FOMO on a Silver Jubilee!

Finally, yours truly now has something more silver to look forward too than just the silverware at home or a scanty silver haired cranium.

We touched our Silver Jubilee as wedded husband and wife. 25 years back, falls under the prehistoric era in the evolution timeline of the so-called Big fat Indian weddings. Those days the weddings were neither fat nor were the bride and the groom, they looked famished by the end of the wedding ceremony, and with no Toni or Guy around to make us look like a Bollywood hero or heroine and we also did not have the right lighting to make us look fairer than we claimed in our matrimonial ads.

To reminisce the day, I had a glance at our Wedding Album after ages... Was shocked to see, I had been devoured from the cover page of the album by other inmates who co inhabited with us the last 25 Years. Wondered why only I was taken apart while my wife was still smiling, consoled myself saying I must have been the sweeter of the two! When I saw a copy of the same picture, I realized I was all sweaty, famished and glaring without any emotions and the photographer then did not have the tools nor the skills to make me look otherwise... The insect inmates must have mistaken me to be glaring at them and devoured me to glory.

The entire ceremonial affair was done and over with in less than 72 hours, and I’m talking about the engagement, marriage and in some cases even meeting the girl / boy for the first time. The closest I got to the Sangeeth ceremony of today was when the cab driver of the car I was travelling in for my engagement churned out a creaky version of Congratulations and Celebrations from his archaic car stereo!!!!

Less talked about the photo shoots of the days the better. It was more like a shoot at sight for me. May 18^th in Madras is like being barbecued and here comes the photographer with super bright lights at my face, the heat from which literally tanned me and took the sheen out of the efforts I had put in to look fairer the previous evening.

The staple menu in almost all weddings was, a Biriyani followed by a scoop of vanilla ice cream and if you are lucky they would throw in a few pieces of fruits of the season and viola you had a fruit salad too.

Fast forward to today, The Indian wedding industry is a 159 Billion Dollar industry, starting from hiring the likes of a globe-trotting Seema Taparia for your match making which technically was a freelance activity for your neighborhood aunties then, to date nights that cost a bomb now which were limited to samosa cut in two and a cutting chai then. Not to forget the tribe of Wedding Planners who would go any length to ensure you were shot from tree tops or underwater, bedeck your venue with Tulips from Keukenhof, Michelin Star Chefs would be dishing out the choicest Foie gras and Sushi and finally not to forget the designer wear that might look good at Met Gala events but not quite designed for Madras Kathri in May.  Ah and not to antagonize the senior citizens of the household, add a dash of tradition too into this cacophony with the likes of Mehendi and a Haldi ceremony which is a fixture, irrespective of the cast or creed you belong too, they would justify it saying after all turmeric is just an anti-oxidant. Mind you, this trend is not just confined to the ultra-high net worth strata but has trickled down to the middle and lower middle-class India too, albeit in a marginally scaled down fashion.

The latest addition to destination wedding is in a space capsule and to add salt to the wound it was announced on 18^th May 2023 exactly 25 years after I got married. You can have up to 8 guests in the capsule that will take you 100,000ft above poor Earth and will also feature a play list, my guess is that Stairway to Heaven would feature in them and how much more literally closer can you to get to the old adage “Marriages are made in Heaven”, but the Indian version says for it to last, it should be written in the stars. So, all you folks who are going up there please read the script on the stars as well and pray that it lasts on humble earth too.

As we celebrate our Silver Jubilee, I am going through a sense of FOMO (Frustration Of having Missed Out) on all of the above. I want to shake a leg, but cannot, as the knees are creaking, had hair then but no stylist or a head spa, designer wear these days come only in slim & super slim sizes and on the best days I can fit just about an arm into these shirts, the closest I get to haldi is in our kitchen while cooking and no drone photo shoots from tree tops for me, else they will capture a barren head. Wish I was born 25 years later!!! Having said that, I still cherish going through those moth-eaten photographs in my wedding album and vividly remember every guest who came on stage (and the gift he / she gave me). I can vouch, this joy, no wedding planner or a big fat wedding can give.  

Here’s Wishing my wife of 25 years all patience and strength with help from all Gods & Stars to endure another 25 with this annoying man!!! 

...and the final whistle is here!

 The final whistle of the FIFA 2022 is just less than 8 hours and with the end of another year in 12 days, I thought It would be best to end my rather inconsistent blogging year with my views on the World cup and the bon-homie around it, as I had the fortune of living in the host country and be part of the festivities first hand.

From the time, the State of Qatar won the rights to win the World Cup on 2^nd December 2010, I have been fortunate to have played a small part in the related infrastructure works starting from the City that is hosting the finals, the Stadiums and the Drainage networks around the country, it gives me a sense of joy and pride to have been part of this history.

Though not an ardent football fan, I tend to follow only the World cups and the earliest in memory is the 1986 World Cup in Mexico which was famous for the wrong reasons with Diego Maradona’s Hand of God becoming more famous than God gifted feet of his. I was 14 when that happened and here I am 36 years later watching it with my daughter all of 14, as World Cup unfolds in front of her. I followed a world cup on paper while she was fortunate to actually watch it live. Football or for that matter any sport has evolved greatly over this period of 3.5 decades and had there been a VAR then, Argentina might not have qualified and gone on to win the world cup. That was a period when God played a hand and technology was not around, but in my opinion, technology brought in that unwanted perfection to sports.

My knowledge of football continues to be pathetic so much so that if they call an offside now, I am immediately reminded of how brilliant Vishwanath & Ganguly were on their offsides while it is scorned upon in Football. Its not that I love football less but I love cricket more.

As someone who witnessed this from close quarters I can say this was a seamlessly organized World Cup with close to 25K volunteers of diverse nationalities putting in their heart and soul with a smile to welcome the world to Qatar. I am no FIFA guru to compare it with the rest of the World Cups but from a resident, and an unbiased spectator point of view I can say the organizers did not leave a stone unturned.

