When you are past forty your wives suddenly realise that THEY need healthy husbands or rather more conservatively, A HEALTHY HUSBAND around when they turn forty too, as a result of which I was forced out of bed one fine winter morning and dragged to a yoga class my wife had enrolled me into without my knowledge. On meeting my guru I clearly told him that I was not in pursuit of any packs since I had all my packs tucked in one and the only six pack I knew was the one I emptied on weekends.
What followed were weeks of aching joints caused by efforts to reach out to unexplored regions on my body (to be read as touching my toes without bending my knees), should you have any misconceptions on the regions I was trying to reach out to.
Crash course on asanas followed, and soon realised that I was half an assana all these years for not having led a healthy lifestyle. What followed were lessons on Tibetan five rites, Sufi Trance and then a briefing on aligning your life to the Meridien Organ Clock. For those like me who heard these terms for the first time, the explanations follow, but those who know what these are already, thank you for dropping by, as I figure out that you are one of those health conscious folks around.
Thanks to my guru I learnt that my body had various spinning psychic vortexes and as the spin rates reduced with aging, ill health surfaces. So in order to keep the spin rate high I had to spin. Ironically, I’m someone who earns a living as an Hydraulic Engineer telling people around me that Vortices are bad and they need to be broken or slowed down to increase the life of a rotating machinery like a centrifugal pump, Here I was being taught on how to increase the spin rate of my psychic vortex. I didn’t have the courage to tell him that after 7PM most of the nights I was on a perpetual spin and followed the motion of the earth and the universe with all earnest (though at times did try to change the course and failed).
So, as instructed I began to spin and soon realised the effect of physical spinning was way difficult to handle than the C2H5OH (In the Spirit of Chemistry!) induced spin I experience on occasional evenings just that the occasions happened every evening. Well I would have been happy if I was challenged physically with the spinning alone since that was something that I was used to. I was asked to immediately follow it up with 4 other rigorous exercises under the influence of the not so spirited spin, this I was told was what the Tibetan monks did and that I would attain monk like qualities. All I wanted was a Ferrari and never sell it and here I was being trained to be monk like. I loved the Old Monks though; they are the ones who taught me to spin the first time around.
Following this was my course on meridian organ clock where I learnt about the time of the day when my organs are up and about…I meant my liver, lung, pancreas, heart and the likes. Learnt that my liver was most active between 1AM and 3 AM, forcing me to take a tough decision on doing away with my late night binges and start as early as possible.
I should say that the one fine winter morning changed the course of my life and now I lead a life of asanas, pranayamas, Tibetan Rites and wake up to the alarms of my meridian organ clock. My advice is, follow your wife to the yoga class you are dragged to…and be sarvangassnically (Sarvangaasana = An aasana (posture) where you do a shoulder stand) in English to be head over heels in love with her for showing you the ‘steady’ path to a rejuvenated life when you spent wasting most of it trying to crack the relationship between the spin rate and the bonding between the right ethanol - water mixture.
Friday, February 22, 2013
Saturday, January 5, 2013
The 'whr to go' illness...
Couple of days back I woke up with a hangover, I thought, maybe I had overindulged in seeing off the year that just went by or it must be the age playing games. Staggered out of bed with a heavy head. I was actually feeling 'nice' though. After walking around like a zombie for a while I realized that it wasn't as nice as I had felt in the first instance.
Visited a doc who after hearing me out and after a session of diagnosis of making my head follow the snap of his fingers from left to right making me feel like a pup under training, told me gravely that I was suffering from vertigo, I explained patiently to him I didn't know 'where to go' or where I was going and that was a symptom and thats why I was there. He cleared his throat and repeated vertigo and went on to explain that it was all about imbalance of the ear. The happenings around the world that I was hearing over the last weeks were bad enough to throw any sane person off balance.
On reaching home I could hear the strains of music from my daughters room, on quizzing her she told me that the album was from One Direction. Here as I entered directionless with my newly acquired knowledge on what vertigo was, felt my daughter was actually pulling a fast one on me. It was not to be, it was just pure coincidence and this was the name of the new boys in town of the boy band genre. Looks like these boys were better at least as far as their name selection goes in comparison to their predecessors who were more confined to the back streets or the ghettos...some hope I thought, these guys at least have a direction.
Stability is such an overused word these days, be it the economy, politics, business or even life, every one craves for stability and yet a tiny labyrinth and a few milligrams of fluid imbalance in your ear can change the confident swagger to a directionless stagger. We hear day in and day out the importance of so many vital organs and the path breaking innovations in medicine around these organs and very little about tiny little stuffs like the ear labyrinth which are equally important. But guess these are natures little signs to keep you grounded, while you might think you know where to go in life, with a momentary vertigo attack you might not actually!!!
Visited a doc who after hearing me out and after a session of diagnosis of making my head follow the snap of his fingers from left to right making me feel like a pup under training, told me gravely that I was suffering from vertigo, I explained patiently to him I didn't know 'where to go' or where I was going and that was a symptom and thats why I was there. He cleared his throat and repeated vertigo and went on to explain that it was all about imbalance of the ear. The happenings around the world that I was hearing over the last weeks were bad enough to throw any sane person off balance.
On reaching home I could hear the strains of music from my daughters room, on quizzing her she told me that the album was from One Direction. Here as I entered directionless with my newly acquired knowledge on what vertigo was, felt my daughter was actually pulling a fast one on me. It was not to be, it was just pure coincidence and this was the name of the new boys in town of the boy band genre. Looks like these boys were better at least as far as their name selection goes in comparison to their predecessors who were more confined to the back streets or the ghettos...some hope I thought, these guys at least have a direction.
