Hariharan here

அன்னை

2011-09-17T06:08:00.000-07:00

சிப்பிக்குள் முத்தாகிப் , புளியிட்ட செப்பாகி,
மண்ணுக்குள் பொன்னாகி, மண்ணிலே பெண்ணாகிப் பிறந்து,
எனை வளர்க்க உனை கரைத்து,
தியாகியாகி, எந்தன் ஆசானாகி,
அன்பாகிப் , பண்பாகிப் , பிறர் போற்றும் ஒளி விளக்காகி
நல்வழி காட்டும் ஒளியாகி
உடையவனுக் குடனாகி, ஈன்றவன் தாயாகி,
கற்பிர்க்கு அணியாகி, ஒப்பிலா மணியாகிச் சிறந்த நுன்,
தாளணியாகி, அதிலும் தூளாகி வந்த மண்னும்,
என் நெற்றி திலகமாகி திகழாதோ !
என் எல்லாப் பிறப்பிலும்
உன் வயிற்று சுமையாகி
மகனாகிப் பிறக்கும் பேறை
எனக்கு அவ்வொப்பிலா இறைவன் அருள மாட்டானா?

அழகு

2011-09-17T06:01:00.000-07:00

தமிழை அழகு என்றோம்
தமிழ் தந்த கடவுள்,
முருகனை அழகு என்றோம்
அன்பே,
நீ அழகு என்றதால்
உன்னை தமிழ் என்றேன் நான்

நீ என்னை காதலித்தால்

2011-09-17T05:54:00.000-07:00

உலகில் பிறந்த சந்தனம் எல்லாம்
ஒன்றாய் இழைத்து ஆண்டவன்
உன்னை படைத்தானோ

ஆயிரம் சிப்பிகள் மது உண்டு முத்து உமிழினும்
இணை ஆகுமோ உன் மல்லிகை மொட்டு பற்க்ளுக்கு

பொன் வேண்டி ஏன் மண்ணை தொண்டுகிறார்
புவியின் பொன் அனைத்தும், சிலையாய், பெண்ணாய்
உன் வடிவில் நிற்கிறதே

இறைவனின் மல்லிகை தோட்டத்தில்
விளைந்த விண்மீன்கள் யாவையும்
உன் வட்ட விழிக்குள் வைத்தாயோ?

உன் சுவாசத்தை சுவாசித்த பின்
மூச்சு விட மனசு இல்லையே

விடியலில்,
கமலங்கள் மலர்வதும், பறவைகள் பறப்பதும்
கதிரோன் கண்டு என்றல்லவா நினைத்தேன்
உன்னை கண்டபின் உணர்ந்தேன்
அவை யாவும், நீ துயில் எழும் அழகைக் காண என்று !

இயம்ப இயலா அழகை கண்டு
இயற்கை என வியந்தோம்,
அந்த இயற்கையும் வியக்கும் நுன்னை என்னென்று விளம்ப...

தித்திக்கும் மலை தேனே, திகட்டாத அமுதே,
இப்படி எல்லாம் உன்னை
சத்தியமாய் கவிதை பாடுவேன்,
நீ மட்டும் என்னை காதலித்தால்

இழப்பு

2011-09-17T05:50:00.002-07:00

மாலை முல்லை மலரும் வேளை,
காலை கதிரவன் மறையும் வேளை,
கதிரவன் கண்ட கமலம் போல்
என் உதிரம் கலந்த நாயகி நினைவுகள்,
சோலை மலர் நடுவில் மலர்கையில்,
பாலை பறவை போல் தவிக்கும் என் உள்ளது
நாயகி, என்னை மறந்து,
பள்ளம் மேடு கடந்து கொண்டவனோடு
வீதியில் உலா வருவது கண்டேன்
வெண் துகிலில் இட்ட கரும்புள்ளி போல்
என் வாழ்வில் வந்தவளை மறந்து,
புதிய வாழ்வு தொடர,
மற்றொரு நாயகி, என்னுள்ளம் ஏறினாள்,
அவளும் மண்ணில் சிந்திய நீர் போல்,
என்னை பிரிந்து செல்ல,
இவ்வுலகத்துடன் பிரியா உறவுடை
இயற்கை பெண்ணை காதலித்தேன்,
வாழ்வின் வஞ்சனையோ,
நிலையிலா இன்பம் வேண்டி, மனிதன்
அவளையும் அழிக்க துவங்கி விட்டான்,

இழப்பு என்பது எனக்கு மட்டும்
என் அகராதியின் எல்லா பக்கததையும் அலங்கரிக்கிறதோ?

இறைவன் எங்கே

2011-09-17T05:50:00.000-07:00

அறிவியலும் இறைமையும் ,
அறியாமையால் அறியாத பேதை நான்,
அன்னை மடி பிறந்த அனைத்து உயிர்க்கும்
முதலில் தோன்றி, இடையில் மறந்து,
முடிவில் மறையும் நிரந்தர கேள்வி,
"இறைவன் யார், எங்கு இருக்கிறான்?"
என் மதியிலும் துளிர்த்ததை
மெதுவாய்க் கேட்டேன், சான்றோர் ஒருவரிடம் !

கதிரவன் அறிவும், மதியின் சாந்தும் கொண்டு,
பசுமை வெற்றிலையாய்ப் பளிச்சித்ட அவர் முகம்,
பாக்கொடு பல்லிடை அரைத்த
வெற்றிலையாய்ச் சிவந்து, பின் சினந்து கூறினார்,
"மூடனே, இறைவன் எங்கும் உள்ளார்"

பாவம் !
அவர் என்னுள்ளும் உள்ள
இறைவனைக் காண மறந்தார் போலும் !

ஹைக்கூ

2011-09-17T05:46:00.000-07:00

விண்மீன்கள்

இறைவனின் குழந்தை அளைந்து எறிந்த சோற்று பருக்கை !!

காலை பறவை வேண்டி வானத்து தேவதை தூவிய தானியம் !!

Shadow of dark god- Indira goswami

2011-03-15T17:43:00.000-07:00

A book review:

Shadow of dark god by Indira Goswami

The story is quite simple. It is set in vrindavan and knit closely with the life of radheshamis, young widows who decide to settle in vrindavan. Incidentally, vrindavan hosts the maximum number of hindu widows density in India and serves more like asylum to them.

The story of two young widows, saudamani and shashi and that of a spinster, mrinalini depicts the life of radheshyamis assaulted with poverty and suffering from human wolves and greedy priests and pandas. The background of Saudamini and Shashi are entirely different, the former is supported by her father, Dr.Rai chaudary and well off, whereas the latter is dependent on an ashram and even forced to live with the priest, Alamgadhi against her will. Yet their lives are threaded together and follow more or less the same path.

The feelings of young widows caught in the maze of desires, society and moral policing is captured with utmost clarity, a rare piece among the published literature.

Saudamini lost her husband within a year and later lost her heart to a Christian youth for emotional support. Yes, she loved her late husband. But she hardly could recollect his face. And then she loved the Christian youth also. Loving another man after an untimely and death of her husband at a very young age may not be a sin. But her parents thought so and shifted to vrindavan.

Most of us respect widows and often sympathize with them. But we push them to a raised platform of sainthood and believe that it’s the best one could ever do to protect them. We fail to understand that widows need support just like any other woman and not sainthood. For eg, Shashi did not love the priest, Alamgadhi with whom she was living with in the ashram. However, she lost a great support and social security in the latter’s death. This part of the novel was real finesse.

This novel is a must read for those people who think that feminism is all about respecting women, fighting their ill-treatment and weeping over the miseries detailed by feminist authors in their fiction. Feminism is not about pitying women, but to acknowledge them and accommodate them as they are.

I was wondering , can anyone produce such a master piece without experiencing it first hand (I think such a clarity of reflecting female mind is difficult even for females). Later I googled and found that the author herself is a young widow. She also had spent some part of her widowhood in vrindavan. And that justifies J

குழந்தை தொழிலாளி

2011-02-20T10:21:00.001-08:00

உலகம் எங்கும் தீபாவளி, விண் எங்கும் வண்ணங்கள்,
மத்தாப்புக்கள், சர வெடிகள் , தரை சக்கரம் என
புதிதாக பல வகை வெடிகள்
அதிசயமாய்ப் பார்த்தாள், ஐந்து வயது அஞ்சலை,
அமைதியாய் அண்ணாந்து பார்த்து
பெருமையாய் அம்மாவிடம் கூறினாள்,
"அம்மா இதெல்லாம் நான் தான் செய்தேன்".........

ஒரு முறை நீயும் வாராய்

2011-02-20T10:00:00.000-08:00

கண்ணா, நீயும் மறுபடி வாராய்
வந்தென் ஐயம் ஒரு முறை கேளாய்,
என்ன பார்க்கிறாய்?
சட்டை பை முதல் சாக்கு பை அளவிற்கு வித விதமாய்,
கீதை என்ற ஒரே புத்தகத்தை எழுதிய கில்லாடி,
உன்னை தான் ! !

எந்தன் அன்னை,
அவளுடை அழகிய உடலை வருததி
எங்கோ சுழலும் கிரகங்கள் எண்ணி,
திங்கட் தோறும் நோன்பிருந்து,
நாள் முழுதும் உன் புகழ் பாடி,
என்றோ நீ திருடி தின்ற வெண்ணை குறித்து
இன்றும் அளவளாவி மகிழ்ந்தனள்.
அன்று நீ உடைத்த கலயம் பற்றி கவலைப்படவில்லை,
வீணான வெண்ணை எண்ணி வருந்தவுமில்லை

எனின்,
எவருக்கும் துன்பம் தராமல்,
யாருக்கும் தெரியாமல் ஒருமுறை
ஒரே ஒருமுறை அப்பா பையிருந்து
மிட்டாய் வாங்க எடுத்த ஐம்பது காசிற்கு,
உடல் சிவக்க நையப் புடைத்து
உன் முன் மன்னிப்பு கேட்க சொன்னார் !
நான் செய்தால் பாவம்,
நீ செய்தால் லீலையா?
ஒரு வேளை, நீ திருடர்களுக்கெல்லாம் அரசனா?
அதனால் தான் நீ செய்த பிழைகளும் போற்றபபடுகிறதா?
சுயநலம் வேண்டி நியாயத்தை வளைக்க
நீ என்ன ஜாதி கட்சி தலைவரா?
இல்லை, இந்திய அமைச்சரா?
ஐந்தலை பாப்பின் மடியில்
சுகமாய் உறங்கியது போதும்,
ஒரு முறை நீ ஓடி வாராய்....
நியாயம் வேண்டி நீதி போதித்த
ஆசானிடம் மெதுவாய் குறை கூறினேன் !
சிறுவன் என்றும் பாராமல்,
சுருக்கென்று பிரம்பால் புடைத்தார்

உன் அன்னை யசோதாவோ
உன் மலர் மேனி போர்த்திய தோல் துப்பும்
வியர்வைக்கும் வலிக்காமல் அடிப்பார்,
என்னுடை பிரம்படி எப்படித் தெரியுமா?
பாலில் கலந்த சர்க்கரை, முழுதும் கரைந்து, பின் எஞ்சியது
அடியில் தங்குவது போல்,
தொடையில் விழுந்த அடியின் வலி,
உடல் முழுதும் படர்ந்து , பின்
குருதி செல் நரம்பும் தசையும் தாண்டி,
என்பு வரை வலிக்கும் !

ஞாயிறுதோறும் "மகாபாரதம்" நாடகத்தில்
வைகுண்டதில் படுத்து சிரிப்பது பார்த்தேன்,
ஒரு முறை பிரம்படி வாங்கினால் புரியும் ,
உன் வைகுண்ட புன்னகை எல்லாம்,
அரசியல் வாக்குறுதிகள் போல் காற்றில் பலந்து காணாமல் போய் விடும்,
எனக்கு வேண்டி, செல்ல கண்ணா
ஒருமுறை பூமிக்கு வாராய்,

ஆனால், நான் புத்திசாலி,
நீ என்ன சொல்வாய் என்று எனக்கு தெரியும்,
" நண்பா, குமுறாதே , சற்று பொறு,
அடுத்த யுகத்தில், உன்னையும் கடவுளாக்கி
உன் ஐம்பது காசு திருட்டு குறித்து
வேறொரு அன்னை விரதம் இருப்பாள்"
ஹா ஹா ஹா

2011-02-12T21:10:00.000-08:00

அன்பே !
உள்ளொன்று புறமொன்று இருந்தால்
வஞ்சன் என்பார்கள்,
நானும் அப்படி தான்
உள்ளே நீ.
வெளியே நான்

In search of Jaya Madhavan on a sunday morning

2010-09-24T10:50:00.000-07:00

My friend, Ram is an ardent fan of Jaya Madhavan, a columnist in a leading newspaper. One day he came and told me,”You and Jaya Madhavan have a lot in common. Both of you write a lot about piss and shit”. That doesn’t mean that I’m columnist. I’ve made few amateur attempts in writing and my poor writing standard is one among the list of remaining few uncommon things between me and Jaya, which Ram had decided not to mention.
Since then, I’ve read several of Jaya’s columns, mostly through Ram and I fell in love with her writing (believe me, definitely not for Ram’s reasons). Since we were subscribing “The Hindu”, a proud symbol of educated tamil Brahmin family, I never had the pleasure of reading Jaya fresh on paper. Usually, Monday morning breakfast conversations would be dominated by Jaya and Ram. Ram used to send the link of her column even before reading his office email. Every Monday, I decide to buy her daily next Sunday so that I need not be dumb, stuffing tasteless office idlis when Ram discuses in detail about her article. Whether you like an article or not, when someone else, that too who irritates you by his presence six days a week asks, “oh, you haven’t read that?”, you automatically loses the power of your presence and I hate that.
Recently I got an opportunity to win over Ram. It was an early Sunday morning and I was waiting in the bus stop for my friends with whom I had planned to attend our mutual friend’s marriage. The sky was still dark with patches of orange flashes struggling to break their cocoon clouds. A small shop opposite to the bus stop was busy with people sorting the dailies. Sundays are painful for them as most of the dailies have lots of magazines and they have to be carefully inserted. Sundays are also blissful for them as many stingy young men who generally on other days depend on office subscribed newspapers to update their poor general knowledge buy newspapers.
The first thing that flashed in my mind was that I’m going to read Jaya’s columns fresh and the immediate second thing that occurred was that I can confidently talk about it next day. I crossed the road swiftly and paused in front of the shop. The lady, busy in sorting magazines looked at me. I asked, “India today please”. She turned around and gave me a magazine. I was waiting for a daily and shocked to receive a magazine. I said, “Not this, India today news paper”. She looked at me differently, yes differently. Ptchth ‘India today’ is a weekly magazine, not a daily. Clad in decent formals, I looked like a joker to her as I, though appears to be educated, didn’t even met the basic expectation of knowledge in newspapers. I have already made the damage. Now I have two options (1) to pretend that I had actually intended the magazine only and buy it from her (2) think for a while to identify the correct daily. Both the options were not going to repair my lost image to the shop keeper. The former one would cost me a magazine and I would still be devoid of Jaya’s column. So I attempted the 2nd option; brooded for a while trying to remember all the newspapers I knew. Only name that repeatedly circled my mind was “The Hindu”. Damn this tamil brahmin pride of Hindu paper and filter coffee. I haven’t seen anything other than that throughout my life. I wanted to ask her “please gimme the newspaper with jaya’s column”, but ended up asking, “there’s some other news paper with India..”. She looked at me as if she had stamped over roadside dog shit (now, I was actually not keen for the metaphor of dog shit, but wrote it out of my respect for Ram). She didn’t expect a well educated man coming an asking a shop keeper for an English news paper without even knowing what he is asking for. My total confidence reached its avalanche limit and my inner heart felt loose like phlegm. I just wanted to get rid of the place as soon as possible. The lady took ‘Times of India’ and handed over it to me. I shared a thanking smile, hurriedly paid her and walked back to the bus stop without a second look. I’m sure she might have had a topic for her dinner “These days young IT guys… I donno what they are.. they are just a useless junk…and ….”.. (Sorry my dear unknown friends of IT; public attribute any stupid attitude of this generation to IT professionals and unknowingly I was one of the recent damaging elements).
After reaching bus stop, I thought of diverting myself with Jaya. Shit… She had not written anything on that Sunday. My entire image staked for an unwritten article. How will I cross the road everyday? Won’t the lady laugh at me every time I cross the shop? Won’t she share the joke among her fellow friends and won’t it spread to the neighborhood. I suddenly started imagining myself in the centre of the busstop and whole velachery crowded around me laughing at my lack of knowledge of newspapers.
I couldn’t stand there anymore. My friends called me every ten minutes to tell that they were on their way and would reach in five minutes. I stood there rigid for more than 40 minutes and left the place in the first bus with my friends. And for forty minutes during my stay, I hadn’t turned towards the shop.
I came home tired in the afternoon and briefed my anguish to my younger sister, when she asked “Are you referring to Jaya madhavan of Indian expre

A very very short story- submitted for a contest

2010-06-10T13:08:00.000-07:00

Place: Mars

People are bald and prematurely aged. Everybody carries oxygen cylinders. Advanced solar vehicles are the only means of mobility.