As in any GCC country the Indian population which is a predominant one, found itself in the thick of things and this was the first time a World Cup happened closest to the Indian Subcontinent, the time difference being a mere 2.5 hours.  The majority of the Indian diaspora come from Kerala which unlike the rest of India love their football. Can’t blame them as the state’s only notable contribution to Indian cricket has been the fiery Sreesanth and the constantly fired but always fired up Sanju Samson. Messi, Ronaldo, Neymar and even some of the un-pronounceable Croatian & Polish players were worshipped as Gods in Kerala, some went under water with a hoarding of Messi, some prayed for him in institutions cutting across the sensitive religious divisions. The Keralite fans sporting the favourite team jerseys outnumbered and out voiced the native Brazilians and Argentinians and luckily their jerseys were not the ‘Besharam Rang’ (thankfully Netherlands were ousted in the Semis!). Though there was an entourage of Bollywood and Mollywood Celebrities including Deepika Padukone who will unveil the World Cup later today, I am hopeful someday a country of 1.3 billion people produce 11 Mbappés to pose an Indian challenge in the World of Football, and graduate from being just super fans to players to watch out for. Waiting for the 1983 moment in Indian Football!

As the curtains come down on the month long festivities in my adopted city, I can vouch that this has been a truly inclusive and the most diverse world cup, but at the same time one which glaringly highlighted a deepening East-West divide.

No country or region can claim the right to a sport. Cricket is a testimony to that. A sport has no boundaries, only rules. Anyone who is skillful enough and can play by the rules can claim the sport to be his/her/their own too. As the FIFA Qatar 2022 tagline goes Now is all...I certainly believe Now is just the beginning to all. Mexico / America / Canada are all set to host the next World Cup in 2026, from the diversity point of view I believe you will see Tacos, McDonalds and I don’t know much about Canada, just like the visitors knowledge was limited to Shawarmas in Qatar. No offense to any one from those three countries, my excuse is that I am as ignorant as you folks there in the west when it comes to the knowledge of Geography and culture on the other side of the world.

Sangamam ‘94

Circa 1989, the month of December… Virat Kohli was in his diapers and Mark Zuckerberg was 5 Years old, an entire bunch of teenagers in the city of Madras were honing up their skills in Calculus, Organic Chemistry, Optics etc. The only street corner discussions were…Machan DOTE 1 or DOTE 2?

For the uninitiated DOTE stands for Directorate of Technical Education, 1 falls into the tier of the erstwhile Government Engineering Colleges while DOTE 2 comprised of a bunch of Private Colleges at its infancy in Madras.

The objective was getting into one of them. The buzz words that did the rounds were cutoffs, management quote, DOTE 1, DOTE 2, Mechanical, Civil or Electronics Engineering. The options were few then.

Finally come August 1990, destiny brought a bunch of guys and girls from very diverse backgrounds,  some first time literates from their respective families, some first time graduates, some first time Engineering aspirants  and finally some children of Professors of Engineering in the erstwhile Institute of Technology in Madras. That was how diverse we were. Yet on day one, the fateful day, we made our journey down the muddy two lane highway called the Old Mahabalipuram Road to our destination for the next 4 years, Hindustan College of Engineering, as one bunch of naïve unsure teenagers dressed like POW’s with shirts out, bathroom slippers and all, fearing the wrath of the ‘Seniors’ and their unwelcome initiation ceremonies. After spending the first year mostly in fear and anxiety with a close knit bunch, we went our ways in the sophomore year to pursue careers in Mechanical, Civil or Electronics and Communication.

The drafter was the aspiring Engineers Stethoscope; we took great pride in flaunting it just to keep our neighborhood aware that we are pursuing what every Indian parent dreamt of. A Degree in Engineering.

In Mechanical from where yours truly is from we encountered, TOM, SOM and DOM. It translates to Theory of Machines, Strength of Materials and Design of Machines and all these books were written by one Khurmi who ended up giving us nightmares for the next couple of years. My favorite though was a book on Thermal Engineering by one P. L Ballaney. It was hard bound book and had just the right number of pages when wrapped with a towel would support your cranium well and thereby transferring the contents directly to your brain, or so we believed.

We were a special bunch of kids is what I always felt. We entered the last decade of a millennium looking forward to a new one with aspirations and ambitions. While the Berlin wall was torn down and Nelson Mandela walked free the first disruptions in technology were also happening.  The internet was at its infancy, Email was just taking shape, transition from rotary dial to digital keypad phones were making its appearance, and by the time we reached our final year mobile phones were making its way  in developed countries but was yet to reach the shores of India. The seeds of disruptive technologies that we see today were sown during the period we spent in college.

25 years on, here we are with distorted waistlines and receding hairlines, but armed with titles & designations  prefixing and suffixing our names that mean nothing when we are with our bunch of  old friends to celebrate the emotions we went through on day one and the subsequent years we spent at HCE in the then sleepy hamlet of Padur.

Back to the city and the campus filled with emotions and rightly so.  They say Madras is an emotion and Chennai is a city. We have returned to the city 25 years on to celebrate and relive the emotions we left behind.

A Dodransbicentennial Tribute

Do…Dodran…bi…Yeah that’s exactly what we are celebrating.  It doesn’t matter if you couldn’t a) pronounce it b) didn’t know the meaning. This is addressed to the erstwhile alumni of Christ Church Anglo Indian School who were taught to pronounce it and spell it, right after they had learnt the meaning of a word by distinguished teachers who continue to, not only live in our hearts but also in our acts.

Some good souls got together and decided that it would be a good idea to celebrate the milestone and the process of informing the diaspora spread far and wide began, thanks to the people connecting tools these days like WhatsApp & Telegram, they came in droves.  60 year olds were sharing anecdotes on managing the Traffic as teenagers on the erstwhile Mount Road, when it was still in a manageable state, with childlike exuberance, the 50 year olds wanted to play a game of Bank, River, Ocean, Sea & Land (More about this game later) overrating the strength of their aging knee caps, the 40 year olds were lamenting that the women folk were not well represented, well what else can they think of in their 40’s!

It was a potpourri of emotional outpouring. Indeed a pleasant sight to see the virtual banters between very eminent groups of alumni. How each went on to be distinguished in their chosen paths is always surprising, when looking back we were indulging in our scholastic exploits in a school sandwiched amongst five movie halls. The Eastman colored hoardings around us outnumbered the black boards in the school and it took some really eminent set of teachers to make the black boards more attractive...  In contemporary terms it’s like asking a kid to study in a room with multiple play stations switched on. That’s exactly where we had our first lessons in developing a monk like concentration on the job on hand.

All of us would have passed through many other Institutions during our academic pursuits after we stepped out as naïve 15 years olds from its portals. However the strength of the bond to this particular alma mater comes a close second to the umbilical one.