Stability is such an overused word these days, be it the economy, politics, business or even life, every one craves for stability and yet a tiny labyrinth and a few milligrams of fluid imbalance in your ear can change the confident swagger to a directionless stagger. We hear day in and day out the importance of so many vital organs and the path breaking innovations in medicine around these organs and very little about tiny little stuffs like the ear labyrinth which are equally important. But guess these are natures little signs to keep you grounded, while you might think you know where to go in life, with a momentary vertigo attack you might not actually!!!
Saturday, November 10, 2012
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.
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.
Friday, October 26, 2012
Gangnam Style – The Korean Kolaveri!
There’s a vested interest in the choice of this blog topic. Gangnam Style has been viewed around 550 million times, while, ‘Why this kolaveri’ has been viewed around a 62 million times. So I have strategically titled my blog so that my counter ticks with the left over morsels. If you are one of those who googled for either of these songs and landed on my blog I’m sorry and grateful to you at the same time. I don’t want to disappoint you both, here’s the link to both the songs on youtube.
Gangnam Style
Why this Kolaver di!
I first came across Gangnam style, thanks to one of the audio rounds in a School Quiz show hosted by Derek O’ Brien. Couldn’t answer it and hence came back home and googled and was deeply depressed that this song was heard 383 million times before I did. In fact during the good old days of quizzing, the audio rounds were all about identifying the voices of Lal Bahadur Shastri, Nehru (passages with & without ‘at the stroke of midnight hour…’), Winston Churchill or a piece from Pink Floyd and trivia on identifying musical instruments were confined to a Jalatharangam or Mandolin.
In fact I could sympathise with an average South Korean, since he must have felt remorse and pride almost simultaneously the way Korean language gained worldwide fame, just as Tamil did over an international audience a couple of months back. The irony was the common link of fragmented pieces of English strewn all over in both the songs.
When Chris Gayle and co danced to the tunes Gangnam Style after mauling the Aussies, instead of a Calypso I realised the world of music was skewed. There was a time when a calypso was composed in praise of Gavaskar in the early 70’s,and it was rated the highest honour and almost 4 decades later the West Indians who themselves are traditionally rich in music were celebrating their resurgence to a Korean song.
The sad part is that trash is being recognised as music these days and gets an unwarranted mileage thanks to curious passers by on the net. The quantifying parameter for song popularity is the number of hits it gets on youtube from where it gets catapulted into ‘fame’. Youtube is unfortunately a visual medium where the auditory credentials are overshadowed by visual impact. This is definitely not a platform to evaluate or rank a song.
But some how the mechanics remain the same , Illayaraja a legendary South Indian musician recently mentioned he was surprised at the fact that all the songs of his first movie ‘Annakilli’ almost 4 decades back were hits in spite of him being a novice and without the aid of propaganda mechanisms of today. People identified themselves with the songs that wafted through the air waves is what he said; remember these were All India Radio days with a population of 1 radio per street. The opinions or the hits on the song travelled ear to ear. The speed at which it was relayed was proportional to the distance between the household that had a radio and the one that didn’t.
People identify themselves with / patronise a ‘Gangnam style’ or a ‘Why this kolaveri di’ for different reasons. It’s not out of the love for music but more out of sheer curiosity and wanting to join the ‘been there, done(heard) that, before the 599 million did’ bandwagon. Such songs sure do get more than a million pairs of feet tapping, unfortunately that’s where they stay, never quiet reach your heart, let alone stay there.
Gangnam Style
Why this Kolaver di!
I first came across Gangnam style, thanks to one of the audio rounds in a School Quiz show hosted by Derek O’ Brien. Couldn’t answer it and hence came back home and googled and was deeply depressed that this song was heard 383 million times before I did. In fact during the good old days of quizzing, the audio rounds were all about identifying the voices of Lal Bahadur Shastri, Nehru (passages with & without ‘at the stroke of midnight hour…’), Winston Churchill or a piece from Pink Floyd and trivia on identifying musical instruments were confined to a Jalatharangam or Mandolin.
In fact I could sympathise with an average South Korean, since he must have felt remorse and pride almost simultaneously the way Korean language gained worldwide fame, just as Tamil did over an international audience a couple of months back. The irony was the common link of fragmented pieces of English strewn all over in both the songs.
When Chris Gayle and co danced to the tunes Gangnam Style after mauling the Aussies, instead of a Calypso I realised the world of music was skewed. There was a time when a calypso was composed in praise of Gavaskar in the early 70’s,and it was rated the highest honour and almost 4 decades later the West Indians who themselves are traditionally rich in music were celebrating their resurgence to a Korean song.
The sad part is that trash is being recognised as music these days and gets an unwarranted mileage thanks to curious passers by on the net. The quantifying parameter for song popularity is the number of hits it gets on youtube from where it gets catapulted into ‘fame’. Youtube is unfortunately a visual medium where the auditory credentials are overshadowed by visual impact. This is definitely not a platform to evaluate or rank a song.
But some how the mechanics remain the same , Illayaraja a legendary South Indian musician recently mentioned he was surprised at the fact that all the songs of his first movie ‘Annakilli’ almost 4 decades back were hits in spite of him being a novice and without the aid of propaganda mechanisms of today. People identified themselves with the songs that wafted through the air waves is what he said; remember these were All India Radio days with a population of 1 radio per street. The opinions or the hits on the song travelled ear to ear. The speed at which it was relayed was proportional to the distance between the household that had a radio and the one that didn’t.
People identify themselves with / patronise a ‘Gangnam style’ or a ‘Why this kolaveri di’ for different reasons. It’s not out of the love for music but more out of sheer curiosity and wanting to join the ‘been there, done(heard) that, before the 599 million did’ bandwagon. Such songs sure do get more than a million pairs of feet tapping, unfortunately that’s where they stay, never quiet reach your heart, let alone stay there.
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