange them asking me about it.
The policeperson was not impressed.
A few weeks later I got a letter from the regional passport office saying that they would have to confiscate my existing passport since I had committed the crime of applying for a passport twice. I made two trips all the way to the passport office at the State headquarters and met the passport officer in charge who said that the police had reported that two attempts were made to secure passports and the law would follow course. I even showed him a copy of the application letter that I had written out for the passport and tried to make him understand that I had no interest and no valid reason for filling out a second application. All this fell on deaf ears.
The next time the police came a hunting (again I was out) my Dad shelled out a couple of hundred rupees. The policeman realising that nothing more could be gained from this venerable looking gentleman quietly took the money and left.
There ended the mystery of the double passport applications.
The strange tale did not end there.
While waiting for my train home at Kochi railway station I found myself sitting next to a middle aged man. He was just on his way back from the regional passport office at Kochi. And he had a tale to tell similar to mine. He had been in the middle east for a good many years and when his passport was about to expire, applied for a fresh one. But he was now charged with illegally applying for a passport twice. And he faced the same punishment - confiscation of his passport.
But he said with determination - "I am ready to go to court on this matter, but I shall not bribe a policeman to get things sorted out." Brave words from an Indian, in a land where court cases are prolonged to no end and are a waste of both time energy and will power.
what other ways would these goons come up with, I wondered, to make a few extra bucks?

Never Say Die.....

Smoking Hypochondriac: Doctor! How do I begin? You know the graphics the damned Minister Ramadoss promised to put on cigarette packets ($#@#$%#& ... )?
Doctor: Yeah! I know. He did promise. But they have not appeared so far have they?
Smoking Hypochondriac: I don't need to! Coz I have already seen them! And the graphics on the package if they ever come will be too late!
Doctor: How come? That's strange!
Smoking Hypochondriac: I had a chest pain and a severe bout of coughing so I saw a chest specialist.
Doctor: And?
Smoking Hypochondriac: Well, he told me to have a chest X ray taken. And I did!
Doctor: Then?
Smoking Hypochondriac: The lungs! It was all rotten- I swear! Though the X rays were too hazy for me. And I fear I have ulcers in my mouth!
Doctor: Really? We need to do a check up and run some tests pronto! (Praise Ramadoss!) On the lighter side if what you say is correct we could send your chest x rays to the cigarette people so they could put it on their cigarette covers. The best graphics ever, I bet. You could even make some money that way! (Praise Ramadoss!)
Smoking Hypochondriac: Doctor, I also fear I have a stroke coming! I am dying, Doctor! Please help me!
Doctor: Now, now, be calm. Let us run those tests first. (Praise Ramadoss!) Don't get so excited. We are there to help you out.
Smoking Hypochondriac: And doctor, I am out of breath. The cigarettes did that to me. And I never suspected!
Doctor: OK... Let's put you on oxygen for half an hour. And I shall add an expectorant to it, so breathe easy. (Praise Ramadoss)
Doctor: Why don't you give up cigarettes, by the way? That's the best option you have right?
Smoking Hypochondriac: It's too late Doctor. Every time I think about my afflictions I reach out for a cigarette!
Doctor: Ok. First things first! First the chest x rays. Then oxygen and the decongestant; after that maybe some oral application for your mouth, and maybe we could do put you on some medicine to prevent that stroke you said was coming. (Praise Ramadoss!)

Will this happen to all of us one day?