Many eminent historians have chronicled the history of the school and I would not even attempt it.  I would confine myself to a couple of trivial experiences on the campus which I’m sure many would identify themselves with…Here we go.

As soon as the Investiture Ceremony for a particular academic year was over the eagerly awaited part was the duty rooster that was published. The most sought after duty was the one guarding the narrow strip that connected the Boys side and the Girls side part of the campus. I would like to call it The Wagah of Christ Church sans the hostilities. It was a border that was always manned and ‘womaned’ during the breaks.  Many a crushes & many a friendships have blossomed at that border.

Corporal punishment was so common on the campus. Never have I seen an incident when a parent walked up and defended their wards action.  Try it today and the kids and the parents slip into depression. The only depression we knew in those days was the one that passed over the Bay of Bengal that later manifested itself into a cyclone. Each of our teachers had what I call a patented approach to corporal punishment. One still stands out vividly in my memory and yes… ouch…my ear lobes are hurting when I think of this. The ritual starts with both your earlobes being gently primed / massaged and was later used as a lever to pull you back and forth, increasing the intensity on the earlobe with each to and fro movement all along narrating the gory details of your misdemeanor. This ended with a simultaneous release and slap on both cheeks. The timing and the synchronization of this mode of punishment was executed with clock like precision and with the elegance of a ballet artist. The even more painful part was that this act was performed in the august presence of your class mates some of whom were your partners in crime.

The games we played on the campus were also quiet unique and very indigenous. One of them was a game Bank, River, Ocean, Sea, Land that was played on the church steps. I have been trying to dig up the origins of this game for many years but in vain. There surely should be an inventor and anyone who can throw some clues on this would be suitably rewarded on the day of the event. 

While we exhibited the stiff upper lip behavior most of the times the Madras in us came up once in a while. That’s how a game called Kallangole was born. The game was played at the end of the Kite season. The campus used to reverberate with the chants of ‘Any Maanja!!! Any Saada!!! Any Twine!!! It was said with the same poise with which one would narrate an Alfred Lord Tennyson or a Wordsworth in the class rooms.

Come 26^th November we gather as a family to not only celebrate a milestone but to share reminiscences of the days spent, honor people who facilitated it and above all a day to give back to the institution that has played a key part in shaping you.

A Madras boy makes Chennai proud!

I sometimes wonder we in India are a selfless lot, since we take great pride in chest thumping a fellow Indian’s achievement with gay abandon. Indian media these days goes a step further and makes it a point to celebrate the occasion by giving us a byte from the tea shop from where the celebrity had his last bite.

We just don’t praise him we leave no stone unturned to claim our share of the limelight. Someone or the other knows the someone who knew someone who was close to our new found celebrity. Call this 6 Degrees of separation from fame?

The elevation of Sundar Pichai as the CEO of Google today is one such incidence that has gone berserk on the social media. Well here’s my share of claim to his fame, we were born in the same year and his birth date (12) happens to be a mirror image of mine (21), and that’s not all, we share a rare numerical connection, the squares of the birth dates are also mirror images of each other. Wow! So you see how close we were!

It is indeed commendable that a Gen X compatriot went on to head a company without whose help Gen Z would not survive today. From an Indian perspective the rise of these guys was inevitable. Thanks mainly to the institutions set up in the 50’s and 60’s; within years of gaining independence, such visionary decisions on setting up of educational institutions of quality have gone a long way in shaping the nation. Irrespective of political affiliations I believe this need to be acknowledged and appreciated. A true example of one reaps, what one sows.

The eighties and the early nineties were the coming of age of these institutions and the products of these institutions during these years were juxtaposed between an opportunity filled fast moving world and a complacent India that had lost its fire-in-the-belly post-independence.

This was essentially the pre coaching center, pre-parental aspiration era. An era when the parents were too poor to have aspirations and the kids were so full of dreams, so much so, they forced their parents to reluctantly toe the line. Toe the line, not to enrol them into the most successful of tuition / coaching centers but just to buy them an air ticket to pursue their dreams, the dream they had achieved by sheer hard work and nothing else. Unfortunately, today it’s a reversal of roles, the parents are full of aspirations and the kids are too poor in spirit to dream!

Congratulations Sundar Pichai, this is definitely not a rag to riches story, all stories of our era are Kumar shirts to Louis Phillipe. The middle class successes that we see these days are not just stories but epics that need to be well documented, the good and the bad. Otherwise why would the first Mc Namarical performer from India be behind bars now? So enjoy your moment of glory responsibly with the usual Madrasian humility.

The Madras boy, who is today in the limelight was born and brought up in Madras and left it before it became Chennai and returned to bring glory to Chennai. What Madras sowed then, Chennai reaps today.

A sound and smell take on Madras

I see so much being written about the city I grew up in as it celebrates 375 years of it's coming into existence. The reason I write this is also because of the fact that I keep reading articles on Madras by people 30 and below who write about Saarang and not Mardi Gras or from people who were 50 and above who write about the time when the Adyar river was still used as a means of transportation. The other reason is the fast narrowing gap on the difference in the number of years I spent outside Madras and in it. As though, prophesied, I left the city of Madras the year it changed its identity to Chennai, circa 1996, after having spent 24 years in the city. I dread the time I will turn 48 because that's when I have to end up equally sharing the period of my domicile status with a couple of other Middle Eastern cities.

Here is a take on how nostalgia can trigger you, courtesy wikepedia.

‘The scientific literature on nostalgia is quite thin, but a few studies have attempted to pin down its essence and causes. Smell and touch are strong evokers of nostalgia due to the processing of these stimuli first passing through the amygdala, the emotional seat of the brain. These recollections of our past are usually important events, people we care about, and places where we have spent time. Music and weather can also be strong triggers of nostalgia.’

So here I am trying to use sound and smell to bring to you the nostalgic journey of a die-hard Madrasi.