Gayathri was having dinner, a plateful of artificially synthesized powder, the only food in planet. Pointing out to the orange heavenly body, she asked, “Whats that?” Her mom sighed, “That’s earth, where our ancestors once lived. The nature fell prey to greedy men and poor earth is now bald like us”.

Save environment

Abstractness during a train journey

2009-11-22T09:01:00.000-08:00

22nd Sep 2009 to Hyderabad

Train crossed the Ashok Leyland factory, like a jet piercing the clouds, leaving behind a white trail. My heart jumped to tell someone beside, “hey my factory”, but condemned the anxiety as childish. Well, many of the childish happiness nowadays are beyond reach due to consciousness of self behaviour.
I went towards the compartment’s exit to smell the gushing air kissing the steel sheets skirting the train. It was drizzling and the setting sun appeared behind the rain. It appeared as if the great orange ball is encaged behind the vertical water bars of rain. The sun, a ball of dazzling pure orange started sinking in the clouds beneath like an innocent victim of quicksand.
I felt helpless and inert, like my inertness towards corruption, inertness towards filthy politicians, inertness towards victims of social harassments and many other things in society. I then realized that my inertness was actually born out of my inability, a shameless failure of my will power. The so called inertness, a witness of helplessness made me feel abashed; the sorrow, heavy by itself climbed my mind and up to my brain. My neck couldn’t bear the additional emotional load above and my head hung down automatically.
My eyes then capsuled the green fields spread across halfway till horizon. Like nodes of a finite element mesh, the shrubs buttoned itself into the clay submerged in the sheet of water. The sun reflected its rays of hope from the cloud’s quicksand. The elongated orange rays from sun laid down on the sheet of water reminded me again of my muteness towards sun’s request to retrieve it from the cloud’s claw.
The train later passed a power plant, the flames as high as the 50 feet danced brilliantly. A sense of bliss and achievement was visible in the fire when it looked around the charred building, contentment over its dominance. Above the chimney, black soot rose and slowly, very slowly diffused into the transparent air.
I looked above; the sun has descended further, yielding itself to the power of clouds beneath. A great realization stuck me again, the whole sky, dark now must have been formed from the constant burning of the purest form of fire, the sun. I looked back at the fire in power plant, its notorious smile while vomiting the smoke was evident. I looked up again; the realization filtered the knowledge contained within. The evil smoke vomited by the sun in the past billions of years has formed the great sky and it has now re-formed to quicksand to kill the sun in the evening.
The heavy headed flames in the powerplant continued sending black smoke, without realizing that one day, all these smoke is going to engulf the very flame which had produced it.
It is very similar to our life. Every bad conduct sends a poison from us to the outside world. It quickly dilutes itself with the society. Haunted by our everyday activities, we fail to notice both its emergence and disappearance. One day all the poison emitted by us will definitely kill our soul and or our body.

5 star ladies hostel- A short story

2009-11-01T09:17:00.000-08:00

(The theme of the story is inspired from a true incident told by one of my dearest friends, whom I respect for all she is.)

The bus stopped inside usilampatti muddy bus stand with a heavy sigh from its brakes after a long 14 hours journey. I got down from the bus when the dust was still attempting to settle down. The dust took its revenge over the bus for disturbing its hibernation by settling down as my trouser perhaps because I traveled in that bus. It was still early morning and the yellow rays from sun had not picked up its temperature yet. I decided to take the shortcut behind the bus stand so that I could reach my house in ten minutes after 15 turns and 8 crossings. Velappan was coming back after his morning schedule of milk distribution. Seeing me, he smiled a smile broad enough to expose his loss of one tooth in the upper jaw. ”sundara, have you forgotten us? After your parents demise, you’ve never come home. How are you? How is the weather over there? Huh! You seemed to have lost weight and I think you were much fairer last time”, he continued and pedaled away neither waiting for my reaction nor reply. I just kept smiling till he was out of sight.
I knocked my neighbour’s door to collect the keys. Kamalam mami emerged amidst the busy kitchen schedule with the remains of rice dough in one hand and saree is tucked in for swift and easy perambulation in her cramped kitchen., which hadn’t witnessed a single whitewash after Gopalan master’s ( kamalam’s husband) retirement 8 years back. She gave me the key, enquired about me, the same set of queries I’m encountering since velappan.
Though it is hardly one year since I had come here, I felt nostalgic, especially after my father’s demise last year. The emptiness of the small house devoid of his physical presence definitely reflected a part of heart’s feelings, which still haven’t recovered from the emptiness he had left back. He was an ordinary farmer by profession. But, his respect and love for my mother made him extraordinary, especially in this society packed with filthy male chauvinistic pigs. Somehow most of the men in the society think that wives are mere alternatives for cheap labor, a live machine to replace housemaid, mixie, grinder, washing machine and above all a dumb robot made just to vent her husband’s frustration. I thought the poor fate of the society’s fair sex is confined only to my town of usilampatti. In my past few years in Chennai, I can boldly claim that the male domination is a part of every single family, whether it is usilampatti or Chennai or for that case any society which has human beings. Even those gentlemen and ladies talking and writing at length about women freedom do not spare themselves from their attitude of male domination.
The freedom for women in its real sense can be achieved only by changing men’s mind and nothing else. Till men change their attitude to accept their counterpart as equals, women’s social freedom will be just but a distant mirage. My father not only understood this, but also lived by what he understood. He respected my mother and hence was an aberration in the small town. My father used to tell that only those families who can respect their ladies will prosper in their life. I sometimes feel guilty at my prosperity as it can be staked as evidence against my father’s hypothesis.
After enjoying nice fresh water bath in the stream nearby, I finished the customary duty of visiting all the houses in the street. Each family had a lot to share with, some joyous, some sorrowful, and the prize of patient listening would be a filter coffee at the end. The day melted quickly giving way to the milky moon light. I was relaxing in my father’s easy chair in our pyol, when ramaswamy, a grocery shop owner living in the corner house hobbled towards me, “Hey sundara how are you? Was busy on the shop for the whole day. Sita( his wife) told that you had come”. I welcomed him, hiding my irritation of his unsolicited entrance disturbing my solitary bliss amidst the moonlight and neem breeze. A casual chat on the climate, water problem and politics went on for a while. Ramaswamy, with a sudden curiosity asked, “What are you in Chennai?”.
“Well, I’m a real estate agent where I actually help people buy, sell or rent their properties. It’s basically a service business.”

“oh ! Broker a”

“Ptch!!, Despite my endeavours to avoid the ignominy of being called as ‘broker’, I fall victim to such affronts, especially at a place like my hometown. Why can’t people use ‘real estate agent’? Doesn’t it sound more decent? When I first came to Chennai, I didn’t intend to become the so called ‘broker’. I wanted to start a business of my own. “Business !!, that’s not for people like us”, amma had exclaimed when I told her my plan for the first time. I argued and convinced her later that business needs only acumen and is not confined to one set of people. Later, I had to convince my father for financing me and I carefully delegated the responsibility to amma.
“Sundar wants to start a business in Chennai.”
“Business!!!”, almost the same exclamation as that of amma.
“Like Tata and Birla?”, my father asked. Any one or anything related to business is extrapolated to Tatas and Birlas. For example, after my settling in Chennai, amma used to tell her neighbours, “my son is doing business, like Tata and Birla”, this time Tata and Birla are seated in a statement of pride. When I told my friends “I’m doing business”, they reply back “oh, like Tata and Birla?”, a hint of sarcasm.
Huh! I really pity Tata and Birla; for they are the most used and abused names in Indian family’s conversation on business.
Ramaswamy interrupted my flashback thoughts, “Sundara I have come to you for a favour. Who else I know in Chennai and who else could help me”. One good thing about usilampatti people is that they talk straight to the point. Though Ramaswamy tried to plodder around, he couldn’t manage to conceal his plea for more than a short interval. In less than 5 minutes, I understood that Ramaswamy’s daughter had finished her engineering and she was planning to come to Chennai for a job search and that I was supposed to take care of her. A sense of pride over powered my irritation, at being entrusted with the new responsibility of being the girl’s guardian. It meant that I would have to take her to Chennai, find a good accommodation, take long walks with her during the late evenings when the roads are relaxed from traffic, advice her like a father, listen to her childish narration, take care of her health and list went on. Coupled with my pride, a sense of satisfaction started creeping in; like that when you feel when you help a blind cross the road or that you feel when you buy a biscuit and a cup of tea to the road side crippled beggar and so on.
With my acceptance and within a week, the three of us (Ramaswamy, his daughter Gayathri and I) left to Chennai. When we reached usilampatti bus stand, half of the village had assembled to bid Gayathri farewell. Everyone had the same farewell message, “Gayu, you wont forget me, will you? And don’t forget to write letters”. Indian postal department should be proud about usilampatti as its still unaffected by internet and its viruses.
Gayathri proved in our journey, why she deserves such an affectionate farewell. Within the twelve hour journey to Chennai, I knew all her details, the schools she studied in, her friends and their families, her teachers and their families, her neighbours and their families and the list went on. Since I knew many of the people she referred to, she got even more excited at my acknowledgement and went into further details to ensure that she was able to feed me with some first hand information. Her main ambition, it seemed was to join a software company. And I also understood from her that most of the engineer’s dream and ambition is to be a software engineer, where a fat salary fills the pocket, enabling them to enter into a new culture characterized by Pizzas, latest English movies and an on-site trip to the western hemisphere. About a century back, Indians were transported to Malaya and Burma in bulk by the British for rubber plantation. Their families sent them with cheer and lots of hope for clearing their financial debts. Little did they know then that these people were going as slaves to obey the orders of a capitalist. When I see the software engineers slogging late hours and weekends under the pretext of competition and career development, I somehow see not much difference between software engineers and those rubber plantation workers.
“Wow, how beautiful sunrise is,” Gayathri got up. “It looks like an orange, but in usilampatti, we don’t get oranges like this. That mohan, the fruit vendor sells only lemon sized oranges. Instead we can buy lemon itself. Ha, why should we buy lemon? Mangalam mami has a lemon tree in her garden and she is generous in distributing her lemons, unlike Kavitha mami who guards her guava tree as though she won’t even let the squirrels touch it…….”, she stopped finishing one around of gossip about all her neighbours and friends. Suddenly she stopped, “what uncle, you are talking since I got up, let me brush my teeth”, and she left. There was complete silence other than the periodic lullaby of train’s wheels.
We soon reached my one-room apartment cum office in Anna nagar. Before evening tea, I had found an accommodation for Gayathri. It’s hardly few streets away from my apartment. A white board hung outside and within its faded area was encapsulated in small blue font, “5 star ladies hoste”, sacrificing the ‘l’ of the hostel to environment. The lady in charge, in a shiny chiffon blue saree matching the font colour of the board outside, welcomed us clenching her broad smile to her beautiful face. With age, she was overgrown and her cheek muscles drooped making her smile even broader. The tiny vermilion mark caught between her eyebrows melted in the Chennai sun and descended her long nose. When she assured safe lodging for Gayathri, all of us were convinced.
Next day Gayathri shifted to ‘5 star ladies hoste”. The lady was in a plain green cotton saree and more beautiful than the previous day. A sign of maturity and responsibility blended with love may describe her in brief. Ramaswamy couldn’t control his outpour of the gathered tears hidden under his eyelids. Before leaving, he thanked me thousand times for my service.
Days went on, I often met Gayathri, and mostly when she came to ‘M.G. internet café’, diagonally opposite to my apartments. She would go through all the job search sites, read tips to make good resume and keep applying. With hundred applications and no responses, she came there again to re-edit her resume and explore new companies. Often, our meeting would confluence to the coffee house nearby. Our one hour meeting would witness her talking for 60 minutes, with diverse topics ranging from job market, usilampatti, her friends and so on. And never had she failed once to tell some good things about the lady in charge.
Occasionally I used to visit her in her hostel, for after all I’m her local guardian. I felt a parental responsibility for Gayathri, may be because of Ramaswami’s trust over me, or perhaps the self-consciousness of ageing witnessed by the graying hairs over my ears. I would be able to hear Gayathri at the gate itself and would wonder whether there is a time in her life when she could remain silent for 5 minutes. She used to greet me with her cherubic smile and immediately start talking, “uncle how long have you been , you know what happened yesterday…. “, a lady in brown house coat passed us, Gayathri interrupted, “hey Kavi, I old you about an uncle from my home town isn’t….”, she continued for a while when someone else passed with Gayathri interrupting again. After some time, she turned to me as if gaining consciousness after an accident, “uncle, what were we talking?” I was amused by her use of “we” as she was the one who used to talk and I would merely listen.
I got a wealthy client who was looking for investing his big chunk of black money in real estate. Money in black pays well and I soon became busy. One day Gayathri called me and said that her lady in charge was planning to take all the hostel in-mates for new-year party. She sought my opinion and I encouraged her to go out as it would definitely be a good change for her.
Two days later, I got a call from her hostel conveying an unbearable message. Gayathri had committed suicide. I rushed to her hostel. The whole building was silent, evidencing the void of Gayathri’s departure. The wrinkled thin white cloth formed an opaque layer over Gayathri’s dead body. The lady in charge explained that she was in love with a guy and he had cheated her. She showed some letters from her bag.
The post mortem report confirmed that Gayathri was raped before the incident. Ramaswamy’s fragile hand trembled when he received her body from police custody. We neither spoke nor ate anything. The shock drenched in sorrow melted and mixed with my stomach fluids causing some uneasiness. The sorrow vapourized, expanded and occupied my abdomen and chest. It further expanded pressurizing my ribs and choked my lungs. Like a safety valve, my eyelids gave way to the sorrow fluid and tears flew.
Separation and sorrow are inseparable. Even earth enforces gravity on its objects to escape the sorrow of separation. Gayathri, was suddenly omnipresent; in my apartment, in the net centre, in the coffee shop, her memories dwelled everywhere. Her innocent talk kept echoing into my ears. I was like a parent or an elder brother to her, enjoy and relished the bits of services to Gayathri; sometimes it was posting her resume, sometimes it was buying some stationeries, sometimes even accompanying her for interviews. All these, however insignificant it may be, had acted as a catalyst to improve our relation. Thinking further on these lines, I was convinced that I was closer to her that we acknowledged. The revelation brought along with it some amount of possessiveness into my mind. I felt that she should have discussed it with me and my intervention then could have avoided this tragedy. Had I known about her affair with that unknown guy, I would have admonished her, or I would have dealt straight with that guy. I felt like killing the guy who took advantage of her innocence. With the anger drifting towards the guy, my possessiveness shared its positive side of compassion to Gayathri.
Often I missed her and more often I became frustrated. I wanted to take her to beach temple; wanted to buy her the pearl ear-stud which she sighed at with awe when we went to Hyderabad bazaar, wanted to cook her favourite pulaav and so many other things which were postponed added fuel to my burning frustration.
As time went by, my sorrow slowly melted like candle wax. Gayathri’s memories were only intermittent; her constant presence slipped to dreams at night. The rigidity of her thoughts relaxed its grips and my real estate business diluted it further. I became busy with the wealthy client to convert his black money to land. That day I went to internet centre to email my client about a property.
I heard a voice, “hey it’s the lady at 5 star hostel”, the voice belonged to a group of excited guys in my next cubicle. From my seat, I could see a portion of their monitor. Yes, they were right, it was the same lady in charge of 5 star ladies hostel. My astonishment in what I witnessed later sealed me into my chair. The lady in charge was calm as usual; but the girls around her were crying, some of them looked tired; some of them bleeding and yet the lady in charge’s tranquility was intact.
Oh my God, that’s Gayathri. What am I seeing? Is it true? No, this can’t be. I wanted to close my eyes, but couldn’t; I wanted to run, but couldn’t. My legs went tired, a solid mass of energy just escaped out of my body, like air out of a burst balloon. I was stone fixed as two men damaged Gayathri. She protested vehemently, but in vain. The lady in charge stood beside, smiling. Ahh ! I ran out, like a mad man towards unknown destiny to escape an unknown force following me. However, despite my restlessness and hasty running, a corner of my mind smiled at my consciousness and told, “How much ever you run, you can’t escape the guilt inside forever”.