In honor of the perpetual net surfer

Birth of a SalesMan

We have all had a brush with salesmen. You find them selling lottery tickets, mobile phone subscriptions, credit cards, bank loans, even safety pins and rubber bands; they promise you everything under the sun.
While travelling by the evening train to my hometown on Saturdays,I happened to come across a very astute salesman selling CDs which he claimed contained every single legal form you would ever need in your life - right from passport application forms to legal documents for your dying will. Presumably he had downloaded the online forms from government sites and burnt them onto CDs and then packaged them neatly in sealed covers with his photograph on it and a blurb saying that he held the patent for the contents within.
He started his promotional address with a challenging question - how many on the train had travelled to the state capital just to get hands on a legal form they needed for some urgent procedure or an application form for a government job?
With his CD, he claimed all that would stop. Every single form under the sun was now available on his CD- his patented product, he repeated. If the customer did not have a personal computer they could visit the nearest DTP center (found at every nook and corner of my home state mostly in the business of printing wedding cards and promotional brochures) where they could get a printed hard copy of the soft version.
Clever move I would say. Lots of people do a lot of unnecessary travel in their lifetime just to procure a necessary legal form - since the government is not yet so tech savvy and printed forms are the norm. If forms are available online, you wouldn't know the site to download it from and even then they were subject to frequent change and get outdated at a whim.
I saw things in a different light.
Procuring the government forms are only 10% of the pain. Forms are subject to frequent changes, almost once every year, as I mentioned earlier.
But the main headache is filling up these forms. The entries on goverment forms have very ambiguous and dubious titles which only the scribes sitting outside the goverment forms can discern and fill. If you attempted filling government forms by yourself, you would have to fill a couple of them until you came up with one which you presumed had all the correct entries. Even then, there was always the risk, that when you got back to the office to submit the form, the clerk in charge would dismiss your application with a shake of his head pointing to some entry which was wrongly filled in your carefully filled up application, and ask you to re-enter the details on a fresh form making you lose your time, money on a new form and more importantly losng your position on the never-ending que where you were. Filling up income tax return forms, filing for a fresh passport or a PAN card are big headaches that most would gladly pay an agent to fill up, paying a king's ransom in the process.
The salesman was playing up on those fears and he did get quite a lot of customers- many of them quite well educated, mostly middle aged gentlemen and old couples. when the salesman added that some young budding entrepreneur could also set up a small business just printing those forms from the CD and selling them to needy people who would otherwise would have to travel to the concerned government office to procure it. Some country bumpkins thought this was a good idea to make a quick buck(you see employment is still a big problem in my native state), and a few more CDs were sold.
I saw this partiucular enterprising salesman every single Saturday evening when I travelled home, for a couple of months, until one fine day, he simply vanished - perhaps sensing his game was up, afraid to face the ire of the more frequent travellers on the train who might have seen through his scheme guaranteed not to fail! These entrepreneurial salesmen!

Five Point Someone- A perfect 10

It seems I have been moving from Chetan Bhagat's (India's most widely read English author according to TIME magazine) less promising books to the better ones. I started off with One Night at the Call Center; on which I commented because I felt I had to, on his take of Indian Call Centers, since I am familiar with the BPO industry; moved on to his latest book, The 3 Mistakes of My Life, which I felt was utter trash and did not deserve comment, but finally discovered a gem in his first book, Five Point Someone - a book which he describes as, what NOT to do at IIT.
This book is well written so I wonder how I missed reading it in the first place. The plot and storyline of his book comes out as pretty realistic which describes life in the IITs but could pretty well be a scenario in any one of our Indian colleges.
The college where I studied in fact had many similarities to what he describes in his book.
Our college principal's daughter, was something of a college starlet and there was not a single desk in our college classrooms that did not have her name inscribed on it with pen or carved out with a blade by some daydreaming Romeo in the middle of a boring college lecture. Chetan Bhagat's character Neha, who is Professor Cherian's daughter in the book could pretty well be her equivalent.
Then I know a close friend of mine who never wrote a single exam without having a nip of whisky in him (just to loosen up his tension as he said!). But unlike our protagonist, Hari, in the book who found that vodka in him before the college vivas was an utter disaster, this friend of mine passed every exam that he wrote with flying colors!
The book pretty well captures how domineering, intimidating and bookish college professors can be, except for the rare one who truly inspires and will go to any lengths to help out a hapless student. He pretty well describes how boring college life, with inane lectures would be, without some of the colorful characters you would find around any campus.
The book is pretty well a mish mash of romance, comedy, dark humor, passion and a lot of laughs and he uses language pretty well to his advantage, sometimes resorting to Indian English. His mastery over description is captivating. For instance there is a scene in which Chetan describes Hari's interest in Neha's bare legs against her car's brake pedals on their first encounter- writing "how erotic a girl's naked feet on metal can be"!.
On the whole, a pretty wholesome book and I can say one of the good books that has come out of an Indian author without being too academic or classic. I would say populist literature without being too cheap. Worth a read, once, maybe twice.