You can go to bed in a neighborhood called Border Thottam, where the lullaby would comprise of the sound of the choicest words from the original Madras Tamil literature the kind of o..., kasmaalam, kaidhey and the likes, addressed by a rickshawkaaran high on a round of sarayam, the local brew or the potlam the local potent smoke, followed by an interlude coming from vessels being thrown around and conclude with the so far patient wife thrashing the day lights out of him and then the thuds of thumping her heart, not as a sign of victory but as an act of cursing her fate . In the very same city in another part you can wake up to the strains of suprabadham making its way through your windows. Or a song from an Illayaraja number playing in your next door tea shop. The strains of 'sa re ga maa' from the paatu class or the 'thyyum thatha thayyum thaha' from a dance class in the neighborhood. The call of the old newspaperman or the kaikarikaran, the mobile vegetable vendor breaking the afternoon silence with his call for business which actually sounds like it follows all fundamentals of Carnatic music or the late night arrival of the cotton candy (sonpapadi) man ringing a bell. Or simply close your eyes and stand in T Nagar and hear the din, for some, but music for others like me, or the call to business in the zambazaar fish market. The kaaapi kaapiy call as the Madras Mail pulls into Arakonam junction and after you alight from the train the ‘side, side’ call of the coolies or the ‘meter mela 10 rubaa savaari’ negotiations with the omni present autokaaran who you can hear before you can actually see them. The mother of all sounds of Madras ironically is the music associated with the final rituals en route ones heavenly abode. I have always wondered that the rhythm associated with the ‘Saavu mollam’ could actually bring back the dead.

In a recent tribute song called the Madras song by Murugappa Group and The Hindu as part of the Madras day celebration the lyrics went thus 'Vasanai thaan enga GPS' literally translated as we use our olfactory enabled GPS. I know it is debatable and taboo to talk about the scents of Madras. However I intend venturing out on it. Sitting in a window seat of an erstwhile PTC bus, try and do a Parrys to the South of Madras trip, the fragrance in the air to begin with is jasmine from the flower bazaar which gets a little adulterated as we pass the Napiers Bridge this turns to a musky smell of salty air from the Bay of Bengal and then we smell the strong aromatic balm we associate with colds and coughs as we cross the Amrutanjan factory on Luz Church Road. On the way we cross a shrimp processing unit followed by a cookie (more commonly known as the butter biscuit) factory. This gives you a feeling that you have had a seafood meal followed by the choicest of cookies on cream as deserts. Small joys I say. As the bus passes a funeral procession, this is when the smell and the sound of Chennai get juxtaposed. You smell the rose petals and tap your feet to the rhythm of the saavu mollam. So if you ever were to be kidnapped in the city blindfolded you exactly know the route you are taken.

The landscape of the city may change over the years, the memories that one has from the senses above are the ones that are retained for decades. Madras might not look the same anymore but it still does smell and sound the same for me always though with some minor variations.

Happy Madras Day to all.

A MALTAN's tribute to Madras.

As the Madras day celebration is now an extended affair from a day event to a monthly one I thought I should contribute to its history through my history in this wonderful city. I lived in Madras from 1972 to 1996 and all along during this period I never knew Madras Day was on the 22nd of August. I was pretty surprised that the city suddenly thought about celebrating its birthday since 2004 and that’s a clear 360 odd years after its birth. It was so, due to the efforts of a few people which included the likes of the historian Mr. Muthiah is what Wikipedia says and I'm happy for that, since no one better than the respected Mr Muthiah. The doyen who has chronicled Madras history more than anyone else deserves to be credited with the evolution of this event.

I write this because I owe a lot to this city; Madras is what made me what I’m today. Let me first introduce myself, I’m neither a hard core Dravidian nor a part of the much accomplished and more re-known member of the Tambram community that shaped the intellectual and artistic landscape of this city.

I am a MALTAN. There is no chance that you might have heard of this tribe or usage before, since I just coined it as I was writing this piece. No, I don’t come from Malta, I’m someone who was just born in Gods own country, Kerala, but over the years have made Madras my home. MALTAN is a word I coined which could sound more like the anglicised version of MALAYALATHAN which I was referred to, during my growing up days in Madras or an amalgamation of a MALyalee, living, adapting and imbibed in the TAmiliaN culture, just like the way the word TAMBRAM was born. In fact we had a lot of stuff common with the Tambrams except the Non veg part. We were a community that challenged them intellectually and earned our place in the multifaceted society of Madras. We (as in TAMBRAM and us) both belonged to the erstwhile Forward Community as per records irrespective of our economic or social standing, which means we were the only ones to compete with each other when it came to admissions to professional colleges and I still wonder how a SYRIAN Christian could NOT find his way to the list of minority communities in Madras.

The Maltan’s contribution to Madras has been awesome. We played a pioneering role in the economy of the city ranging from tyres, carpets and all the way to jewellery. We also did take part in creating some of the great educational institutions in Madras. More importantly my mother’s contribution was that she managed to teach each of our domestic helps Malayalam but managed to learn bits of pieces of Tamil, while my dad has learnt to read Tamil from all the wall posts of Thina Thanthi and Thina Malar and I can narrate a piece out of Silapadigaram or a few couplets from Thirukural. This is how we have managed to merge with the society. This is what gives me hope of surviving in the Middle East without knowing Arabic.

I deliberately left out a profession practised by the Malayalees in Madras which I felt needs a higher stage than the ones listed above. The term Malayalathan came into existence only due to the efforts of malayalees who set up Tea stalls across the length and breadth of Madras which was further propagated by movies churned out of Kollywood. Any TEASTALL in Madras in those days was referred to as Nair kadai irrespective of whether it was owned by a NAIR or not, just as any provision store was referred to as Nadar Kadai.

Coming to me, I was fortunate to have been brought up by liberal parents who taught us secularism in all its true sense unlike the ones propagated by the vote bank biased politicians of today. We, a family of Syrian Christians lived in a building owned by one of the richest and most influential Muslim family in the erstwhile Border Thottam in Madras with a hard core TAMBRAM family having their roots in the erstwhile agraharams of Kumbakonam as our immediate neighbours who taught me the virtues of Brahmanism and vegetarianism. I fell for their doctrines and displayed the principles during family reunions in Kerala so much so that I earned myself the name BRAHMANAN within my circle of relatives which has stayed on even as of today, though a good Kerala Beef Fry accompanied by Old Monk will top my to-do list any day.