Slum dog- a perspective

2009-03-04T10:41:00.000-08:00

Every one, by now might have read, heard or written enough reviews about the recently launched movie, Slum dog Millionaire (henceforth shall be represented as SM). Still I attempt one as the commercial movie hitting the top review columns, suddenly have taken an icon of Indian patriotism after Oscar ceremony.

We, Indians are thrilled even to learn that our movie is nominated for Oscar, perhaps we live by the adage, “competing is more important than winning”, or may be because we know the worth of our movies and are pleasantly surprised by its entering the international arena. I remember one actor's interview (there are millions of interviews by thousands of actors in hundreds of channels, so dont remember who), "we are using the cameras ditched by hollywood and our people want 'Matrix' like actions in all the movies.

Coming back to SM, I too, with the enthu inflicted by multiple sources, watched the movie with great patriotic feelings. The movie was nice overall, a good theme, but i was disappointed. First of all, someone please tell me whether its a hindi movie or english movie. First half or rather the childhood days of Jamal is in hindi till suddenly they jump from a running train and whole india speaks british accented english. The childhood slum days can never be depicted in english, but once the phase is over, the director conviniently came out of hindi. However, the well known hindi actors under very common indian cicumstances, when speak a foreign language in screen, the aberration is incorrigible, especially after a wonderful start of slum hindi.

The hindu-muslim riot and killing of Jamal's mother is an emotional force-fit for the simple question of 'what does lord Rama holds in his hand?". Similarly, when Anil Kapoor tried to cheat Jamal with wrong answer, Jamal is arrested for cheating case. Such scenes are aimed only to pull the emotions of viewers and built with no logic.The original book from which this movie is adapted doesnt have such illogical situations.

Talking about the theme, the social crimes of child abduction, prostitution and gundaism...A definite answer which director might have got from any indian across a coffee table. The director doesnt seem to have researched on any of these, for the scenes move too rapidly even to register or create an impact. The theme have lot of potential to exploit the emotions, reality and the real sufferings, but went till Oscar unexploited.

In one of the reviews I read that Oscar is under pressure to recognize india, but their ego prevented them to call upon an Indian director on stage and hence have found an easy route. Though the argument may convince all those who didnt appreciate the movie, I do not completely agree with it.

Few months back, I read a couple of novels by Khaled Hosseini describing the miseries in Afghan since USSR's invasion and for those who have had a first hand feeling about Afghan cant stop praising the work. But if an Afghan goes through it, he may not see anything interesting as he himself is a part of system which makes others eyebrows life in surprise. We are in a similar state of mind, being a part of the system, we couldnt appreciate it.

Finally, the reason for many of us to hate SM could also be because, the movie which is such an ordinary depiction of India won an international applause under a foreign director and not one among our millions. :)
(Image source: http://www.imdb.com/media/rm1571460352/tt1010048)

Lost debit card- short story

2009-02-25T03:13:00.000-08:00

As the tiny white blades swung gently, the 2 ton air conditioner pumped cool air, laden with a strong aroma of room freshener into that small ATM. Today’s freshener flavour is sandal and is soothing unlike the previous week’s penetrating jasmine flavour.
But, inside the small room, I was not bothered about anything around. It was the third time I’m dialing from the wall-hung dust laden white phone inside the ATM. I pressed the button “Direct Manager” and waited impatiently when a computerized voice answered, “Welcome to JM International Bank, for banking related queries, please press ‘1’, for credit card enquiries, please press ‘2’, for demat account and other related enquiries, press ‘4’, for personal and housing loan queries, press ‘5’, for insurance and related queries, press’6’, …. And if you want to talk to our phone banking officer directly, press ‘9’.
I was desperately waiting for this and immediately pressed ‘9’. This time another cute computerized voice answered,” Please wait, you are in queue” and beautiful sitar music replaced the computerized voice. Had I not been in my current agony, I would’ve flirted with the owner of the computerized voice,” honey, your voice is better than the recorded music and…” But this time I didn’t entertain any such distractions. The loop of computerized voice and sitar music continued for sometime when a natural live human voice broke at the other end, “good morning sir, thanks for calling JM bank, This is Seema in banking accounts section of JM Bank, my staff no is 81435, what can I do for you sir,” she finished her routinely repeated constant greeting dialogue.

God knows how many million times she had repeated the same greeting to several customers and it’s really appreciable that she still holds enthusiasm in her voice. Who knows, may be the fat monthly pay includes her acting enthusiastic hiding her work’s boredom..

I repeated for the third time. ‘My name is Rajeevkrishnan, my account no is 460324589311 and I’ve lost my debit card.”

“Oh, I’m sorry.” Seema’s sweet voice answered at the other end.” This is Banking section, you may have to contact Card service” and transferred the call to some other desk. The monotonic ringing continued for sometime and there was silence, pure silence, the absolute solution for my complex problem. I slammed the receiver.

“Today is a bad day for me”, I thought. I tried to recollect all the possibilities under the sky for losing my wallet. “Did I forget to take it from house? Did I miss it in fuel station? Or…..” a series of mental questions with a single answer “No”.

Sometimes, under extreme pressure, your mind lands up somewhere unconnected to the present. My mind flashed back and forth and Gayathri haunted my thoughts. More than the loss, my worry then was how to face her that evening. “How many times I’ve told you not to keep debit card and license in your wallet? Are you that lazy to keep them in a separate pouch?” and a series of bashing. A corner of my mind generally agrees with her. But what I’m afraid is about the worst that follows, a solid half an hour of lamenting starting from my missing her uncle’s cousin’s nephew’s marriage eight years back and continuing chronologically event by event which ends in my forgetting to buy a cough syrup for her mother last week, which she claims that I should voluntarily have bought seeing her mother coughing.

I followed the ritual again for the fourth time. “Welcome … Please dial 9”.

I stood there feeling the cool air spit from A.C, watching the Monday morning sun slowly engulfing the mother earth with his flame lips and waiting for the irritating computerized voice to stop. The other end got life again.
“Good morning sir, Sumathi here”. This time its Sumathi, earlier it was Seema, before that Pearl who followed Kavitha. The beautiful names and their honey filled music-like voices were good, but gave no solution for my missing debit card. Kavitha didn’t know what to do and promised that she would call me back after discussing with her boss and she thinks she gave a smart answer. Pearl followed the same tactics of Seema, transferring my call to some department without waiting for a reply. And I wonder how none of the transferred calls are answered.
Having repeated several times, even my voice hardened like the emotion free computerized voice. I repeated the whole story again. Listening to my tragic story, Sumathi said “Oh ! I’m sorry”, a compassion not expressed by any of the previous ladies adoring beautiful names. Anyone, especially when in distress is easily moved by a couple of soothing words. Even in the state of misery, my brain made a mental note of the importance of empathy. Sumathi’s “sorry” made me believe that she’s going to solve my problem. Sumathi continued, “May I ask you few questions to verify your details?”.
“Yes, please”, I replied as courteous as possible though my mind was telling “you lousy lady, finish it fast and talk about my debit card.”
She asked, “May I know your mother’s maid’s name?”.. “What? maid’s name? Why do you need that”. “Sir, please tell me your mother’s maid’s name.” I was confused and answered, “Backiam”, the lady whose rough hands are responsible for the shining utensils of our kitchen for the past several years.
“Sorry sir, its not matching our records.” “But how come my mother’s maid’s name entered your database and it seems complete nonsense.” Even amidst the agony of losing card, I felt awfully irritated at her questions. My mind, for a moment went blank, a state of thoughtlessness surpassing the present tension. Sometimes, when you are forced to a complete state of pure confusion, left with no solution, you will surely have some clue in front of you just waiting for you to crack it. This time it was a fresh application form lying over the glass top which melted the dirty handprints leftover by someone unknown who might have taken its assistance for filling some forms, or may be to drop a cheque. But why do I care about all these?
The application form, printed nicely in orange colour also shared some dirt from its glass bed. The application form read as follows
“ NAME (CAPTIAL LETTERS):
MOTHER’S MAIDEN NAME: ………”,
Oh ! She wanted to ask my mother’s maiden name. My god! I was rather panicked wondering how insane the bank is to appoint such a crack brain in the help desk. Her sweet voice didn’t appear sweet anymore. I felt talking further about my lost debit card was abominable and I slammed the receiver.
My cellphone kept on the glass top vibrated riling my temper. The green colour monochromatic display contained within itself, “boss calling” in dark block letters. I could see unpleasant changes in my face even in the distorted reflection in the stainless steel contoured plates in front of me. I attended the call and for several minutes I kept on uttering only two words, “yes sir”. I had to rush for an urgent meeting and to send an urgent email and….. nowadays I’ve lost the feel for urgency as every damn activity is prefixed with ‘urgent’ and I do it as normal as possible.
Frustration from the calls I made and received forced me to get out of the ATM. I decided to send an email to the bank rather than calling unhelpful helpdesk. I took my briefcase, the one my brother in law presented for one my wedding anniversaries (Gayathri thinks that the suitcase is made of diamond, though I know the truth that he got the foam brief case as a compliment for some cheap conference on some useless topics he attends) and brusquely walked out pushing the aesthetically bent stainless steel handle of the heavy glass door.
I came out, took a deep breath of the warm air. I need to think what I should do now. I couldn’t get rid of Seema, Pearl, Kavitha and Sumathi. All of them haunted like devils and somewhere nowhere I could see them ganging up to mock me. I imagined them laughing at me hysterically, how crude!!
The ATM watchman approached me. The peach shirt has a coffee brown label, “B.S.K security services” embroidered over it. The shirt might have witnessed some tough blows during its previous washes, the embroidery has started unthreading. First thing that entered my mind was “hey black shoes don’t go with your trousers”, I controlled my thoughts and gave him a confused look. I’ve read in internet about ATM watchmen abducting the customers at gunpoint for money, but I seriously couldn’t believe that he’s attempting the crime at day time. Hmm, many criminals don’t even know how to perform a crime, and finally get caught to the big bellied khakhi policemen.
He might have understood my anxiety; he smiled relieving me from the thought of my being abducted. He searched for something in his pocket. Oh my god! Tension again, what could be that? A pistol, a knife, or any other pocket size weapon our film industry hasn’t captured yet for its miraculous heroes?. He took it out of his pocket. It was dark brown in colour and very familiar to me, yes, yes that’s it. He spoke for the first time, “ When you went in, your wallet fell down, please count the money”.

Kite Runner- Book Review

2008-11-25T08:23:00.001-08:00

A captivating brilliant novel from Khaled Hosseni. The advantage of its being in first person made full justice to the emotional extract. The story is about two friends, Amir and Hasan (though Amir couldn’t accept till the end that he was a friend to Hasan) in Afghanistan. Amir and his baba leave Afghan due to Russian invasion in Afghan and flee to America. After several years (after Amir’s baba’s death due to cancer and after Amir’s marriage with Soraya)Amir goes to Afghan and bring late Hasan’s son to America as an act of repentance for a cowardy betrayal he had done to his friend in his childhood days.

Usually, many novels bring out innocence when the subject is about an infant and end up forcing the author’s thoughts through the child. There are definitely some rare pieces where the child is brought out in its original form, a very difficult task, say Lucy the pisher in “The Burning Summer” by Claire Raine. Even in those rare pieces child is depicted as an embodiment of innocence. It is true that under the milky skin, hiding beneath the innocence a child can be cruel to the core; however since innocence is the basic character, the cruelty sometimes lead to compunction like Amir in Kite Runner.

Amir’s baba rocks throughout the novel. Though the author thought of surprising us by telling Hasan as illegitimate son of his baba, he had left enough hints right from the beginning and I was not really surprised.

I saw a lot of me in Amir, his tastes, his thought process, may be because he had flaws and so am I and I believe so are everyone. Reading through this I felt little uneasy as my wrong deeds of the past pricked me. But I adore Rahim khan’s statement to Amir that only purity in character can give you guilt feeling. As you said, there’s always a way to be good again. Thank you Rahim for that. .