The Scientific Disclaimer

Imbibing scientific temparament into oneself has been hammered into us time and again.
We are being spammed by results of scientific studies almost every day - on the net, in newspapers, on the TV, and in magazines too.
I came across an interesting study on how the world's most expensive coffee comes into being.
The initial discussion is how the Asian Palm Civet eats raw coffee berries which are defecated by this exotic creature, the beans then washed, and sold as coffee beans to make the world's most expensive coffee with a unique taste.
The study seems to suggest that the bean undergoes some sort of transformation within the civet's digestive system which gives the bean its unique flavor.
Then as a footnote, the study adds - the taste is unique quite probably because civets only forage on the most ripe berries and later excrete the seeds eventually used for human consumption.
Thank good for the disclaimer - now we can view things in a different perspective.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kopi_Luwak
Another study on a completely different topic claimed that pregnant women under stress bore children who had a much lesser IQ and had learning disabilites. The study was carried out in Alaska at a storm shelter where offspring born there were found to have a much lesser IQ, because their mothers were stressed up due to the natural calamity, the report said.
Then the disclaimer - the study carried out on pregnant women at the storm shelter, belonged to the lower strata of society and perhaps it was but natural that their children should have lesser IQ and poor coping skills.
Thanks to these disclaimers.
Red wine some researchers argue is good for the heart in small doses. But another study goes on to say that to get the right dose of the "good chemical" in red wine, one would have to imbibe the drink in such a huge quantity that it would be mortally fatal to an imbiber.
These pros and cons on every subject under the sun have been made public.
Scientists have been mixing up the cause and effect of phenomena for ages. And results of studies that could mean almost anything have been put up as venerable scientific studies.
So next time you read the results of a scientific study somewhere, take it with a pinch of salt.
Poetic license should not not be a word in the scientist's dictionary!

Courtesy - The Funny Malayalee Again

I am sure most Malayalees have heard of this one, but I am recounting it here just in case someone has not.
A prospective father in law was interviewing a prospective groom for his daughter in a sleepy old village in Kerala.
"Do you smoke?", was the elderly man's first question.
"No, I don't sir", replied the young man. And added in a low voice,"Except when I drink!"
"So you drink too, is it?", asked the old man sharply.
"Yeah, I do that, but not too often, except When we sit gambling cards below the coconut trees at night!"
The old man was agitated."So you gamble too, is it?", he pursued.
"Well, not often", replied the young man. "Except the nights when we plan a raid on the rich man's house to steal some gold!"

Babel Fish

I am going to start this post with a joke.
A man and wife with a small kid walked into a store and started talking to each other. To everybody around it sounded worse than gobbledygook.
One person in the crowd was a bit intrigued and asked the man, "I never heard that language anywhere. What language do you speak?"
The man pointed to himself and said, "I am Chinese. So I talk to my kid here in Chinese!" And then pointing to his lady companion, he went on,"This is my wife. She is Czech and she talks to our kid in Czech! And we both, husband and wife, talk to each other in English, coz that's the only language both of us understand!"
"Thats really strange!", exclaimed the third person. "Communication in your family must be a riddle!"
To this the Chinese gentleman smiled and said, "Yes, we call it Chinese Checkers(pardon the pun)!!"
Well reality is not always far behind fiction.
Coz we speak 3 different languages in our home. All the time!
It all started when our father was posted to a remote public school in the sugar belt of Western Maharahstra, when we were still small kids.
The local children knew only Marathi(yes, not even Hindi!) and our only way of communicating with them was through that language, which was even on our curriculum.
We picked up the language and were soon able to speak the language fluently.
Later as we grew up, we moved to Eastern Maharashtra, were the locals speak a kind of pidgin Hindi. We picked up that as well and adapted it as our mode of communication between us brothers. Our parents communicated with us in English, we answered back in Hindi and they themselves spoke to each other in our native Malayalam, which we understood very well, but did not speak or write.
Even when we grew up things did not change.
We brothers still speak to each other and our parents in hybrid Hindi with English words thrown in for good measure. Our parents speak to us in English with lots of Hindi words, while they still talk to each other in Malayalam, which we can grasp as well!
Wondering how all that silent interpretation and translation goes on in our heads?