I was even more fortunate to have studied in a school called Christ Church on Mount Road which was located sandwiched between 2 of the most famous cine complexes, the Devi group of theaters and the Plaza, was actually half as old as the city and was founded in 1842, a clear 100 odd years before India attained Independence. It was here the fundamentals of real secularism was taught thanks to the wonderful friends circle that I had from different spectrum of the Religious, economic and intellectual spectrum of the society in and around the school and the teachers. Even after I moved to the so called more affluent part of the city, Besant Nagar I was at ease with the diverse and more affluent version of the Tambrams of Adyar, Gandhi Nagar and Besant Nagar whom I encountered in another great school called St Michaels Academy in Gandhi Nagar.

I could not have earned this experience anywhere else in India except Madras. People might say Bombay or Delhi offers the same, sorry folks; Madras knew and still knows what it takes to play host to a secular community. No particular political party need to take credit for this. It’s just the people of Madras now Chennai that need to be given the full recognition for creating this secular atmosphere.

Thank you MADRAS for making me what I’m today and thank you Chennai for letting me enjoy the same freedom in the city that welcomes me with open arms each time I visit it.

Coffee, Tea and me!

A conversation on coffee art on canvas with a close relative of mine inspired me to pen my love for the brew. The discussion was actually about the shades of brown coffee could take and how concentrated it should be. I thought to myself there couldn’t be a better time to write about coffee than, when the mother of all coffee shops (as in shops serving coffee, not to be confused with their Dutch cousins) recent entry promising to serve India with a coffee passion of 40 years. A 40 year old company bringing the coffee experience to a country which has known, brewed and tasted coffee since the 1700’s!!!

Any show of love for the brew by a Syrian Christian from Central Travancore was always looked upon with disdain amongst my tribe. A Malayalee was invariably associated with tea in Madras, the place were I had my early bearing. Thanks to the numerous tea shops run by the Nair immigrants (or as the legend goes), every street corner teashop was known by the generic Nairkada irrespective of the role a Nair played in it. Hence, a malayalee drank only tea was an unwritten edict in Madras.

Having been brought up in and around Triplicane and later on in Besant Nagar I was fortunate to be living close to Tambram community in Madras. This was instrumental in me being baptised a coffee drinker which still continues to be the preferred non alcoholic beverage. However, what I was initiated to was the filter kappi served in a davara and tumbler and during my younger days I always thought that coffee should only be served with the open end facing downwards. Growing in Triplicane the aroma that wafted through the air during a walk past a Leo Coffee outlet, the legendary coffee bean and powder retailer brings about an olfactory hallucination in me even after decades. Not sure how many of you remember this piece of trivia, the BG score for the Leo ad is what catapulted Oscar award winning musician A R Rahman to fame. Today Leo Coffee has diversified into pepper, cardamom, mineral water and even bananas religiously following the Ansoff’s matrix.

In my opinion Starbucks should have launched their India campaign from Mysore as a symbolic gesture and as a tribute to Baba Budan who managed to carry seven coffee beans out of the Yemeni Port of Mocha all the way to Mysore, and you thought all along, that Mocha was a suave name for a coffee shop and coffee was the invention of the Tambram community of South India.

The filter itself is a device that could shame the top 10 coffee maker manufacturers of today with respect to the quality of the end product. The decoction or the filtrate that trickled to the lower levels of the filter by gravity along with 2 spoons of milk kept your spirits high until dawn the next day. Probably that’s why a spoon was never named a coffee spoon. You always added couple of spoons of milk to filter coffee and not the other way around. The quality of the decoction was also a function of the mix of the quality and quantity of the pea berry and chicory that made the coffee powder. In fact the legend goes that the older matrons of the Tambram community could actually smell the brew and detect the precise ratio of pea berry, its type, and chicory akin to smelling your way to differentiate a Glenfliddich Single Malt 18 year from a 12 Year old.

The Baristas, the Mochas, and the Starbucks have all sprung up as social hangouts where one can meet over a coffee but never for a coffee. In all these outlets the taste and the aroma are secondary it neither leaves your buds wanting more nor does it kindle your olfactory.

Lastly, I cannot thank my mom enough for making this experience of tasting filter coffee each time I travel to Madras, I can be sure a cup of filter coffee awaits me at 4 am which is normally the time I land in Madras which incidentally is the most appropriate time of the day to taste your first brew with the strains of suprabatham from the neighbour’s finding its way to your ears.

The Great Indian Partition

Not the one you were thinking of…There’s enough been said and written about it over the last 65 years!!!

The partition I’m going to talk about is the hair partitioning every Indian boy is subjected to from the time he reaches a combable age or when his hair reaches a combable length. For me it was not any different, the routine after an oily head bath would be as follows. Either your dad or mom depending on who is free to carry out this ceremonial execution of determining the line of partition which indirectly reflects your line of destiny too. Actually destiny is also referred to as ‘Thala vara’ in Malayalam loosely translated as ‘line on your head’ while in Tamil it is more generally known as ‘Thalailezhithu’ loosely translated as ‘script on your head’. Guess the Tamilian interpretation of your destiny is more detailed & dramatic while the Malayalee interpretation is purely linear.

A vice like grip holds your lower jaw which leaves the mark of a thumb and 2 fingers on either side of your chin. The next step is to comb all your hair down and the max it will reach is the mid point of your forehead any further you are headed to a barber. Now comes the interesting part, a sharp toothed comb is run right through your scalp proportioning the entire scalp to a 1/3: 2/3 partition. The 1/3 portion is on your left while 2 /3 is on your right. But remember somebody else is facing you and making the decision on this partition. Left for them is right for you and vice versa. They wanted you to be more left brained and hence proportioned 2/3rds to their left while you ended up being more right brained since you had only 1/3rd to your left. Every Indian parent’s aspiration of their children cracking an IIT or at least a private engineering college seat stems from this. Little do they realise that there was an orientation flaw that made children write stupid blogs such as this instead of cracking Fourier, Laplace and Advanced calculus!!!

Well, now coming to the reason why I ended up writing this. I was recently watching a music show on television featuring Shankar Mahadevan who was looking far younger than his age, thanks to his hairstylist who had made all his hair or rather whatever was there to be vertically oriented with help of some wonderful gel I believe!!! This formed a nice façade around the bald spot he sported. My daughter mentioned he looked really cool and when I pointed out to her that his surface area of the scalp was more than mine she refused to believe me. Thankfully an overhead camera shot helped me prove it.

I, for one, still religiously follow the partitioning policy when it comes to combing my hair and I can look very boring. However one morning I actually woke up with very unruly hair and my daughter said I looked cool…and when I rushed to the nearest mirror the ‘hair do’ or rather ‘hair undone’ was pretty close to all the gelled hair styles sported by the gen-next.