Relay Race- short story

2008-08-26T11:47:00.001-07:00

Our town might have had one of the best engineers to design the gates of ‘Queen Victoria Park’. Since my childhood days, thousands of kids have swung on the iron gates and it still stands majestically holding my grandson between its slender vertical bars. The huge boughs of the Peepal tree near the gate fanned in the scent of fried cashew nuts sold outside by few black skinned, gray haired ugly-looking women. As a reflex to Peepal tree’s call, my hand scanned my shirt pocket. Scanning my shirt pocket is an easy job; it hardly holds an old fountain pen, a small pocket diary scribbled throughout with random information, a small bit of ‘to be bought’ items list written legibly in my wife Gayathri’s handwriting, few coins and few rupee notes totalling a value less than one hundred. My hand pressed my pocket, like Dr.Seetharam does with his chill stethoscope during winter fever. With the five rupee coin excavated from my pocket, I walked briskly towards the gate. The thin summer air was thick with the scent of cashew. In exchange of that five rupee coin, I got a small pack of cashew nuts and a murmur from the wry ugly face “now a days you wont get a cup of water for five rupees and people want cashew nuts..”. Ignoring the comment, I gently opened the shabby pack revealing bright yellow coloured cashew nuts. I took one cashew; it looked like a penguin with a broad hip and a narrow neck; its curved neck was charred due to excess heat from the clay ovens in the thatched roof huts of those ugly women. Appreciating the beautiful symmetry of cashew, I felt the fine dimples spread over its golden yellow surface. I happily allowed my appetite empty the packet. I slowly unwrapped the paper cover that till few minutes back held those daffodil cashew nuts. One side of the wrapper was decorated by a black and white photograph of some actress, whose name I don’t remember. The other side had a quote of Albert Einstein about Mahatma Gandhi. I carefully tore along the black lines embroidering the quote and slid it into my shirt pocket; who knows, someone might have thought that I’m actually storing the photograph of that actress; but I don’t really care what others think about me.
When I got up to deposit the remaining wrapper safely inside municipality’s never-cleared dust bin, I saw Vichu (Viswanathan) coming towards me from the park library. Soon we were sitting in the concrete bench under the neem tree, the one which we have been sharing for hundreds of evenings since our retirement. “Ha Nana (Narayanan) where is your grandson Ramu?” When Vichu asked, I realized that I had forgotten Ramu for quite a while. Startled, I turned back and was relieved to see the iron gates still holding him between its vertical bars. Pressing his palms on the concrete bench, Vichu bent back to relax his posture and enjoy the neem breeze. Breaking the silence, he farted, controlled explosions in the park air. May god bless all the holy hands that planted the trees around us which instantly purified the air contaminated by Vichu’s emissive presence. The Peepal tree’s breeze this time cleared the odour and relieved me the effort of wrinkling my nose tip. Vichu spared an unembarrassed casual smile, stroked his belly and said “today’s culture….”
I was surprised. In general, eye brows broaden in response to pleasant surprises and vice versa. This time, my eye brows contracted when Vichu attempted to reason out today’s culture for his invisible gas bubbles. Relieving my surprise, Vichu continued, “Today’s culture has ruined our lives. Those days, we had healthy food; spinach and vegetables that grow above the earth’s surface enriched with positive energy. The diet was balanced then. But, today’s culture have shifted towards pizzas and coke, hardly my daughter-in law cooks vegetables. Mention not the technological demons. The food, already poisoned with artificial chemicals is cooked with microwave. And what remains is only gas trouble and stomach ulcer.”
Being a part of retired men association, such bane for technology is not new. I think the hatred for technology stems out from the ignorance of not understanding the same.
“Vichu… I agree with you that our eating habits have westernized. But, weren’t we different from our previous generation? May be we didn’t had pizzas, but we adopted chappathis which were not a part of any of our parent’s dinner menu. The increased work pressure has decreased the available time and energy and hence increases the sales of packed foods. And about your curse on microwave oven, Vichu, don’t you remember how upset your father was when you bought the gas stove. He feared that the inflammable gas stove may one day shatter the whole house into pieces. We were different from our previous generation and so are this generation from us.” Gayathri’s words echoed in my ears. Once when I was upset with my son, Gayathri told me, “You were not like what your father expected and your son is not like you expect him to be.” Gayathri might have mentioned it casually. Truth, even if casually mentioned is indispensable.
Vichu was silent for a moment; may be his emotions were pricked by my mentioning about his father’s displeasure on gas stove or perhaps he was in agreement with my argument.
“But Nana…”, Vichu continued “Its not just about food. I’m talking about overall degeneration of this generation. It’s disgusting to see people being stingy in their costume and still be unabashed of it. Disco clubs and night-out parties have become a part of family life. Movies and internet spread venom and people are trapped into it.”
“Vichu, I think there is some problem in our viewing the next generation. We are unable to accept changes and at the same time we fail to realize that we ourselves had introduced some changes in this society. Talking about costume, our previous generation wore only traditional dhoti. Did you continue that? In fact, you were the first one to wear bell-bottoms in our college. I still remember your blushing when kamala told that you looked like Rajesh Khanna when you wore that coffee-brown colour bell-bottoms and tiny executive check, long collared full sleeve shirt. It’s a matter of fact that our social system is changing, may be the rate of change of social life is faster in this generation than ours.”
Vichu interrupted before I finish, “Nana, you mean to say that everything is allright?”
Evening sun had already started fading. Ellipsoid bulbs of sodium vapour lamp came to life giving birth to continuous flood of yellow light attempting to compete with the setting sun over the local area of concrete bench. Vichu’s discontent on my supporting this generation was visible in his facial changes, now illuminated by the monochromatic light flowing through the translucent (once transparent) glass panes of the sodium vapour lamp.
“Vichu, I’m just trying to say that every element in this society is changing. Few years back, we were the source of change and we didn’t realize then that we were changing. Now, when this generation is changing, we become mere observers. According to our parents, we were not right and according to our grandparents, our parents were not right. If you extend the time scale into both past and future, you would always observe that the older generation is reluctant to the changes of the present generation. And whether such changes are good or bad, we can’t comment. Because what we witness as changes are just symptoms, symptoms of something bigger and sacred. Yes, all these changes are just symptoms of another slow invisible change of our society’s value system. Among the infinite changes in technology, social life, dress, eating habits etc, some may positively influence and contribute for the betterment value system and some may not..”
Ramu came running to hug me, with soiled shoes and sweat laden T-shirt. When Ramu hugs me I forget everything, even my line of thought; but this time I didn’t and continued, “Vichu... Life is like a relay race, each individual run only for a certain distance and handover the baton to the next. Similarly, each generation run a certain distance holding the baton of ‘change’ and hand it over to the next generation. So, lets not worry about this relay race, but shall try to channelize the these changes to the overall objective of a better value system for future.” Vichu this time appeared to be relaxed and extended a smile. We walked towards the iron gates built by an unknown ‘best engineer’.
We crossed a couple of young men in their thirties, who might have come to the park with their kids and probably were returning then. In that silent atmosphere, amidst the soothing music of Peepal tree, those voices were clearly audible. In a hoarse voice one of them spoke, “these kids... God, they are no way like our generation. How nice we were as kids? I am really scared about the future of this new generation.”
Vichu pressed my hands, a gentle sign of approval…

That Stupid thing!!!!!- A short story

2008-04-18T10:31:00.000-07:00

My name is … ah ! who cares about my name in the Chennai city holding more than 7.5 million individuals, including the yesterday born grandson of my friend, Srinivasan. Even the one day old cute kid whose feeble cry from his teeth free empty mouth making his rosy cheeks red, will not care to talk to me one day. From the one day old kid to people who have only one day left to live in this funny world, nobody wants to know about me. The 7.5 million individuals in this Chennai city, some percentage of whom I witness daily, some other percentage I witness rarely and the majority I never witness, to me appears like 7.5 million individual societies. All because of that stupid thing.

The basic principle of human society is to interact and cherish relationship. Every individual influences the society. The society is run by the response of each individual to the responses of other individuals. Everything was fine till few years back, until the stupid thing made its presence in the peaceful Chennai. From dawn to dusk, even while sleeping, people need only one thing, that stupid thing, that hand-held stupid mobile phone. Nowadays, I’m not seeing people around; I just see 7.5 million mobile phones roaming around holding human beings with it. Earlier, 8 out of 10 people I encounter used to greet me, but now; sometimes even I wonder whether I exist or not.

That day I really thought the guy has gone insane; what else you think about someone who talks and laughs by himself without anyone around in the middle of the road. Another day, when I went to milk booth, the person filling the decade old broken chair inside the cash counter asked, “ya tell me” and I replied “two packets”. He started shouting, “I don’t care who you are and let me see how you get it”. I was stunned and twisted my complexly entangled brain cells to think what the problem in buying two packets of milk is. Thank god! Only then I realized that he was talking-to someone through his mobile phone. Everybody everywhere is busy talking to someone nowhere in mobile phones. The whole world looks like a lunatic asylum where every individual confines to himself, an aberration in the society. But, since the whole society is behaving like infinite individual societies, only I look like an aberration for them. The black colour, grey colour and many other coloured plastic boxes with rubber buttons and a small screen have eaten away all my friends and relatives from me.

It’s long since I’ve talked even to my daughter. Normally when she comes home, she complains about the weather and also grieves that she had to walk a long distance. Compressing her big eyes, her cute little face wrinkles when she complains. I love to see that expression and often tease her for that. She’s indeed beautiful and like her mom, she’s a chatter box. During dinner, we sit together and we listen to her while she narrates incident by incident since that morning. Whether it is a quarrel with her classmate or an appreciation from her teacher, her food won’t digest until she completes the whole days stuff. The practice continued for years even after her joining the job, but until recently. Nowadays, she enters answering a call, later get hooked up in another call and responds to some other call even while dinner. No more narration from her and no more wrinkles over her face. All because of that stupid mobile phone. I feel like puking over it.

The worst part occurs during my daily travel to office. I use electric train for commuting to office. It’s a half an hour journey and I used to enjoy it very much. We, the co-passengers had formed our own local groups. The first one of the group will reserve seats for people boarding in subsequent stations. Our group mostly comprised of old men, Mr.Sankaran whose pot belly hits the passenger in opposite seat, the bald headed Balakrishnan who have never missed the sandal scratch on his forehead, a proud symbol which he used to portray that he is a keralite and Mr.Shyam,smart and handsome, an odd man in our group used to discuss about varied topics. Though we had never been to each others houses, we knew all of our relatives, functions at our homes and everything personal about us. Similarly, there were other groups; those who play cards and makes lot of noise, who sing film songs using compartment walls as drums, who stands on foot board to look around girls entering each station and so on. Basically, people of similar interests got together and enjoy. But, now, everything has changed. People are idle. Though they travel together throughout the year, they don’t even know each other’s names. They are always busy talking to someone or other in their stupid mobile phones.

Another group of people sit idle like Egyptian mummies. Yes, they are listening to FM radio in mobile phones. They sway gently by the cradle vibration of the train and I think they liked it as the swaying is sometimes coherent with the rhythm of the music that stupid mobile phone vomits. Once, I sat in between these swaying people, suddenly when one started talking to some stranger. He didn’t care about his neighbours and was revealing all his personal details. From his monotonous conversation (believe me, its killing to listen only one half of conversation), I understood that he is a diamond merchant and is going to Europe next week. Had my dad not inculcated some good value system, I could have used the free info to own few diamonds. If I go on listening to such numerous one sided conversations, I’m sure I will go mad one day. Already, my wife complains that my behaviour is awkward.

But one relief is that this train trauma will last only this Thursday. Tired of this old man who still uses his secretary to check email, my company thought that they should get rid of me at the earliest opportunity possible. Though I would have loved to work for some more years to avoid being with my wife for the whole day, the very thought of everyday train journey made me love my wife.

The most awaited Thursday also came at last. Since nursery school, I’ve been a part of many farewells. Every farewell is associated with mixed emotions, a grief of losing the past and excitement of entering the future, like a cup of water after eating gooseberry, a sourness mixed with sweetness. Relishing the past memories and expecting the future moments, I was experiencing the last official 30 minutes train journey. The train stopped in between at local stations and the railway platforms exchanged passengers and all the passengers with stupid mobile phones. A lady clad in a bright yellow saree reflecting the morning mood was standing near the entrance, perhaps for getting down in the next station. The breeze, which remains still at railway station, gushes with heavy force when the train moves blowing the lady’s yellow saree exposing her waist. Sweat dropped from her first waist tire to the second, slowly, very slowly like the collaboration of left over water droplets on an automobile windscreen after rain. But this sweat is an irritating feeling, especially in places like Chennai, the sea water provides enough liquor for the sun that the atmosphere is always fully drunk unable to suck even one drop of sweat from us leaving all the salt laden sweat to trip over clothes making us embarrassed with white salt patches. Everyday, I face the same problem. My loving wife always have something or the other to tell me in the last two minutes before I leave and I have to run from the railway gate to platform within 30 seconds at least to push myself into the last compartment in font of the white uniformed black skinned guard. When I force myself to equilibrium holding the passenger rails, I gasp severely accompanied by wild oscillation of my drooping belly like the bellows of a harmonium. My heart beats rapidly pumping through all possible blood vessels and spit sweat on my forehead and neck. The sweat collects and flows down through the side and reaches my earlobes. I feel tickled, try to wipe it off and I drop my bag in the attempt. The pot belly compels me to get my trousers stitched with the only known tailor Manickam as there is no standard size that fits my disfigured physique. While gasping, my belly pushes my trousers and the white lining peeps out. I can’t see it as y belly prevents, but can realize it by the teasing half-lipped smile from some teenage girls opposite to me.

Being the last day, I started early and escaped the embarrassment of white lining from the teenagers. But, today the teenagers were replaced by the lady inside yellow saree. She was deeply involved in her mobile phone that she was not even aware or didn’t care to be aware of her waist getting exposed. But some college guys who were swaying to the music inside the stupid mobile phone were fully aware of the lady’s exposed waist. I felt sick, but soon forgot about it as I entered my office.

Evening, my office staff hosted a farewell for my retirement day. All of us assembled in the conference hall and for the first time, I took the leading chair in the dais. Most of the people gathered 5 minutes before the scheduled time. Perhaps, the aroma of cutlet behind the dais might have attracted them. We heard some unheard music when one of the guys excused himself with his mobile saying, “hello, ya Ravi speaking”. Soon, one more lady followed the same way. By now, Ravi had come and Gopal received a call. I’m sure it is his fiancée. Despite his dark skin, he blushed; but I had been to his engagement and I personally feel that she’s just an ordinary looking female and doesn’t deserve so much blushing. Within 5 minutes, everyone around me was talking to someone who is not there then and I stood aloof experiencing the unfathomable truth of my loneliness. Under some strange permutation all the potential friends of the gathering were silent for five minutes and hence could finish my farewell.

First our G.M spoke and was followed by many others, my bosses, peers and subordinates. As a custom, they all spoke nice about me. I felt proud despite my complete knowledge that all these are alive only for few more minutes and will vanish like Cinderella’s chariot the moment I get out of the dais.

Before that moment, my G.M garlanded me and gave me a nicely packed gift box wrapped in satin ribbon. I was so delighted, especially at the packing and satin ribbon. With so much of excitation, I slowly opened the box. There was a small greeting card signed by all saying “you will be with us always”. I slowly took the greeting card and found a … god !... the stupid mobile phone.