Quiet flows (?) the Manimala

The mighty Manimala river winds its way through the heart of our hometown, Mallappally.
When I was a child I remember going to the Manimala river in the evenings, to have a bath with my two brothers accompanied by an elder. The water was warm and inviting, in sharp contrast to the cool evenings. I remember the golden sand on the banks glistening in the rays of the sun setting for the day.
The spot where the local people preferred to bathe was on a bend where the river made a sharp turn on its short trip to the sea. Vehicles crossing the river on the suspension bridge spanning the Manimala, one of the oldest of its kind in Kerala, could be seen making their way to the next township, a short distance away.
A clear stream that collected water from the numerous springs on the hilly countryside converged with the Manimala at that very place and the cool stream water intermingled with the warm river water to make it an ideal place to have a dip.
As the women from the water deprived homes left for the day after washing their dirty linen, we were left to ourselves to bathe, wrapped in our tiny threadbare cotton towels. We didn't know how to swim so we were warned not to venture into the midstream where the water flowed a lot faster due to strong undercurrrents.
All that has unfortunately passed.
Today nobody goes to the river to have a bathe any longer. Some women folk still go to wash clothes but that is out of sheer necessity as the summer dries up the household water wells.
In the rainy season the water swells and wreaks havoc in the low lying areas as usual, but the water is a muddy red and unfit to bath. In the summer the river all but dries up. People have started treating the Manimala as one giant garbage dump. The various streams that feed the mighty river are polluted with garbage of all sorts right from excreta to electronic waste. All these get carried to the river and going there to bathe is akin to drowning in poison.
The golden sands that adorned the banks too are no longer there. It has simply vanished thanks to the intense sand mining by the sand mining mafia out to make a quick buck selling the sand for building purposes. The suspension bridge is no longer stable thanks to the sand mining. Its pillars are weak and have been strengthened with concrete struts.
My mind misses goes back nostalgically to those days when we used to make the short trip to the river for our weekly bath and prance around on its once golden banks in utter glee.

A tribute to the funny Malayalee

Malayalees are a funny lot. I would say they are the Indian counterparts of the Irish in the UK.
They see something funny in almost anything, sometimes at serious issues too.
I recollect some stories my father used to tell us when we were kids.
One of them is still fresh in my mind.
Private buses operate in most of Kerala. So the owner of a bus fleet was interviewing potential conductors for a job. There was a huge rush of candidates thanks to the unemployment problem in Kerala.
The bus owner asked each candidate to perform a single task. The task was to stuff a brand new matchbox with matchsticks from another new matchbox. In other words two matchboxes in one.
The enlightened gentlemen who were asked to do this refused to do so, considering it simply illogical, saying that it just could not be done.
Finally a smart young man took the two matchboxes as the others watched in disbelief. He removed a few sticks and placed them into the other. Then again a few sticks were transferred. This went on till the matchbox he was filling started bursting at the seams. Still he went on. Then finally he was putting each match, stick by stick into the overfilled box.
He was about to continue unmindful of the other people who were watching dumbstruck, when the bus owner motioned him to stop.
"I very well know that the task is impossible. But I wanted one of you to try it. The idea is, you need to try to cram more and more people in my buses even when they are jam packed full!", he said with glee.
The young gentleman got the job.

Another instance goes to a time when the British were still ruling India. The English brought a lot of changes to India, their biggest gifts being the railways, the other being the English language.
When the Englishmen started raising poles to lay the electric and telephone lines, the locals were suspicious and dismayed.
"They are putting poles into the ground, tying them up with electric ropes to pull India towards England!", was one wise goon's opinion.

Another story I have to relate might irk feminists, so my apologies to them. Everyone has heard of the obese uncle who seemed pregnant. Well this one has a similar twist.
The lady teacher was giving a Biology class to a class of toddlers. Thumping her chest the saree clad lady said emphatically, "This is where the lungs are".
Next day the lady came to the same class wearing a salwar - kameez. I can see your lungs, now, madam!" one of the toddlers exclaimed pointing at her breasts!
Just to prove my point here is a funny take on the IT recession by the Funny Malayalee :-D
http://www.technoparktoday.com/2009/02/technopark-ottanthullal-video/
And another one:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FpQkc7CMqLc

All that glitters...

This incident took place in the early eighties when I was still in my upper primary class.
We had a lot of stuff to read in our house. My father subscribed to The Blitz, The Times Of India and the now defunct Illustrated Weekly of India (then edited by the most venerable Khushwant Singh). So we were never really short of reading material.
The Illustrated Weekly reserved its last page for classifieds and one advertisement insert that appeared week after week caught my fancy. It was an advert for a mini printing press. It promised to print wedding cards, visiting cards and anything that came to your imagination.
I was intrigued by this product and I mentioned this to my father one day. He brushed it off as a child's immature fancy. But week after week I saw the ad and got more and more excited about it.
Finally my father told me he would order the product. It cost 30 rupees which was quite a sum in those days. The order was supposed to be placed by VPP(Value Post Payable) which meant that we would have to pay the postman the amount before we could open the package.
I waited anxiously for the mini printing press and started dreaming of all kinds of thing I would be able to do with it.
It was a long wait but one day finally the printing press arrived. The postman handed over the package, my father paid the money and I tore open the bundle as soon as I could.
To my dismay what was supposed to be a "printing press" was just a collection of rubber blocks with inverted letters embossed on it. There was a small holder for the these blocks and an ink stamp pad came with it. It was just a crude rubber stamp.
I tried arranging the letters on the holder to spell out my name. I pressed it against the pad and tried to make an impression on paper. But it was a clumsy process. The letters fell out and if they didn't, the impression was imperfect with some letters not producing any imprint, being misaligned.
I was dismayed.
My father laughed. He said,"Let this be your first lesson in life about buying. You always have to be careful of being cheated".
I wondered whether my father indeed had an idea of what the so called printing press would be, when he placed the order.
I never bugged my father for anything after that, until I reached the 10th grade when I asked for, and got a typewriter which proved out to be a real utility and on which I drafted my first story which appeared in a local english magazine in serialized form.
I had learnt an important lesson in life - things are not always what they seem.
Later in life I saw some weird products some of my friend bought on the internet. A mosquito killer arrived in the form of a hammer and a plate. There were spurious products which promised to produce rays which would repell anything from flies to rodents.
I smile now, when I think about that mini printing press and what it turned out to be and what it taught me.