I need to really redraw my line of destiny and try and ‘gel’ with the gen-next at least in my hair do.

Forties here I come!!!

We are a month into 2012, a year of significance in my life cycle…Entering the forties, call it the naughty forties, or the roaring forties…For me it’s just the dreaded forties which I will confront in a couple of weeks time. The irony is that I just realised my younger daughter has learned to count until 40 a few days back!!! The joy on her face on telling me of a new number she learnt called 40 was the moment that inspired me to pen these thoughts on a generation that hears forty for the first time vis-à-vis a generation who dread the number. Incidentally she turns 4 when I turn 40 within a gap of 3 days!!!. The similarity lies in the fact that neither she nor I know what lies beyond 40.

The signs have not been good. The great Indian batting line up who are all my contemporaries as far as the era goes have started to crumble, the company that helped capture my face and made my parents create a book called an album has filed for bankruptcy (Kodak). Today the face and the book are juxtaposed digitally turning on the likes and dislikes of millions across the globe.

To begin with the fall of the great Indian batting line up. Dravid, Sachin & Laxman in the order are going to reach their respective 40’s in a year or less. Being sportsmen their physical wear & tear is far higher than mine. But they were cricketers who looked good & played better in their whites more than in the coloured clothing probably because they were fortunate to see a black & white picture tube before they saw a coloured one. We all belong to the generation that went through the Black & White experience an experience that conditioned us to clearly know the good from the bad, helped us draw our line with a white chalk on a black board to know our limits. The cricketers knew how to patiently play out overs and leave the ones outside the off (limits) alone. They knew what ‘off’ limits where. The philosophical iteration is that they knew to be grounded (or knew how to play along the ground) was far better than going over the top.

The impending last rites being performed on Kodak coinciding with me reaching the forties has left an emotional scar. The marketing gurus across the world might use it as a case study in the years to come to explain it as a corporate failure to adapt to the world around them to explain their death knell. But for me, Kodak has been very close to me. Kodak helped capture me in the nude when I was around a year old and my parents didn’t have the option of photoshoping my face or my bum to look fairer!!! They had only one go at it and Kodak never failed them. The number 36 meant a lot to my generation handling a camera, dirty minds stay off the number. It simply meant the maximum number of negatives being developed into positives. Kodak probably was the only company that taught us early in life that negatives can be converted to positives!!!! Philosophically this has a lot of relevance to many of the discourses dished out by the pseudo gurus around us these days.

Thank you the legendary Indian line up for teaching me to be patient & grounded, and thank you Kodak for giving me the hope that negatives can be converted to positives. Both have entertained us and left footprints in our memory. Thankfully, these are not digital footprints that can be traced back, morphed or photoshoped…Wishing all my contemporaries a 15th anniversary of your 25th B’day…

Caned to be able.

Corporal punishment is what they call it these days…and they have banned it too. An unfortunate incident brought out of the closet this instrument of discipline.

I grew up at a time when the cane was part of the monthly grocery list and played a prominent part among the shopping list which included books and stationary at the beginning of an academic year. This was a ritual followed in most of the households of the time. Along with new textbooks, notebooks, pens, erasers and good old yellow coloured wooden scales you brought home a brand new cane which had a multicoloured plastic loop at one end to hang it on the wall.

But back home the cane had a very strategic location; it was placed right behind the portrait of Jesus Christ, the instrument of discipline placed behind the image of forgiveness. When I was up to any wrong doing I ended up looking at the image of Christ and my dad looked beyond or rather behind him to discipline me.

At school I also had some teachers who resorted to the so called corporal punishments and I distinctly remember one who followed the ritual of slowly pulling us back and forth using both our earlobes all the while explaining the ill effects of our wrong doings and at the same time looking for remorse in our eyes, and if we showed none, the back & forth movement ended in a slap on both the cheeks releasing the grip on our earlobes almost simultaneously, an act that needed excellent hand eye coordination and perfect timing. Let me tell you though we felt a little humiliated we did not nurture any hatred towards the teacher for long. The humiliation or the hatred element lasted only a few hours but the lessons we learnt stayed with us for the rest of our lives. We knew very well it was part of our grooming, a step in shaping us to face the world ahead.

Caning, impositions, kneeling, rap on the knuckles with the edge of a wooden scale were all common modes of punishment, corporal was a word we didn’t know then...These were just modes of punishments used to correct us, not abused to warrant a complaint.

I’m now a reasonably respectable citizen of the world thanks to my dad & teachers for having used the cane, sparingly though, to make me what I am today.

I’m happy I was caned to be able in the life ahead…

Tryst with the late thirties…

I came face to face (or was it head on) with this moment of revelation at my neighbourhood barber’s (oops Hair stylists). I was offered one more service at the end of my hair cut, by my barber, ‘Sir, Do you want a Hair Dye / Colouring get done?’ and he had the cheek to follow it up with a recommendation on hair transplants …and the likes.

I realised for the first time that I was on the wrong side of the thirties!!! Or atleast my head was…

Well not really the first time… during the last few haircuts I have been realising it…The remnants of my locks that were being chopped off that fell on the white cloth adorning me were getting greyer. The greys had begun to outnumber the blacks…Shades of wisdom I comforted myself. The time spent at the barbers chair is one of introspection…and with the question that I was confronted today I knew that reality had dawned or rather the age had begun to dusk on me…

Well, when I entered my thirties I was subtle in mentioning my age and would say I was thirty something…I just realised I am thirty ‘more than something…’

Lochinvar in Bollywood...

One of my all time favorite poems Lochinvar by Sir Walter Scott, a poem set in the 18th & 19th century actually foretold the storyline of many a Bollywood blockbusters of the 21st century. Let me take you into a journey from one century to another, for a change we are not talking about Sachin Tendulkar…

(Lets start with Shahrukh Khan in Pardes…)
H! young Lochinvar is come out of the west,
Through all the wide Border his steed was the best;
And save his good broadsword he weapons had none.
He rode all unarmed and he rode all alone.
So faithful in love and so dauntless in war,
There never was knight like the young Lochinvar.