Escape from Exile

2008-03-04T06:52:00.001-08:00

Escape from Exile- by Robert Levy

4^th march 08

On a dry Sunday afternoon, amma drove me out to flouring mill. As I sat next to the poorly maintained flour mill shouting at its top gear, I noticed an old book store beside. Scanning the whole rack for half an hour I found nothing. On my way out when I was trying to pull some book, one stack of books fell down and when I tried to rearrange those, I got hold of a nice old book, “Escape from Exile” by Robert Levy.

The image in the front page was so captivating with a wonderful sketch of a boy clad in fresh bottle green uniforms hiding behind a rock along with an impalpable animal watching a red uniformed soldier on horse back. I was sure that it is a fantasy adventurous novel, may be prescribed for children.

I didn’t want to leave the book which cost Rs.15/-. You won’t believe me, the 180+ pages novel I finished in a single working day. A very interesting adventure of a little boy Daniel, who suddenly is lost from this world and reaches another world called Lithia, which is still like the medieval age. There is a conflict going on in Lithia for ruling the kingdom. Like most stories one of them is a good natured and other is the villain. Daniel, got a unique ability of talking to animals and he befriended a horse, a poisonous snake and samkit, a strange animal. The story is that Daniel helps the good natured one to regain the land. But he was originally with the villain and the story is mainly about his escape to reach the hero (heroine. The good natured Lauren is a lady). Finally Daniel after his work returns to world and only while returning he understood that he was taken to that world for a purpose of saving samkits from extinction.

A good one to read, I recommend to all those who love reading tinkle, chandamama, gokulam etc. J

A train to Pakistan

2008-03-04T06:45:00.000-08:00

Train to Pakistan

A wonderful story capable of squeezing every drop of blood in any heart. Its unbelievable that it’s a novel. Kushwant singh is indeed a great story teller. Till reading this novel, I didn’t have great opinion about Kushwant singh. In fact, I had associated him as a talented obscene writer. But I was really moved after reading the novel. The sufferings of post-independent India and the communal ferocity and clashes; its difficult to find a fiction to describe it so realistically. And the story is about a village where muslims and hindus were at peace, undisturbed by the clashes outside. A murder at the village followed by a train full of dead Sikhs disturbed the peaceful pages of the novel. I just loved the climax where a rogue (who incidentally can be called a hero) gives his life for his lady love.

My Sandal statue- Short story

2007-12-23T07:35:00.000-08:00

It’s around one week. I’ve changed myself completely in the past one week. Neatly washed and pressed trousers; starch dipped shining cotton shirts perfectly tucked in; aligning the pressed lines of shirt and trouser…. It is altogether a new Ramu. Of course, whatever styling I do, it could be on the choice less uniform of khakhi trousers and white shirt. I think it was bought around two years back. My dad has promised me a new set if I score distinction in my coming 10^th board exams. Otherwise, the only possibility of getting a new uniform is to grow your thighs so big that your trousers can’t enter. Even then every inch of the cloth will be explored for alteration and force-fit on your extra grown muscles. I think that’s applicable to almost all middle class and lower middle class families.

51 J, the bus I was travelling in, stopped with a jerk in ‘Nehru statue’ stop. I turned back; yes, she was there sitting like a sandal statue. How beautiful she is? Wavv. Her smile sparkled like diamonds. She was talking and enjoying with her school mates. Standing in the front foot-board, with roaring Leyland engine beside, to me, her conversation appeared like“deaf and dumb news” relayed every Sunday noon in doordarshan channel. I was expecting a glance, just a glance from her and all the devils surrounding her won’t allow that. When she took a 180 degree turn, she took a glimpse of me. She stretched both her eyebrows in unison, her already smiling lips spread further to acknowledge my presence. That’s all, that’s more than sufficient to take me heaven. She smiled, yes, a living sandal statue smiled at me.

I first saw her about a week back; a week after our school- reopening. I was travelling in the same 51J bus when a glass- like smooth voice asked “can you get me a ticket please?” I turned back in the direction of honey filled voice. There stood the same sandal statue with reddened cheeks. Sweat sprouted over her forehead like morning dew dressing the bushy leaves. I lost myself for a moment. After some time, I looked at her direction to check whether she was looking at me. I was disappointed; my conscience asked me “why should she look at you?” Yes, why should she? Rather why or how could any girl look at me?, a slender dark figure, with dirty uncombed hair, ugly face, wrinkled white and khaki uniform and bathroom slippers under the feet. Which girl could be interested in me? But my sense was working only part of the time; rest of the time my romantic emotions dominated and expected a glance from her.

One evening is sufficient for any 10^th standard guy to collect information about any girl in his town. She was residing in “Chetti street”, her father a peon in sub-register office, the old building constructed during british period which was once the office of the then collector, Sir.Robert Franklin, whose dust-laden portrait still hangs on the first room of the office. Her father has been recently transferred and hence her admission was easy in Little flower convent, the town’s biggest girl’s school, next to S.M.V, the town’s biggest boy’s school, where I’m studying. The best part was, I even got her name in the same evening. But it was not a big task. There is a lane next to her house and I stood motionless for about two hours in the lane filled with excreta and urine of local street dogs and street boys. I overheard some conversation and understood her name as ‘Gayathri’. Ga.. ya .. thri.. three syllables- Gayathri, Gayathri, Gayathri… every time I recite her name, I’m thrilled, I feel some extra millimeters of blood gushing through my blood vessels. Never before I felt that Gayathri is such a beautiful name.

Next day, I took bath early, combed my hair, applied an extra layer of ‘cuticur talc’ lying on my sister vidya’s table, applied sacred ash as a small scratch just above my nose, pressed my uniform, tucked in my shirt and when I came out, I knew I was looking handsome despite my unchangeable original ugly face. Vidya murmured “something happened to this stupid” and hurried to kitchen to share her opinion with my mother. My mother came out and exclaimed, “what happened to you suddenly?”. I just smiled and avoided a reply. I faced similar queries from next house mangalam aunty, opposite house sundaram uncle and of course, all my pals. I had to smile hiding all my anxieties and say “nothing” repeatedly to everyone, like a new student introducing him with the same two lines with everyone he come across. I stretched my thick lips attempting to have an ever smiling face; somewhere someone told me that everyone looks handsome when they smile. I reached the bus stop 5 minutes earlier making myself doubly sure not to miss the bus. The acrid smell of the unburnt diesel filled the air and the bus turned towards the stadium. One day of familiarity was more than sufficient to recognize her much before the bus halted. Though the previous day, I had seen her only for few moments, she had filed my dreams throughout the night. Gayu ( I, now prefer her calling ‘Gayu’) boarded the bus allowing her worn out sandals kiss the bus floor. Gayu looked more beautiful than the previous day. I thought even sun felt a little proud when his orange rays were reflected by this angel’s black, oiled plaited hair. A black ribbon was choked to death mercilessly around her hair plaits. Sacred vermilion and a synthetic sticker decorated her crescent shaped forehead; the vermilion diluted and formed a small stream by her sweat spat by her soft skin. Her cheeks were soft like butter and bristles of milky hair grown hither thither shone brown in sunlight. Her wheatish skin hid her teenage pimples. Her white shirt showed patches of blue tint; like my mother, her mother also might be using cheap dye-powder. In our schools, white means blue. If anyone wears a neat white shirt, our physical education master, a man in clowny cap and old fashioned sunglass would come and question, “Cant your mom dip your shirt in blue dye at least once a week?”. I hope even Gayu’s school might be same case, wherein the physical education master could be some funny lady. Gayu’s green skirt had already turned pale. With my experience in wearing old uniforms, I could bet that the skirt was at least 2 years old. Probably, her mother too might be using the stinking, lather-free, yellow detergent cake costing two rupees in civil supply stores. Once again the same honey floated in air, “Excuse me, ticket please”. I turned to her and she too showed some sign of recognition. We smiled at each other. I felt like floating in the heaven, the fog filled place decorated fabulously with beautiful ladies dancing always. That’s what they show about heaven in ‘Ramayana’ serial on Sunday morning.

Next day, I had already bought the ticket for her. I saw the sandal statue boarding in stadium stop. Still, I pretended to take no notice of her, just to hear the honey filling the air “excuse me”. I turned and gave her the ticket. She looked surprised; she was indeed beautiful in all her emotions. Soon we ended in a giggle and again I was in heaven.

Two days went by and I became her conductor. Just for her, just for her smile, just for the angel, I never mind being a conductor throughout my life. The routine continued in the evening also. I gradually detached myself from my friends. Evening, I got down in her bus stop, walked with her till the corner of “Chetti Street”; those walks I was longing for… It is always s pride to walk with girls; that too beautiful girls. One set of friends would have a great regard for you, enquiring “how did you do that?” and I advice, “love is not just about looks, its all about conversation between hearts, which you dumb fellows can’t understand”, I prophesied sounding similar to some ultrasonic communication, that narrow eyed, broad mouthed physics sir said some time back. Another set of friends, quite opposite; envy you for your achievement and make fun of you proclaiming, “love is not for brave men” or “it is not love, but infatuation” and many other such theories. I ignored both the category of friends and showed no emotions, for I saved al my emotions for my dear Gayu.

Today is the seventh day and in the past one week we have talked enough about ourselves. I was longing for this for my whole life and now its happening. What next? I should declare my love. I’ve to start; obviously, she a poor Indian conservative girl cannot be expected to open up. In fact, when you propose, she should not accept my love immediately. She should resist, weep and curse my intentions. I should understand this signal, follow her, ask sorry, plead her and after two or three days, she will smile accepting my love. If otherwise, she accepts my love immediately, she will lose her value, it gives an impression that she is longing for someone’s proposal and hence will be considered as a bad cultured girl. I know all these social limitations. While getting down at my school stop, I said “Gayathri (I’m not yet brave enough to address her Gayu directly), evening, I shall wait for you in ‘Kumar book stores’, we shall go together. She nodded; how beautiful she nods !!!

Evening, I stopped at a road side flower shop and enquired how much does a rose cost. An old lady chewing betel leaves looked at me. It was unusual for a school boy to drop in at this hour and that too ask for a rose. Usually, only married men buy flowers for their women folk in late evenings. Ladies, either buy for themselves or for temples. Even if a school boy drops in, he only buys jasmine or marigold for temples and never a rose. Though rose is a symbol of love, no youth is brave enough to propose a girl in public and all the roses born in the town mercilessly went to vinayaga temple. I ignored the old lady’s surprise and asked again “that red rose”. The red rose looked beautiful with its half-opened petals bearing droplets of chlorinated municipal water sprinkled by the old lady. She said it costs one rupee and fifty paise. “Ah”, I could eat one samosa, I sighed. I thought for a while; at last my heart won and I kept the red rose safely in my bag. As agreed, we met in ‘Kumar book stores’ and proceeded towards bus stand. We approached “Gandhi Park”, the only park of the town. Welcoming us, the cashew tree and neem tree at the entrance smiled. Few ladies were selling cashew nuts; they might have roasted it from the fallen cahew fruits. We felt the cool breeze and Gayu’s hair danced on her fore head. I first envied, and later got upset at the breeze’s ability to embrace my Gayu without my permission. We crossed the ‘Park library’. Now the library has only four walls. Last year there was a fire accident and the library went into ashes. Some boks were eaten by the fire and the remaining decorated the ‘Old book stores’ opposite to library, after officially registering it as “burnt in fire accident”. I sensed my heart beating unusually faster. I wanted to declare my love with the red rose. I looked around. The whole park was littered and stinking. Gandhi Park is a free toilet. Instead of building parks, had the government started building public toilets, we could have implanted the discipline among Indians of not shitting on mother earth’s face. Suddenly my knowledge constrained to my town spread its political wings for a national toilet problem.

Anyway, I decided not to declare my love then and walked silently with Gayu. When we crossed the park’s other gate, Gayu smiled and said, “Ramu, can you buy two tickets for tomorrow’s evening show in ‘Swami theatre’?”. I was overwhelmed. I think Gayu might have understood my impatience, my shyness to propose and now she’s attempting an ambience to facilitate that. I’m indeed lucky to have a Gayu as my life partner. I nodded like our temple elephant. I knew the ticket selling Satish of ‘Swami Theatre’. He is our cricket team player. I just had to say that his stokes are like Sachin’s and immediately got two tickets.

Next day, I reached ‘Swami Theatre’ on time. Evening mood was creeping in the town. After a hot tiring day, sun was retiring behind the hills dipping the town in grey light. Buffaloes, soaked in nose-deep water were driven out of the pond. Hurricane lamps and kerosene lamps were lit on the road-side shops whereas halogen lamps and fluorescent lamps in show-rooms. Some mischievous boy threw stone at a pig and it ran out of gutter splashing dirty water. I leaned over the parapet wall without acknowledging the happenings around, for my mind was fully occupied by Gayu. The excitement of sitting beside Gayu for two whole hours spread all over the billion cells of my body. I planned, rehearsed how to start, how to talk and how to behave with Gayu.

There at last, my sandal statue is coming. Wavv!! the flesh coloured velvet full skirt and a three fourth sleeved black tops embroidered with some shining objects made Gayu look like an angel. Her hair was floating in the evening breeze. This time I didn’t envy the breeze, coz now Gayu is mine. Only when you are uncertain, you will have the entire world’s possessiveness. She came near me with a smiling face. Somehow, today’s smile looked better than her previous smiles. She too might be using ‘Cuticura talc’, the fragrance from her seemed familiar. Before I got relieved from her beauty shock, she started talking “Ramu, I know that you will get the tickets. Stupid Vimal told that all the tickets are sold out”. Vimal must be her brother. I smiled; which brother in the world has done favours for his sister? I still remember Vidya’s last school day. Vidya wanted me to buy a sachet of shampoo. School day is the only day of the year we are allowed to use shampoo. My mother claims that shampoo makes you bald and never allows us to touch it. We generally use a powder made of hibiscus leaves mixed with something else, a non-patented special composition my mother inherited from her previous generations. Vidya was excitement of using shampoo to float her hair in the air and she had already oiled her longhair. Despite her requests, I went to cricket match without buying her shampoo leaving her gloomy for a week.

I think Vidya’s comment about me will not vary much as Gayu’s comment about Vimal. I politely said, “Its ok Gayathri” and tried my best possible smile, which I have now perfected after whole night secret practice in front of the mirror. One guy in red T-shirt and blue jeans approached us. “Oh yeah, I forgot”, Gayu paused till he came near us and then continued, “Vimal, this is Ramu, I told you na?”. She turned to me, “Ramu, this is Vimal, my boy friend”. I stood still and watched my Gayu, oops sorry, Miss Gayathri getting into ‘Swami Theatre’ with Vimal.