Chicken poop for the soul

Not long ago the city of Bank-lure which was the capital of the ancient land of Canara-arctic was known as the Garden City. It was a clean and green city with wide boulevards and lush greenery on either sides and neat gardens with trimmed grass lawns dotting the city. The weather was akin to that of European lands with mild winters and warm summers and people came from far away lands just to sit in the gardens and enjoy a quiet picnic.
Bank-lure was the chosen destination for people to retire. People retiring all kinds of jobs from government services to the military liked its quiet ambience and idyllic lifestyle.
Soon all that was too change.
Multi-nationals from the West and home-bred multinationals saw in Bank-lure their chosen destination for setting up offshore software development centres. The weather was a plus point and its proximity to nearby lands which had a huge resource pool of well educated professionals was an added bonus.
The government of Canara-arctic welcomed these huge corporations as they saw in these industries, a milking cow for cash and also a potential employment provider for locals and the fact the huge salaries paid to the highly skilled professionals these companies attracted, would ultimately trickle down to the locals. In addition to the fact these were non-polluting industries unlike those in the neighbouring bigger cities.
In short it was a win-win situation for all those involved.
Soon software development hubs sprung up everywhere and yuppies from nearby lands thronged the city. Bank-lure became their land of opporunity.
These yuppies did not mind paying some extra money for whatever they required, be it food, clothing, shelter or trips in an autorickshaw, as they believed they had to maintain a lifestyle akin to their status in society.
Then things turned real ugly.
The poor auto drivers who once were very careful to charge passengers by the automated fare meter, found life getting difficult for them. They had to pay higher prices for basic food items, as the yuppies were ready to pay more for the same stuff causing the shopkeepers to start selling cut-rate items at cut-throat prices. The auto guys had to struggle with their housing because all of a sudden every cent of land became a goldmine for real estate developers. The auto drivers could not send their children to good schools as all the seats were already filled up by children of yuppy families. With no other option left, the auto drivers too hiked their fares. They started billing ordinary people for just waiting in the mad rush hour traffic jams for hours, caused basically by people moving from point A to point B and another set of people moving from B to A. The roads choked with traffic exhausts.
With the higher auto fares, the auto drivers found that they could send their children to better schools, buy prime land to stay and eat nutritious food. For this they charged the poor yuppies sky-high fares. Being inherently thrifty, they thrived.
The yuppies liked to work hard and party hard and they were paid well, so they thought. They didn't mind paying a bit of extra money for buying some goods or paying the auto drivers higher fares. They didn't mind going to hotels and bars with their colleagues just to half-eat a special food dish and leave.
The real estates developers, the shopkeepers, the hotel owners all joined the rat race.
Prices went sky high until the yuppies could take it no more. But they had a lifestyle to keep. The salary received at the beginning of the month vanished by the end of the month. If a month's salary was missed due to illness, they had to borrow from friends to cope with the rest of the month's expenditures.
Land prices shot sky- high, the gardens disappeared and huge high rises came up to cater to the software industry and residences for software employees.
The banks and the financial institutions did not like to be left out. The yuppies no longer to be able to pay in cash now bought desirable objects on credit, courtesy the banks with just a payslip as a promise that the money would be repaid.
Newly married yuppies bargained with shopkeepers for each and every thing they bought, be it a new TV for their home or a dish washer or a apartment in a high-rise.
The city was dying, literally, throttled by software yuppies and the culture they bought with them.