(The second stanza reminds me of Aamir Khan in Qayamat se Qayamat tak)
He stayed not for brake and he stopped not for stone,
He swam the Eske river where ford there was none,
But ere he alighted at Netherby gate The bride had consented, the gallant came late:
For a laggard in love and a dastard in war
Was to wed the fair Ellen of brave Lochinvar.

(Now moving to Salman Khan in Hum Aapke Hai Kaun)
So boldly he entered the Netherby Hall, Among bridesmen, and kinsmen, and brothers, and all:
Then spoke the bride's father, his hand on his sword,--
For the poor craven bridegroom said never a word,-- '
Oh! come ye in peace here, or come ye in war,
Or to dance at our bridal, young Lord Lochinvar?'--

(Amrish Puri and Shahrukh Khan in Dil Wale Dulhanya le Jayinge)
'I long wooed your daughter, my suit you denied;
Love swells like the Solway, but ebbs like its tide--
And now am I come, with this lost love of mine,
To lead but one measure, drink one cup of wine.
There are maidens in Scotland more lovely by far,
That would gladly be bride to the young Lochinvar.'


(Kuch Kuch Hota Hai…)
The bride kissed the goblet; the knight took it up,
He quaffed off the wine, and she threw down the cup,
She looked down to blush, and he looked up to sigh,
With a smile on her lips and a tear in her eye.
He took her soft hand ere her mother could bar,--
'Now tread we a measure!' said young Lochinvar.

(Kuch Kuch Hota Hai contd.)
So stately his form, and so lovely her face,
That never a hall such a galliard did grace;
While her mother did fret, and her father did fume,
And the bridegroom stood dangling his bonnet and plume;
And the bride -- maidens whispered ''Twere better by far To have matched our fair cousin with young Lochinvar.'
One touch to her hand and one word in her ear,
When they reached the hall-door, and the charger stood near;
So light to the coupe the fair lady he swung,
So light to the saddle before her he sprung!
'She is won! we are gone, over bank, bush, and scaur;
They'll have fleet steeds that follow,' quoth young Lochinvar.

(The car chase climax …. Typical of any last scene from a Bollywood blockbuster…)
There was mounting 'mong Graemes of the Netherby clan;
Fosters, Fenwicks, and Musgraves, they rode and they ran:
There was racing and chasing on Cannobie Lee,
But the lost bride of Netherby ne'er did they see.
So daring in love and so dauntless in war,
Have ye e'er heard of gallant like young Lochinvar?

The Surangani Song...

If at all there was a song that spoke of cross cultural healing then it is Surangani the Sinhalese song which made its way into the hearts and tongue of every Tamilian. A song that was a regular fixture in any bus carrying a bunch of School children or College folks on an excursion or for that matter even a general family picnic. As the bus passed by carrying the revellers one could savour the trails of Surangani…reverberate in your ears.

Last night I googled it up and made my seven year old daughter listen to it and believe it or not, I found her humming to the tunes of Surangani this morning as soon as she woke up. For all you lovers of this song please find below the link to the Sinhalese version and the oldest known Tamil version. As they say ensoooy!!!

Surangani - Sinhalese

Surangani -Tamil

‘Barber’ ruffles up quite a lot of hair…

The recent uproar over the term Barber in the movie ‘Billu Barber’ being derogatory is incomprehensible. I thought until recently I visited a barber shop and have been doing so since the time the locks of hair on my head needed a trim. Though I should admit that barber shops in India have witnessed an image makeover in keeping with the changing times.
I remember the days when I used to visit a barber shop which had a rather noisy chair and the only source of entertainment while waiting was a 2 week old ‘India Today’ or an equally old copy of the ‘Ananda Viketan’ and for the movie buffs it would be a month old copy of ‘Screen’ or ‘Stardust’ with the All India Radio cranking up the good old ‘Ungal Viruppam’. On entering it all I had to say was ‘Summer Cut’, irrespective of it being Winter, Autumn or Spring. Unlike today when we receive a catalogue from which to choose the hair color and the contours you require to be shaped. The rickety chairs have been replaced with plush ones which swivels with hardly any noise, the ‘India Today’s’ are of the latest edition and the Radio has been elbowed by their swanky successors, the MP3’s with a top of the range audio system connected to it… and yes... what I failed to notice was that they are no longer Barber shops…they are Salons, or Hair Dressers or Hair spas. I need to learn to be more politically correct when I address certain professionals.
A piece of trivia which most of you from Chennai might be aware of will act as an anecdote on how we have embraced ‘Barber’ as a part of our life. The oft-repeated story is that Hamilton Bridge, just north of San Thome, was named after a British official called Hamilton and that in local usage it became Ambattan Bridge and, thereafter, Barber's (ambattan = barber) Bridge. Looks like that this bridge might be soon in for another round of name change and would probably be called a Hairstylist's Bridge in the near future.

Koothapiran, Abdul Jabbar, Ramamurthy & Co – Oh How I miss them…

Another Test match is underway at the MAC Stadium in Chepauk, Chennai, 4 weeks a lil too early. Just as the boxer’s day test match is a very traditional affair for the Australian cricketing fraternity so is a Pongal test match significant in the Madras cricketing calendar. Although this time we have an unscheduled test being played at Chepauk.

When I switched on the TV early in the morning and heard the likes of Gavaskar, David Lloyd, Ian Botham and L Shiva holding fort at the commentary box, I was reminded of a few of the legendary Tamil Cricket commentators on All India Radio whom I grew up listening to as a kid.

Warning: This blog will be enjoyed by only a very niche audience, an audience who appreciate Tamil and Cricket with the same fervour.

It was a pleasure to listen to one of the above commentators describe the first ball of a Test match and say, ‘Ithoo wallajah salai muniyilirunthu mudhal pandhu vissuvadharkaka Haryana Singham Kapil Dev kudhirai ottathaipola padi padiyaga vandhu seerana vegam pettru valakai vikettin mel vara pandhai veessugirar’ It just meant ‘Here comes from the Wallajah road end, the King of Haryana, Kapil Dev, running in like a horse cantering and following it up with a gallop to bowl Right arm over the wicket’.

When one was just dependent on the radio commentary and trying to visualise (mind you these were pre Hawk eye days) what was going on in the middle this was the best way to describe the first ball of a test match. We have seen many an acclaimed commentators over the years, including an alumnus of the esteemed IIM in the commentary box but I do doubt their capabilities in doing a better job than Koothapirans, Abdul Jabbars & Co to narrate the visuals to the millions of transistor dependent fans of Cricket.