Yellow butterfly- Short story

2007-11-04T03:17:00.000-08:00

Appa was shaving, a ritual, he never misses thrice a week. I thought of waiting till he completes the entire ritual, which includes dismantling his age-old razor, washing it in a mug of water cleansed by 10ml diluted ‘dettol’ solution followed by his packing the razor in plastic box. There is now no trace of “Adyar Ananda Bhavan”, once inscribed on the plastic box. It happens; whenever any container, polythene wrapper or for that matter anything, before discarding, will receive a comment “will be of some use” and it escapes its entry to waste box. That’s the history of shaving set container of appa; someone bought some sweets sometime back and the container later got promoted to the status of shaving set box of Dr.Ganesan, Professor, Govt. Engg College, Madras. Dr.Ganesan (my appa) emerged into drawing room; his moustache was not properly shaved. When I commented, he replied “At this old age, who else other than your mother will be willing to have romance with me. Ah! And your mother, she doesn’t mind this”, winking his eyes, he smiled with a satisfaction of cracking a great joke. Since I was about to ask something serious, I didn’t encourage my lips to respond to his joke. I asked him “appa, what have you decided?” In the past one week, I don’t know how many times I’ve asked him the same question. Appa’s nice smile sheltered behind his unshaved moustache. “America is not fit for me. Madras is a wonderful place and am enjoying…” I knew very well what he is going to tell now. I wanted appa and amma to come and live with me, vidya (my wife) and surya (my kid) in America. I was irritated by his denial of my proposal about his shifting. Owing my respect to him, I killed the emergence of my irritation in my words, but my face showed; my eye brows contracted, front teeth contacted each other, flesh beneath my cheeks expanded and I said, “appa, its around a decade I’m there in America. I’m worried that you and amma are alone here. Surya is now three years old. Do you know how much she misses her grand parents?”

I suddenly recollected my childhood days with my grand parents. Grand parent have a great impact on a child’s character. Appa knows all these things and hence I decided not to explain him how important he is for my surya. I continued, “You have everything there; a big house, a car, temple, Indian neighbours and what not?” I paused for a second, “Appa, why don’t you understand?” I think he was waiting for me to finish. He lighted incense sticks in pooja room, applied sacred ash and vermilion on his broad fore head and chanted few slogas in front of goddess ‘Saraswathi”. The pooja room is a very small one, hardly one person can stand comfortably. Before my every exam, appa used to chant in the same pooja room and applies sacred ash on my fore head, saying, “The questions will be simple and you will do well. All the best my son”

I was firm in my decision. I want my parents to live with me I America. Whats wrong in it? I think it’s my right as well as duty to take them with me. How many parents in the world are longing to live with their children and are mercilessly trapped into old age homes. Amma has no problem in coming to America. Only appa is adamant in staying in Madras. He was getting ready to his college. I told him that am accompanying him to college, as I don’t have anything serious to do around. Appa looked with an initial surprise, and smiled, an indication which I understood that he is pleased to have me at college. My intention was to convince him somehow by today evening so that I can arrange for his visa and other formalities soon.

Appa is a great person. I have always admired him for his values and love. He is in the teaching profession for more than 30 years, yet enthusiastic about his profession. He is known as a student friendly professor and his courses are considered to be easy-grade course (to some extent it’s true). His philosophy is that no one can learn anything within a semester in college. His aim is never to make the student master of all the formulae in the textbook, but to induce a curiosity in the minds of students who can have a constant search for excellence. I remember, once he took ‘metallurgy’ course for mechanical engineers. It is one course which is unanimously hated by all mechanical students. But, at the end of their final year, more than 50% of students went for specialization in metallurgy. I always admire his principles, discipline and definitely his teaching.

But he is testing my patience. We walked across the huge old iron gates, the “Govt. Engg College” inscription on the iron gates is already half eaten by the oxygen in the atmosphere. It was drizzling then. Appa looked at the sky “Varuna, narayana, thanks for your blessings to madras people.” The fragrance emanated out of the first kiss of rain on earth, enriched the atmosphere. The pollen grains of some unknown flowers suspended themselves in the surrounding air and we felt fresh. The huge trees on both sides of the road hugged each other at the horizon. The tender leaves competing with others for sunlight decorated the outer surface of the trees. We walked, crossing the monkeys and spotted deers. “How nice the campus is!!”, I exclaimed. Appa added, “You will forget everything once you are here”. Some yellow butterflies danced in the air forming high degree polynomial curves. Appa continued, “See those yellow butterflies, I always envy them. They are free and they do what they wish to do. Can we?”. Appa had to break the conversation as the first bell rang.

I found a nice old cement bench under a tamarind tree for me. I looked around. Nature is beautiful indeed. Nature never changes its style. The tamarind leaves always look the same, the sky, the water, nothing changes; yet its beautiful. How is man, who is bored within few months to see the same style of shirt, is never bored to see the same nature throughout his life? Is it because nature doesn’t care what others think and just remain as it wishes? The yellow butterflies came again, now forming different set of curves. Appa just said something; he said that the butterflies are free to decide what they wish to do. Do we have the freedom to do what we want to do? In my case, yes, I think I have the freedom. I can change my job, I can become the head of another company, I can read anything, I can…. , No, all those are the things I can. But what do I want to do? I started thinking.

When I was a kid, I was fascinated by my neighbour, Manickam. He was a bus conductor and my ambition then was to become a bus conductor. A bus conductor decides when and where to stop a bus. He has the whole control of more than 60 people at a time, and so much money under his leather bag; I was fascinated. But I didn’t become a bus conductor, why?. Because,….. because my parents wanted me to study well and take a good job in a reputed firm. So, I mean, I lost my freedom because of my parents? Well, not only that, all my friends went to engineering and how can I become a conductor then?. Does it mean that my friends indirectly decide what I should do? Oh. What about the society. I, son of Dr.Ganesan should not become a bus conductor. God ! The entire society has confiscated my freedom. Leave all that, will my wife vidya accept me if I’m a conductor?. So I’m a slave or a shapeless mass whose freedom is barted with my parents, friends, society, wife and the list goes on... I just couldn’t digest, but its unfortunately true. I’m not free to decide what I should do. The world suddenly appeared different to me.

Leave alone the past. I closed my eyes and thought whether I’m doing what I want to do at least in my present. The instant answer is yes again. I’m researching in a company in my field of interest. I’m happy in what I’m doing. Wait a minute, I ask the next question/ will I jump to another company if it is willing to pay me ten times more. The immediate response is ‘yes’ again. I’m confused; is my primary interest just money? No, I can’t believe it; but yes, I have to accept it. The inference is paining…. But money is important; I have to support my family. I love them. Ah ! This time, my love to my family has cut down the wings of my freedom. I was startled for the first time in my life to learn the bitter truth that I don’t have the freedom to do what I want to. It was too much for me to think. I don’t know how long did I spent there.

Appa appeared with a smile, “hey, were you bored”. He didn’t wait for my reply. He continued, “Do you know what happened today. I was teaching equilibrium. Suddenly Srinivas asked me whether any equilibrium exists in reality. I was surprised at his question. He said that he went through a book about universe and had learnt that universe is constantly expanding and cannot be considered to be in equilibrium. When the whole universe is not is equilibrium, how can anything within the universe be in equilibrium?. Forget the physics behind his question. But see his ability to think and link the universe to his mechanics class”. Appa continued, soon changing to Ramu, then Felix, Priya and he went on.. I could sense no tiredness in the seasoned professor’s body. Instead I sensed an inexplicable joy and energy in him. I think.. I think he is doing what he really wants to do. Yes, that’s the crux, he is not enjoying Srinivas or Ramu’s question, but he is enjoying absolute freedom.

I went home, had a coffee, amma’s filter coffee hadn’t lost its flavour yet. I sat on my laptop and composed an email to Vidya

“Dear Vidya,

We, slaves of relation, job, society, emotions, etc.. have no rights to pluck the freedom of others”.

I’m sure she will make nothing out of it. But I’m clear. I looked around. Appa was reading newspaper. Only his hair-free head was visible. I took the phone, “Hello, M.K.Travels, .. Yes,.. I need one ticket to Losangels”. I could sense appa’s surprise by the compression of aged skin in his fore head. I repeated strongly “Only one ticket to Losangels”.

Mango tree- Short story

2007-11-03T08:18:00.001-07:00

Natarajan entered his house when the 8:30 serial in T.V was over and the advertisement for a garment company was going. The colourful products and design were enjoyable even in that old black and white T.V, by lakshmi, ramu, vidya and kamalam amma. The four members were sufficient to fill 75% of the drawing room. Not that the members are too huge, but the drawing room is that small. Ramu rushed to Natarajan, tried to hug him, rested his head against him and shouted “daddy, have you bought me the train toy which I asked you in the market”. There is nothing unusual in the behaviour of ramu as it is quite normal with a six years old kid in any normal family. Lakshmi shouted, “Ramu, wont you keep quiet. Can’t you see your father looking tired? Let him first relax and eat. You disturb him later.” If lakshmi admonishes her only son for his unaberrated behaviour, there can’t be a better reason other than “love for her husband” to fit the situation. Vidya is usually quiet. She is made to speak by Natarajan with his regular question, “vidya, how was the day? What did you do today?” Natarajan is keen that his sister vidya should not be unhappy especially now as she is getting married soon. Mother is the only being who knows only to love you with least or no expectation. Kamalam amma, mother of vidya and natarajan not only loves those two, but loves her daughter-in-law lakshmi also equally. Such small happy family missed one of their senior persons, Mr.Vinayagam, father of natarajan two years back as his heart lost its pumping efficiency. Ultimately his death certificate carried a sentence “death due to ageing”, and doctors after burdening natarajan with five digits in his bill told without expressions, “heart attack”. For natarajan, his wife’s loss of her ten sovereign gold chains mattered nothing in front of his father’s death.

Natarajan is the only earning member of the family. He is brilliant and sincere fellow. One of the mistakes he did in his life was that he scored very good marks in tenth standard. He wanted to become an engineer and as an initial step he joined poly-technique College. He had applied in post-office with his tenth certificate. His high marks won him a clerical post in post-office. Nothing in the world seemed better than a central government job that too at an age of 16. Without any space for second thought everyone was in favour of natarajan joining post-office. Natarajan sometimes thinks that he could have pursued higher studies. The thought was little late by sixteen years after his joining and hence there was no future for his thoughts.

Natarajan is a very lovely man. He usually comes home as soon as his office gets over. By six in the evening he goes for a walk with his son, ramu to the market. The three streets market is the only tourist place in that small village. They usually enter the Khadim Street. The street will be pleasant as most of the families involve themselves in perfume making and incense stick business. Refreshing their nostrils with the fragrance, they cut left and enter Chetty Street, which is dominated, by utensils shop. Copper vessels will be laid in the roads and there will always be an old man polishing some copper vessels. Ramu looks the man with fancy. He thinks that the old man’s method of cleaning those vessels differs from his mother’s method where she uses tamarind and sand to clean vessels of similar kind. The visit to the street formally ends by their gracious presence in ‘murugan tea stall’. It is one of the famous tea stalls over there as it has three benches for its customers. There stands a topless, white bearded old man making samosas, bondas and dhal vadas. Some times he makes banana appam, which is special over there. Ramu enjoys this part of the walk and then parcel some eatables for his mother, granny and aunty too. Mother had told him that this murugan tea stall is very famous that many people come in car just to eat the samosas of the tea stall. Ramu wanted to see someone in car eating it. He has seen some cars occasionally over there but no one eating the samosas of tea stall. He pacified himself that those people might be hiding themselves when they eat. Even granny asks him to hide his eatables when next house anand comes to meet him. The third street of the market is for vegetables and other house hold items. The third street is big and ramu doesn’t visit that often unless his mother takes him deliberately.

Ramu’s evening starts with his playing with his friends in the mango tree in his house’s back-yard. He is never bored with the mango tree. Only natarajan’s arrival from office interrupts ramu and makes him go for a walk with his dad. The mango tree is a magnificent tree with wide spread branches and densely packed green leaves. Even ramu’s grand father didn’t know who planted the tree. In fact no one with ramu in the evening bothered who planted it. Ramu and his friends, satya, rohit, leela, hari and vijay assemble sharply at 4:30 in the evening after their coffee at home even without changing their dress. Each one of them brings some snacks from their home and they climb the lowest branches of the tree. That branch which grew more eastwards was thick and had a comfortable seat for a kid to be seated. And that happened to be the highest point the kids climb. Since ramu is owner of the tree, that high point is reserved for him. There will be high competition for the next positions which is considered better by the kids. Hari was in the next house and he could come soon and occupy the better places of the tree. Hari is very much fond of sweets and others used it as their competitive advantage. Others bribed hari with sweets for getting good positions of the tree. Once settled, each of them exchanges their snacks and starts playing. They climb the tree to some height, pluck some mangoes and eat it with the salt they had brought with. Occasionally when lakshmi comes there, she admonishes them for eating mangoes. Each of them starts talking about their school events later. Since leela was in a girl’s school while others were in the same school she had lot to talk. The topic of the boys varies from who got beatings from head master’s cane to the fun they had in physical education period. Hari showed his palm claiming that he got four beatings from head master for going out of the school campus during class time. The head master is an old man with big mouth, but talks very little. His hands looked short compared to the cane he had which is usually carried by thankaswamy, the great peon of the school.

That day leela was little upset. When asked for the reason, she told that she failed in maths and is afraid of her dad. The boys pitied and discussed in detail the possibilities of her escaping from her dad. Though they found nothing useful, they some how skipped the subject and started playing as usual. This is a good lesson they have learnt without knowing its importance. Yes! The lesson is “the best solution of a problem is to ignore it”. This lesson may be useful for them if anyone of them become a software engineer or a HR manager in the future. Now a days, ramu spent lot of time in the mango tree. At dusk, lakshmi calls him to wash his hands and feet to pray in their tiny pooja room. Natarajan doesn’t come home early like before and so killed the market visit from the schedule of ramu. Ramu hence became more attached to the mango tree. The reason for natarajan’s coming late is because he is a brother of a bride called “vidya”. Two months back, a team of members came in a taxi to see vidya and they confirmed the proposal through Indian post card bearing 25 paise and a tiger symbol in its front side. Everybody was happy with the proposal. The groom is working in a bank as a clerk. He is a graduate. The family was in complete agreement when kamalam amma told that vidya is really lucky for this proposal. Natarajan smiled with pride. It was he who found the guy. Natarajan saw his future brother-in-law reading an English news paper. He used this fact to prove his friends that the groom is in the list of intelligent people of world. Poor natarajan! Had he known the statistics of the circulation of English dailies of the world, he either would have withdrew his statement or would have accepted that the world is dominated by intelligent people. Though natarajan was happy, his face becomes dark when he thinks about the promised gold and dowry for his sister. To make the ends meet he took another part time job as an accountant in the rice-mill nearby. Due to this reason, he comes home late and missed his evening walk with ramu. Both natarajan and ramu missed their evening walk. Since they were left with no option they became accustomed to it very soon.

After supper, natarajan and family came out of the little house and talked for a while under the cool breeze of September outside. The moon looked bright that day and showed natarjan gloomy more clearly. He was tired of two jobs. Ramu was narrating the incidents of the school. He took four mangoes that day and his friends enjoyed it. Ramu was proud to narrate it to his father. Ramu talked later about their games around mango tree. Only then natarajan told that he had decided to sell the tree for vidya’s marriage dowry and next day people will come to cut the tree. Ramu abruptly stopped his tales about mango tree and looked his dad with wonder. For ramu, life without mango tree was not imaginable. He asked his father why they need the tree and started crying. Natarajan couldn’t control ramu and at last succeeded by telling that government had ordered not to have any trees in houses. Trees can only be in the roads and forests. Ramu calmed down as he knew nothing about big words like government. But he was really sad and thought why this government envies their happiness. Ramu thought of several options like hiding the mango tree with all the bed spreads they had and similar other things. He couldn’t convince his dad with his intelligent suggestions. Tired of too much brain work, he fell asleep.

