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.

The Acid Bomb!

I have had my share of cranky teachers as I am sure all of you might have had at some time or the other.
My Chemistry teacher in my tenth grade was an eccentric gentleman named Joseph K. He was particularly notorious for his habit of bringing just one match in a matchbox to light the bunsen burner for his chemistry experiments and when that one fizzled out as it inexplicably did, there was the usual frantic search for a matchbox, much to our amusement and his annoyance.
There was one memorable incident that lies etched in my memory.
The event was the annual school science exhibition when each of us students tried to outdo each other to win the coveted first prize for clever tricks that could captivate the audience of the learned gentlemen who would turn out on the great day.
Mr. Joseph, MSc ,BEd was as usual in the lead with his bag of tricks which he delegated to us students. There was a mini oxygen plant, a chlorine plant and even a miniature soap factory. The sky was the limit to the imagination of our dear Mr.Joseph, post graduate gold medallist.
I was delegated with our teacher's pet project as I was known to have a keen interest in Chemistry which the other students found drab and usually boring.
The exhibit was a crude fire extinguisher contraption that consisted of simply a test tube of hydrochloric acid floating on a dilute solution of washing soda enclosed in a plastic container. I was aware of the technological working of the contraption but did not pay much heed to the practical implications of this seemingly harmless device.
For all I knew when I was asked to turn the enclosing plastic container that held the compartmentalized acid and bicarbonate of soda combination the acid would come in contact with the soda solution causing a lot of carbon dioxide gas to be produced which would vent out through a hole punched on the top of the container onto the source of a small fire, extinguishing it in the process. That was the basic idea of the fire extinguisher and how it was supposed to work.
On the great day we were all excited and in a mild tizzy. The chief guest was a high ranking official from the collector's office.
It was decided that the demonstration of my exhibit would be a one time affair and only to be performed in the presence of the chief guest. I waited anxiously as the chief guest escorted by the school principal, who happened to be my father, wound their way through the various exhibits on the way to mine.
At last the defining moment arrived. In the presence of the honored quests I briefly described the mechanism of the fire extinguisher and proceeded to turn it upside down trying at the same time to point the vent towards a small paper fire kindled explicitly for the purpose.
What happened next dumbfounded everyone including me. The reaction that occurred took place so rapidly and vigorously that the gas produced caused a mild explosion shattering the container that held it, spraying the guests and me with corrosive acid. I looked down to see my clothes drenched with acid, the cotton of my terry cot uniform having dissolved leaving threadbare terry line. There was a minor commotion as everybody checked to see whether anyone was hurt in this scientific experiment gone terribly wrong. Fortunately nobody was.
The chief guest had the grace to ask me if I was all right, ignoring the acid stains on his shirt and coat. Once the initial uproar subsided I slinked off unnoticed to change into a pair of new uniform.
When I returned Joseph sir had the brashness to offer me the opportunity to host his soap producing exhibit. I flatly refused, realizing the lesson I had so unfortunately learnt that day, on the danger of untested theory and practical use.
Later that night during supper at home, we all had a good laugh at the follies of our dear Joseph sir.

Chills at Frankfurt Airport

I have been reading several hilarious incidents at the airport by Mac and one by 3inOne. Well I too have a tale - one that happened on my visit to Germany a few years back.
I was working for a fully German owned firm and I had to be onsite for a couple of months as part of the job.
This incident happened on my return trip back to India.
My German boss had an intuitive dislike for Indian office products and he wanted his newly started office at Kochi to have the latest German stuff, right to a German-make stapler.
The night before I was supposed to leave Germany, I was awake late. After I had cooked supper, washed the dishes, had a bath and did a hectic quick luggage packing before I fell into bed like a log after putting the alarm for an early morning rise.
Next morning I overslept and when I woke I found I was just in time to board my commute to the railway station from where I would proceed onwards to Frankfurt to board my flight to India.
My boss had earlier mentioned to me that he wanted to add some stuff for his office in my luggage.
My check-in baggage was already fully packed, so there was only some space in my carry-on baggage where he could put stuff in. I didn't have a chance to notice what all he stuffed into the remaining space as I was busy with my last minute travel check list. I knew he was putting a dismantled CPU of a computer, because he had mentioned that earlier. All this he was packing into my carry-on baggage which I was supposed to carry onto the aircraft, the check-in baggage having to go into the freight section, to which I would have no access during my journey.
I arrived at Frankfurt airport in good time ( The train terminates just below the airport complex).
At the airport I had my luggage checked in and awaited the frisk of my carry-on baggage by the airport security. The guy who checked my luggage was a tall slim blond haired guy - a stereotype German.
As he passed my rucksack through the X ray machine, I thought I was finally done.
But staring at the screen he called me aside, and conspirationally asked me whether I had a pair of scissors in my luggage. I said I had: a small pair of surgical scissors that I used to trim my moustace. But he said it was something big, gesturing with his hand- did I have anything like that? I was nonplussed. Then he showed me an image of a huge pair of scissors that was silhouetted in blue on the X ray screen. He handed my rucksack over and asked me to open it. Nervously I opened it and put my hands into only to come up with a huge pair of scissors.
It came to me in a flash. This was one of the German stuff my boss wanted for his German office. There was sticking tape, a stapler and some other office riff-raff. But the scissors posed the immediate threat and I would be hard put to explain its presence. And the times were not too auspicious for this to happen too, it was not long before that 9/11 had happened and the security was as tight as ever at most of the airports I had passed through, particularly Qatar airport, on my transit.
Breaking my reverie, the security guy asked me if I would be returning to Germany again. I said no, which was the truth. But he seemed unhappy with the answer and repeated the question. Putting two and two together I got the point he was trying to make. "Yes", I said. "I will be returning soon. Or someone else from my company will for sure", which was not untrue.
Satisfied with my answer, the security person took the offending object wrapped it in a brown envelope noted my name on it and placed it on a rack. He then handed me a receipt and told me I could collect the item on my return back to Germany, but it was surely not allowed on the aircraft. That was indeed very diplomatic of the security officer. Thanking my stars for this not too sad ending, I boarded the plane with a light heart. A mallu hijack indeed!
You can read more of my German adventures here.

Set a thief to Catch a Thief!

Kumily is a picturesque stop before you cross the Kerala - Tamilnadu border. It also has a border check post where the police occasionally check passenger vehicles for contraband, read liquor, from neighboring states where the stuff is much cheaper, Kerala heavily taxing liquor sales.
I recently had the opportunity to pass through this route on my return from Bangalore.
As usual there was the routine police checking, but this time round, to my surprise, the guy who frisked our baggage was reeking of some cocktail he had imbibed a little while back.
Still he was steady on his feet and nimbly tiptoed to check the baggage stored on the overhead racks.
Next time you see liquor being confiscated, don't wonder where it disappears.
It probably is put to good use filling some ill-paid policeman's overfed belly.