In fact I’m not sure if All India Radio still does broadcast the Tamil commentary for the Madras matches which I doubt particularly in the present BCCI era when you need to pay even if you walk past Wallajah road for the rights to just hear the crowd applauding a match.

The way Abdul Jabbar describes a G R Vishwanath Square cut or a Sandeep Patil going down on one knee to cover drive the likes of Bob Willis will surely stand out as possibly the best descriptions of a shot by any standards, sometimes even better than the shot itself.

E-Invasion

Our lives have been E-jacked, every thing we do in life these days is prefixed or rather dictated by the ‘E’. E mails, E commerce, E learning, E relationships, The eees are turning out to be pest just like the ‘ees’ in Tamil (‘ees’ in Tamil mean common houseflies). A Brahmin lady of wisdom told me when I was a kid that we are normally invaded by the fly’s ‘(eees) during the Tamil months ending in ‘phonetic ees’ like ‘Avani’, ‘Aadi’ and the likes…Well if u notice its kind of true.. I don’t have any proofs to put forward, but guys following the Tamil months back home please check it out.

The Electronic ‘E’ that Im referring to here is not seasonal but here to stay, an ‘E’ (Never thought I would be using ‘an’ the proposition in this format when I was taught English Grammar as a kid) that has made an irreversible impact in our lives.

It’s Christmas season, and as a child I remember an annual ritual of my dad picking up 50 odd Christmas cards and we as a family sitting around the dining table together to write out Christmas Greetings to all our friends and relatives. This was one ritual followed in all its sincerity irrespective of recession or hard times... The envelope was pasted with a 50 Paise ‘Gandhi’ stamp if it was within its stipulated weight and without any adders, the envelope was unsealed and this was called ‘Book Post’ and one had to write it in Bold on the envelope. I repeat ‘write’ and not ‘type Ctrl B’ on MS Word.

Today my six year comes up to me and tells me that she wants to log on to 123greetings.com and send an E card to a friend.

Recently one of my newly married younger cousin sent me an E mail and asked me for my postal (Snail mail address). Im sure he wanted to send me a Christmas greeting signed by his beau and him. Poor guy, lil does he realise that after a couple of years the only dotted line a wife would wanna sign would be the ones on the right hand bottom corner of a cheque leaf that says ‘Self’ on the top.

Little did I know as a kid that the ever silent and insignificant ‘E’ would shoot to such prominence in the years to come? You are so ‘E’ dependent these days particularly when one’s on the move… so much so that Emotion has also become a kind of ‘E’ in Motion.

A tribute to one of the greatest villains in Kollywood.

The erstwhile villain M. N Nambiar is no more. As a child I grew up watching him on Sunday evening movies on Doordarshan perpetually playing the villain in movies alongside MGR. I remember vividly his well modulated dialogue delivery and the characteristic palm rubbing; eye rolling & tilted head were his trade mark histrionics that used to give me nightmares in those days.
He was a perfect example of a person who never took work home, one of the best villains in reel life and a saint in the real one.

Its Deepavalli down South and Diwali up North….

Having grown up with a lot of Hindu friends, this festival is as close to my heart as Christmas.

The pre-adolescent days saw me shooting away the ‘capes’ in a gun a la Sean Connery, during Deepavali or bravely lighting a ‘Busvanom’(Flower Pot). Then came the teens, when I started toying with explosives from the real world ‘oossi vedi’ a firecracker in the 20 dB range... And since the teens extend a full 6 years, these were the years when I graduated from an Explosive to an Aerospace Expert… The Explosives increased in their dB’s and their cylindrical diameters, moving from ‘Kuruvi vedis’ to ‘Lakshmi vedis’ and finally ended in the 'A'– Bomb. The Buddha would have smiled but definitely not my mom who often woke up startled from her afternoon nap. Then came the mother of all experiments with firecrackers. These are days when we are sending rockets to the moon but we in those days tried something different like firing a ‘Rocket’ horizontally and getting the projectile all wrong and ended up in the drawing room of the newly moved in neighbour uncle who had a lovely looking daughter.

What’s Deepavalli without the mention of the 1000 walla, 5000 walla or the 10000 or more walla depending on one’s economic standing in the society? This was the Crème de la Crème of all fireworks. Thousands of high powered ‘oossi vedis’ in series were these wallas or more colloquially called the ‘saram’. The longer they lasted the richer you were.

It was a time when the economic might of a neighbourhood was measured by the decibels generated or the quantum of fireworks left over’s post Deepavalli.

Happy Deepavalli to all my friends who have Iyer, Iyengar, Krishnaswamy, Rao or Bhaskaran as their surnames and a Happy Diwali to all my friends who have a Sharma, Gupta or a Kulkarni as theirs surnames.

A tribute to someone who walked with me all these years…

This week saw the passing away of an icon whose family name is a household name in India. Mr.Thomas Bata, the Czech shoe mogul died on the 1st of September at the age of 93 … (never knew Bata was of Czech origin until today) and this blog is a tribute to him. Bata… those four letters was a brand, a generic and above all the only footwear the people of my generation and above knew and wore. The bright red neon with that curvy font that has never changed over the years is a sign board that does not slip your eye which ever city you are in.
It was a ritual, days before schools reopened to visit a Bata store back home, and buy a pair of normal black shoes which would have lasted longer had not your feet grown further and u didn’t try to emulate a Maradona playing football, with a ball ¼th the size of a football. In spite of all this, it would still last a couple of monsoons before it would go under the neighbourhood cobbler’s knife and needle to keep them running and kicking for a few more months. Their price tags always ended in a...99 or a dot 95 paisa from which evolved the infamous ‘Bata rate’ for anything that had price tag that ended with 99 or a 95 Paisa.
Bubblegummers, North Star, Power, Marie Claire were some of their labels, Marie Claire was the one that drew the women to a Bata shop which until then for them was a shoe shop (not a footwear retailing outlet as it is called today) that sold boring black boys shoes. North Star was the Reebok or the Nike of those days and Power was for the middle class morning walker. These were before the entry of the big names in footwear retailing and also before the arrival of Nikes, Reeboks and the likes… From an ordinary black shoe to a Nike + Ipod Sports kit…owe it to the pioneering efforts of this family which started taking care of your feet since 1894…