Next morning ramu was not found anywhere in the house. He, usually after brushing comes to his mother and holds her for a cup of coffee. Today he didn’t come. Everyone called ramu’s name and got no answer. At last it was vidya who suggested that he may be near mango tree. When lakshmi hurried there, she not only saw ramu, but his whole mango tree gang in their respective positions. Seeing lakshmi, the kids stopped their discussion as the meeting was convened for a secret discussion. Lakshmi could see all the kids worried. She enquired what happened. They didn’t tell anything. Only hari had the courage to ask “aunty, are you really going to cut our mango tree?” Lakshmi with no expression answered “yes”. Leela started weeping “aunty, we want this tree. If you want to cut some tree I shall show you some tree near our house. They are not as good as this one. And if you are very very particular in cutting this tree for government rule, ask them to cut the upper half. We won’t use that. Spare up to this.” Leela hurried to ramu’s seat in the tree. Lakshmi was called by natarajan for something. Lakshmi while hurrying, dropped a few words, “hey kids, don’t waste your time. Today evening you won’t see this tree”. Her casual words hit the kids to the core. Hari who could bear even a dozen beatings from his headmaster’s cane embraced the tree and started crying. Following leela and hari other friends also started crying.

Now ramu took the senior position, “friends there is no point in crying. If it is a government rule, we can’t do anything. See why we have exams before going to next class. It is a government rule. Can anyone avoid that by crying? So, don’t cry. Let us adjust ourselves. Initially it would be very difficult. We will get used to it soon.” Though ramu preached like his class teacher prema, he couldn’t control his tears when he saw the tree again. The kids kissed the tree ten times. They then brought some eatables and other things like toys, pencil, fruits etc and placed it in front of the mango tree. According to them, it is their thanks giving ceremony towards the retirement of mango tree from their lives. Suddenly satya commented, “Hey don’t you see a face like structure in the centre of the trunk weeping. It is mango tree’s face only.” Everyone agreed that they too see. No one thought how suddenly they could see such face which they didn’t see ever before.

Time waits for none and they had to rush to their schools before first bell. Otherwise they have to kiss their head –master’s cane with their soft palms. Evening came. Ramu hastily came to mango tree. He thought no one will come. But to his surprise all his friends were there around the remains of the tree. It was chopped completely except the roots. There is no huge trunk or branches. The trunk is now shorter than rohit’s study table. The brown bark of the tree is no longer visible. The centre portion of the trunk remained scattered. There is no scent of fresh mangoes; the scent of raw wood was prevalent. The remains were in light cream in colour. The environment was very silent without the rattling of leaves. For the first time ramu and his friends noticed that the back yard is so big and bright. Everyone was silent when leela broke the ice. She told, “When my dad brings mangoes, I shall bury the seed in the same spot and after some years it will become a big tree”. The suggestion was welcomed and hari enthusiastically agreed to water the sapling. The team dispersed soon for other games. Ramu didn’t go out. He just couldn’t digest the loss of mango tree. He thought mango tree would have cried while being chopped. He thought mango tree might have expected some help from ramu. Ramu also felt abashed. He, being the one who utilized the tree to maximum really should have done something to avoid the tragedy happened. Deep in thoughts he felt asleep. As usual after the 8:30 serial, natarajan entered the house. He was happy that day with lot of currencies from the timber shop owner. He asked lakshmi to keep the money in the pooja room for a while. Then he locked the door and counted the money. He was in a cheerful mood because his part-time job rice-mill owner agreed to give the rice for marriage for just 50% of its price along with the gift of 25 kgs raw rice. In this good mood, in fact every one forgot the presence of ramu. Natarajan looked for ramu. He had bought banana appam for ramu. Ramu was tired of feeling for the tree. Natarajan had to spend one complete hour to bring ramu to an agreement. The agreement was that natarajan would buy a mango sapling which will grow big like the original one in just one year so that mango tree will be ready by ramu’s next summer vacation. This made ramu bit comfortable and he became active with new energy. He now felt hungry and started eating banana appam.

Vidya’s marriage took place in a grand manner in a temple nearby. Ramu was given lot of importance by his relatives and he enjoyed the marriage. Ramu became the pet of his new uncle. After the marriage the newly wed couple was sitting in the small drawing room and was preparing to leave. Ramu came to them and shyly gifted them six big ripe mangoes to his uncle and said “this is from my mango tree”. Poor ramu! He didn’t know that after the exchange of white cover which contained ten thousand rupees in the name of dowry; his uncle is the new owner of the mango tree now.

As long as dowry is an unavoidable ceremony in the Indian marriages, lot of ramus have to loose their mango trees!

Gingelly oil- Short story

2007-11-03T08:17:00.001-07:00

“After getting down at Anandapur railway station, Gopalaswamy Street is at a distance of Rs.25 by an auto rickshaw”, Mr. Mohan was talking to someone through phone even without basic consideration how could rupees be unit of distance. The aspect ratio of Gopalaswamy Street is around unity. Yes, the width of the street is too much that we will have a lavish foot path even if eight trucks are parked parallel. On a lighter side, Mr. Mohan some times comments “once, there lived a king whose son was interested in cricket. King didn’t want to send his son to ground for practicing cricket and hence made a big street equivalent to cricket ground” and laughs loudly showing his yellow teeth to the listeners thinking that he had uttered a great joke. The listeners didn’t mind laughing for such poor joke because Mohan is the wealthiest person of the street and he is also the trustee of the Shiva temple. The street is predominantly called “Brahmin’s street” as thirty eight out of forty houses are occupied by Brahmins (considered to be upper caste in India). Out of the other two, one is occupied by an ex-service man and the other man is a textile shop owner. These two are almost made aloof by rest of the people except during the collection of funds for temple’s annual ceremony. The street had houses on both of its sides facing north and south. Towards the east end is the big Shiva temple. Until Mr.Padmanabhan, senior archaeologist of the district told that the temple is five centuries old, no one neither knew nor tried to know about that. The east side temple door faces a small river thereby making the ambience poetically beautiful. The beauty is somewhat spoiled by the railway track built a decade back. The perennial condition of the river is ensured by the gutter joining the river within hundred metres southward which is the final destiny of town’s drainage. The difference between the area of the street and the area occupied by the temple is approximately equal to the area of the shade given by a neem tree and banyan tree in the centre of the street. The houses of the street are also old and have faced very little modification in the past years. Such a set up may seem to be an anachronism, but it is. The only reason for not allowing the concrete civilization to dominate the Gopalswamy Street is the financial condition of the people and nothing more. The ex-service man, when built the first concrete terrace in the street, remaining thirty nine houses wanted to follow the same until they heard the budget. Even five years since then, no change had crept into the houses of the street.

More than fifty percent of the houses had retired people. The number of old aged people, though were sufficient to form an association, nothing so far have been formed. The Shiva temple is the office of this informal association of retired people. After the evening coffee the retired people association will be eagerly waiting for Mr.Ganesan, the priest of the Shiva temple to pass the street. They will soon gather in the temple and discuss various issues centering the lives of their neighbours. The thesaurus meaning of their talk is gossip. Mostly the topic circles the activities of the priest, Ganesan and his stealing the gingelly oil of the temple. There is a big copper vessel in front of the sanctum and the devotees pour their gingelly oil contribution in that vessel. Mr.Vasudevan started, “I’m sure Ganesan has taken oil yesterday. When I passed his house, I could sense the frying of some pudding”. Mr.Swaminathan continued, “Yes, when he left yesterday, I saw that his bag was big. It looked as if a two litre bottle was inside”. “Ganesan usually buys his provision from the “M.K. stores” in the next street. He have never bought even a milli litre of gingelly oil”, added Mr.Krishnamoorthy. Ganesan really has a habit of taking gingelly oil from temple.

Six foot tall, fair skinned with bent back and big black spectacles, anyone can recognize Ganesan. Some of the houses adjust their time-piece to 5:30 when they see Ganesan passing the temple. He is instructed to perform abhishekam every evening also. Lazy Ganesan just removes the old flowers and decorates the idol of god with fresh flowers. No body questions him. In fact everyone is tired of questioning him in the past years. For granted, everyone knows Ganesan’s answer, “Did anyone see that I didn’t perform abhishekam? Who is the priest here? And who are you to question my work? Have I ever asked you what are you doing in you office?”

One day Vijaya mami sent one basket of fruits (which uncle got as a gift for his first load trip in his new Ashok Leyland truck) to temple and asked Ganesan to distribute the same. He saw the fruits and demanded Rs.10 for the rituals to be performed before distributing the fruits. Vijaya aunty was little upset and demanded the fruits back. Alas! Only half basket of fruits was there. Remaining were then inside sanctum and that night in Ganesan’s house. Ganesan is paid extra for maintaining temple utensils and the beautiful historical stone carvings in the temple. Every month, account shows purchase of extra tamarind and gingelly oil for the above purpose. Unfortunately all these temple resources piled up in Ganesan’s store room and hence the temple utensils remained dirty and dark for a long time and the stone carvings lost their shining with no periodic oil massage. He also collected extra money from devotees giving infinite reasons and explanations. Soon, a golden chain embraced his neck. Complaints about Ganesan cannot be briefed. It can run for more volumes than the latest encyclopaedia on General Knowledge. Irritated Kumar uncle complained about Ganesan to the temple authorities. They came for a sudden visit and then recommended a punishment transfer to Ganesan. There were three members in the committee. Ganesan, later met each of them individually, wept and won the sympathy of one person, bribed the other two and solved the issue amicably. It was an embarrassment for Kumar mama and no one later tried to complain about Ganesan officially. Everyone got adjusted with the known devil. However, Ganesan’s taking the gingelly oil home has always been the topic of any crowd of Gopalaswamy Street any time.

One fine morning, a big tempo full of house hold articles was parked in front of Ambhujam mami’s house. Sita mami, Kamalam mami, Venkatesan mama and many others were silent spectators witnessing the show. Only after an hour or so, Lakshmi mami came to know from Ambhujam mami that new occupants are coming for rent in Ambhujam mami’s first floor of the house. That evening an old Ambassador taxi painted black and yellow with its punctured meter and non punctured tyres came slowly and halted in front of Ambhujam mami’s house. It was late evening and hence no one could identify the bulk of smoke vomited by the taxi in the dark. However, the unburnt carbon particles spread to Gurumoorthy mama’s and other neighbours houses and brought them out. Opening the rear door, stepped down an elderly figure, could easily be more than 65 years followed by an equally old person of opposite gender. Ambhujam mami was smiling wide showing her full set of yellowed teeth as if she was posing for a tooth paste advertisement. The elderly couple wished Ambhjam mami and entered their house. Yes, as everyone else in the crowd inferred, they were the new occupants. Some of the people started commenting about them that the faces were very familiar. However, the informal association postponed the topic about the new entrants for their next evening’s meeting at shiva temple.

All the retired persons tried their best to collect maximum information about the new occupants to dominate the next evening’s meeting. Subramoniam mama started, “Hey, the new comer’s name is Mr.Venkatachalam, retired General Manager from IOCL (Indian Oil Corporation Limited). The very word, ‘General Manager’ opened the mouths of the fellow members. Upto everyone’s knowledge, the maximum hierarchy anyone have achieved even at the time of retirement is an U.D (upper division) clerk. For that matter, even Mr.Mohan, the temple trustee is an U.D. clerk in the district treasury office. That doesn’t mean that Brahmins of the town do not hold higher posts, but they considered staying in such closely arranged houses of Goplaswamy Street as a prestige issue and hence stay in M.V.S. colony, few kilometres away from the town. Hence everyone started wondering whether Mr.Venkatachalam have come to the wrong place. Even Gurumoorthy mama commented “Don’t worry; he will soon shift to M.V.S. colony. Such posh people cannot stay here”. Venkatesan mama continued, “Yes, yes, my wife noticed that Mrs.Venkachalam wore half a dozen of bangles and three chains which put together a minimum of thirty sovereigns. I didn’t give so much even for my daughter’s marriage. And they have three married daughters and are in U.S.A now”. Subramoniam mama exclaimed, “Is it !!!!! are they in U.S? I have a long wish of owning an imported transistor radio. I want to hear G.N.B katcheri in an imported transistor radio before my death. I shall be in touch with Mr.Venkatachalam”. Soon, there were lot of predictions about Mr.Venkatachalam’s salary, his possible bank balance, his life time achievements in the company etc. The topic dragged most of the evening time till the evening deeparadhana in the temple, an unframed rule to end the evening discussion. Only Shastri mama realized later that they didn’t discuss about Ganesan’s gingelly oil that evening. Following that evening discussion, there were lot of discussion about the new comer of Goplaswamy street.

Whatever they discussed is true. Mr.Venkatachalam is a retired General Manager from IOCL (Indian Oil Corporation Ltd) whose three daughters are settled in U.S.A. They wanted to have a peaceful retired life and hence came here where Mr.Venkatachalam’s forefathers once lived. However, there’s a little contradiction in Mrs.Venkatesan’s judgement of Mrs.Venkatachalam’s gold sovereigns. Other than the five sovereign thick old fashioned gold chains, remaining necklaces were gold covering only. Mr.Venkatachalam adhered to strict routine. His morning walk at 5:00 a.m to reduce the load on his little leftover insulin followed by south Indian classic filter coffee with Hindu paper in his light cloth lined easy chair is strictly adhered in his daily schedule. Light Carnatic music spreads the air from the imported tape-recorder. Mrs.Shanta Venkatachalam will be busy in her routine kitchen work and ready with breakfast which coincides with Mr.Venkatachalam’s arrival at the dining table after his daily pooja at home. The couple talked less, but mingled freely with everyone. Mr.Venkatachalam liked children very much and soon became the favourite of the kids with his interesting stories. More than the stories what attracted the kids were the dried grapes he offered at the end of his story-telling session. Besides, Mr.Venkatachalam’s knowledge in the official procedures and other general things made him an unpaid consultant of everyone there for government procedures, better savings options etc. His regular reading of ‘The Hindu’ paper also made him as an information tower for anyone who is willing to talk about current affairs, politics etc. Of course, Mr.Venkatachalam is also happy and takes little pride to have such listeners. He also wanted to talk about business, macro economy, sensex rate, stock market behaviour etc. Unfortunately he had no audience for such high end topics. The discussion about economy by his audience centred on the interest rate of recurring deposit in post-office or at a maximum went upto fixed deposit in State bank of India. Mr.Venkatachalam soon became the wisest person in Gopalaswamy Street. In the annual general body meeting, the trustees were embarrassed by Mr.Venkatachalam’s questions in the accounts. Mr.Venkatachalam pointed out the account mismanagement and demanded explanation. No one till now dared to question Mr.Mohan, the trustee of Gopalaswamy Street. In fact, some of the senior persons were till then thinking that AGM (annual general body meeting) is a kind of get-together where hot ‘vadai’ and ‘jalebis’ are served. Mr.Venkatachalam soon replaced Mr.Mohan and became the new trustee.

Soon Mr.Venakatachalam came to know about Ganesan’s gingelly oil issue. One day, as usual everyday rituals were going on when Mr.Venkatachalam suddenly asked Ganesan to bring back the gingelly oil which he took previous day. Ganesan was startled for a moment, but immediately replied “no, I didn’t take any oil from temple”. Mr.Venkatachalam looked at Ganesan sharply and said, “If you are not going to bring back, I may have to go to your house and fetch the oil can”. Ganesan was shocked and wondered how Mr.Venkatachalam knew this. Ganesan went home and brought back one litre bottle full of gingelly oil. The whole Gopalaswamy street couldn’t hide their anxiety how Mr.Venatachalam caught Ganesan red-handed. Mr.Venkatachalam was the topic of several evening meetings of the retired people. The only conclusion the people could come up is “Since Mr.Venkatachalam is retired from IOCL, he knows oil better and he may have some secret device to detect oil which he perhaps might have used in his office”. Of course, though most of them agreed, some of them felt that this conclusion about Mr.Venkatachalam is stupid. But, soon there were a series of incidents of Mr.Venkatachalam catching Ganesan red-handed and the non-believers quit their original idea.

In the mean while, in Ganesan’s house, Ganesan was saying to his wife, “I really don’t understand how this old man is able to spot me accurately. Today is the seventh consecutive time he is catching me. Whenever I bring oil, next day morning Mr.Venkatachalam’s first words are ‘Bring back the oil’. It’s really embarrassing to get caught often. So, we better shall buy from M.K.Stores. I shall not bring oil for some time”.

The effect was quite visible. After a very long time the sculpture of Shiva temple got prepared for an oil bath. That evening Mr.Subramoniam commented, “I never knew that our Shiva temple’s statues are so beautiful. Besides, nowadays, evening lamps are regularly lit in temple and Ganesan’s provision bill has gingelly oil also. Thanks to Mr.Venkatachalam and his secret oil detecting device.” The whole crowd was in agreement to Mr.Subramoniam’s statement. Some weeks later the retired people were talking to Mr.Venkatachalam and they asked about his secret oil device. Disappointing them, Mr.Venkatachalam laughed continuously for five minutes and followed, “Hey, I don’t have any such secret device. I get hold of Ganesan by mere observation. The first day I took over as trustee, I was overseeing the temple activities and that day I was present till the temple closure. That day I found that Ganesan has poor vision and hence he takes some time to lock the main door. During this time, he keeps his bag near the door. I think because of his vision problem, he can’t transfer the stolen gingelly oil properly into the bottle he has. This oil oozing out of the bottle spreads in the floor as Ganesan locks the main door. So every day morning I check the floor near the door. If there is fresh oil from previous night, I assume that Ganesan have taken it. That’s all”. Though the retired people were upset at this simple solution they were delighted that Mr.Venkatesan applied his mind to tackle this problem easily.

One week later, Ganesan’s wife, Sita was making fresh dosas and Ganesan was munching those delicious dosas. Sita asked, “So how did you fool Mr.Venkatachalam. For the past one week he didn’t find you at all”. Ganesan looked at Sita and signed her to shut up and continued, “I was really worried how the old man traced me and in fact was little bit frightened too. But, last week when I was in the temple’s gopuram to light a lamp, I overheard the conversation of those old men. I have taken necessary care. Not only Venkatachalam, even his father can’t find me stealing gingelly oil. Don’t worry”, Mr.Ganesan grinned munching the remaining dosas.

A letter- Short story

2007-11-03T08:14:00.001-07:00

Dhanasekar entered his cubicle sharply at 9:00 a.m. He usually takes five minutes to settle down and allow his sweat to evaporate and contribute his part for the increase in atmospheric humidity which is already high. It is not so sure whether hot sun is merciless in Chennai alone. Even in morning, sun bakes humans like anything. But, even if sun is merciful and cool in the morning, Dhanasekar any way would have sweat the same. Driving his Yamaha from mambalam to ambattur is indeed long for a forty years old young man. Dhanasekar washed his face and dirtied the tidy white towel in the hanger. He saw his face in the mirror and smiled himself. It seems as if Dhanasekar is quite relaxed and happy that day. Yes, even chandrasekar, his colleague asked, “What dhana seems quite happy today. Have you won any bulk orders for our company”? Dhanasekar smiled for the question and followed, “no, chandru, today I feel relaxed, and now onwards, I will be quite relaxed always. I have admitted my old mother in ‘mathura old age home’. I find it very difficult to manage her as my wife sheela too is employed. My children couldn’t cope with their granny. Sheela also feel very uncomfortable. Mother is very good, but she couldn’t adjust with the current society. She creates lot of problem everyday in apartments, neighbours and with all of us. I don’t want to develop hatred further. I think she will be happy there. To my surprise, my mother looked happy to go there. I believe it is be the best option.”

If someone says, dhanasekar and sheela are made for each other; I will be the first person to second that. It is real wonder whether they have any telepathy communication; yes! Sheela also shares same conversation with her friend in A.G.’s office, Nungampakkam. Sheela was telling, “Oh! God, my husband at least now has acted intelligently which is an aberration from his awkwardness. My mother in law spoils all my children’s mind. And at last, we found the solution for her.”

The personality who dominates the discussion in two offices simultaneously was relaxing in hall no. 102 which is allotted to her in “mathura old age home”. A service lady came to her with a register, “who is newly joined Paarvathi amma?” The old lady, arranging her clothes in the shelf, trying to accommodate herself to the new place, turned back and replied, “ya here”. The service lady collected the details of Paarvathi amma like her food, health records, dress, interests, and requirements. The service lady was with a blue saree and white blouse which is supposed to be the uniform of the old age home. Paarvathi amma replied very politely to the lady and then enquired about the service lady’s family and other details. When Mary, the service lady told that her son is in fifth standard, Paarvathi amma exclaimed and expressed her joy like a kid saying that her grandson is also in fifth standard. Both of them started their conversation which went on till lunch. By the time, Paarvathi amma gathered enough information about Mary that no one will wonder if Paarvathi amma writes Mary’s biography. Paarvathi amma is actually aged, but her activities and enthusiasm makes others feel that it is actually a youth soul in an old body. Whatever others say or feel, Paarvathi amma is the same throughout.

Paarvathi amma’s absence gave a great ambience in door no. 5 of ‘sankara apartments’, mambalam. Everyone can understand that it can be nothing other than Dhanasekar’s address. Dhanasekar, sheela and their children, ramya and Ramu went to dine outside. They entered home at 8:00 p.m and Dhanasekar entered the study room to check mail in his laptop. Beneath his laptop was an envelope whose ends are dirty and is improperly pasted. He took the envelope. Whoever has pasted it, had applied glue in excess. The envelope stuck to the cardboard box and required little pull of Dhanasekar to make it available in his hand. Puzzled Dhanasekar opened and found a letter inside it. The letter was written in an unbleached paper which he had bought for rough work. The stinking blue ink and the poor handwriting which hosted all possible vibrations in its trajectory revealed Dhanasekar that it is Paarvathi amma’s letter. Little amused as well as irritated, Dhanasekar took it. The letter follows.

“

My dear Dhannu,

It’s long since I have talked to you. You have become so busy that you rarely get time. I understand your responsibility and am little bit proud of it thinking that my dhannu have become a great man.

When you read this, I may be comfortably placed and enjoying my new home, “mathura old age home”, as you had wished. I’m sure that you wanted me to be very comfortable and hence have decided like this. I appreciate your love for me dear dhannu, but in this occasion I wish to tell you that nothing can be so soothing for me than seeing your face daily. I’m not bored for the past forty years in seeing you and will never be bored ever.

I love you so much dear son, and at any point of time my little heart cannot accept your defeat. My dream always is “one day dhannu will become a great man and half of the world will be his fans.”

I don’t know whether it is true, but sheela told me that you are very unhappy with me and you want to get rid of me. Oh dhannu, I can spare anything for you; but dear, I never can and want to see you upset. I want you to smile always. You look smarter when you smile.

Do you remember dhannu, when you were eight years old; next street geetha came with her son to complain that you have hit him. I saw you. Your eyes were watery and lips thick. Your rosy cheeks turned red; I understood the incident and didn’t want to upset you. I asked sorry to geetha and settled down the issue. Then I took you to park and made you clear that I’m always there to love you. Later I made you join basketball coaching in the nearby club to avoid your playing in the streets. I never wanted my dhannu to feel bad and I also wanted no one to talk bad about you. Dhannu, you are so special to me.

Dhannu, you did a lot of mistakes in the school. You stole one geometry box in sixth standard; you copied in your seventh standard; you were playing basket ball wonderfully, but after many games, you spent your energy in bullying the opponent team mates rather than playing. You stole dad’s money for your daily expenses and when you were caught, you had whippings from bamboo. And every time, I was behind you to ask apology to the affected end. People may think what a bad mom was I for not admonishing and beating you. But, Dhannu, I don’t believe in beating children (even with ramya and Ramu I follow and want you to follow the same). I thought that my apologizing in front of others for you might prick your values which I believe I have inculcated and hence you would renounce your bad qualities towards better reformation. But to be frank with you, I’m still waiting for your reformation. Do you know why I don’t mind in waiting for your change? Because, dhannu! You are my special son.

Dhannu, when you entered college, you loved a pretty girl. You knew that we didn’t like. But, tell me dhannu, did either me or dad have ever been acrimonious towards you. We stepped further. We arranged for your marriage after your settling in the job. I don’t expect any thanks from you. I don’t want you people to make me important. But, do you think its bad in my part to expect some love or closeness from my grandchildren. Why you never allow them to talk with me. You may perhaps think that I don’t know to bring up children. When I brought you up, everyone around me told me the same. I didn’t believe then. And even now, if you say so, I won’t acquiesce that. Because, I strongly believe that I have brought one of the gems my dear.

When your father was hospitalized, it was difficult for me to manage alone. I thought sheela would be there to take care of the house at least. She dexterously took a transfer. And I then had to take care of you too. Till now, I have never told you about this. I told myself that it may be unfair to force such duties to a newly married lady. But, dhannu, had I been in the same situation, my taught ethics wouldn’t have allowed me to do so.

When your father expired, I wanted his room in the upstairs to be preserved. You know, what all dreams he had in building this house. Every night he thought about the house. He even admired the foundation of the house. Till now, I don’t know what was there to appreciate. He wanted the arch in his hall. He wanted an angular entrance; he had specific specifications even for the slab position. After building the house, he worked 100% of his aesthetic senses for the construction of his single room in the first floor. When I enter the room I still feel his air. His easy chair was the only comfort for me after his death. I felt as if I lie in his lap. His library, spectacles, cot, night lamp, cloth hanger; I wanted everything in the same position just to remember the beautiful moments he had left behind. You know, your dad is one of the finest personalities in the world. His gentleness and decency can never be compared to anyone in the world. I’m proud to say that I’m his wife. You too should be proud to be his son. I learnt a lot from him without he teaching me, but just by his association. Both of us are blessed to have him. Aren’t such a great person’s memories important? I wanted that sweet memories. But despite my request, the room was cleaned and given for rent to some office. You know that I didn’t like that. But you could not have understood my burning feelings. It was acrid, abysmal. And even then, I didn’t complain. My saying so might have tempted either you or sheela to talk bad about your father. Nothing in the world can be worse than that. For god’s sake, I beg you dhannu, never ever think anything bad about your father, because I don’t want you to commit the greatest sin in the world.

I wanted to talk, laugh and enjoy ramya’s and ramu’s company. I believe, it is a very normal expectation of any grandmother. It was a hard blow in my four chambered weak heart when sheela said that I should not talk to them. After all, I just taught Ramayana, Mahabharata and arithmetic. Sheela says that I’m spoiling their time of piano classes and school’s homework. Dhannu, a research by “G.V. trust”, a social body, says with evidence that children’s intelligence and analytical skills emanates mainly from such stories and arithmetic of grand parents. I’m not claiming that I was doing a great job. I just wish to say you that I don’t spoil them. And, I don’t complain you dhannu. You know a lot more than me. You will always think your children’s betterment. But, when you and sheela told me that I should not disturb your family and you have plans to send me to “mathura old age home”, dhannu I virtually cried. Don’t think of my emotions dhannu, I’m just an old cot amidst the polished furniture here. I look odd at any respect. I had to apply little common sense to understand that what you did is not a great mistake. Dhannu dear, I promise, there won’t be any disturbance from me. You all will come in my dreams always and that will never be a disturbance for me, but elixir in my memories.

One important thing dhannu, though our society is running fast with its heels aiming western culture, it is not that easy for all to accept the justification of sending parents to old age home. So, when you talk to your friends, please say that I have gone for a pilgrimage tour and want to spend some days with some of my relatives. Don’t tell that you have sent me to old age home. They may think ill of you.

Dhannu! My dear, one day you will become a great man and half of the world will be your fans. And hence I don’t want even one person to think that you are bad.

Before ending this letter, I wanted to ask for apology for wasting your time to read this letter. But even before that I wanted to tell you one thing son. Dhannu I love you dear, I love you always till I live.”

Any normal person with human senses cannot control his feelings after reading this letter. And what about Dhanasekar, after reading this, he cannot avoid his eyes vomiting tears; he cannot avoid crying in front of his father’s portrait. He cannot stop from hurrying to ‘mathura old age home’.

But, as soon as Dhanasekar opened the letter, he had a call from his boss and he just left the letter in the dustbin beneath which decorated the corporation waste collecting Ashok Leyland trucks next morning. Alas ! Poor paarvathi amma’s feelings went unnoticed again.

Kamatchi paati- A Short story

2007-11-03T08:11:00.001-07:00

“God has created some people with some purpose and message. If you happen to meet any, please try to read the message god has sent”.

I’m coming to my town around ten years after my higher secondary education. Returning to the places where you have spent your youth days is always splendid. The same old streets, same old ‘Krishnan stores’ where amma usually buy her provisions, the same ration shop with long queue for kerosene (most part of which is sold black), the same wine shop where next house suresh uncle goes secretly fearing ambika aunty, the old tea stall whose origin is actually a traffic signal post where we had our first puff secretly, the same cycle shop where we hire cycles and wander for hours together even without considering hot sun, the same CEO office ground where we play cricket in weekends, the same fancy stores which once was a greatest place in the world where we get sports stickers, the same ‘surya hospital’ which supplies same tablets for constipation as well as diarrhoea or any other medical diseases, the same computer centre whose ‘windows 3.1 version’ attracted us and made us once boast that we too have learnt ‘computer’, the same photo studio which hardly produced good photos at first shot, making us to visit it many times for a passport size photograph ultimately delaying our process of getting bus concession due to delayed submission of forms, the same ‘state bank of india’ where my father was and still is working (the only difference is he is promoted twice since then), the same ‘S.K.S. talkies’ which releases all “rajini kanth” films first and therefore our favourite theatre, the same church which is the only place where I have seen my science teacher Mr.Ebenezar without a cane, and hell a lot of same things………. It seemed as if except me, there is almost no change anywhere.

Looking out through the window while waiting for breakfast, I happened to see that very old yellow painted small house. That is actually the house of old lady called “kamatchi” whom we usually call as “kamatchi paati”. Kamatchi paati since my childhood memory is an old lady with bent back, long face, dark wrinkled skin, big eyes covered by even bigger spectacles, a yellow rope to ensure that spectacles doesn’t fall even when she bents, grey short hair, khaki cloth bag in hand and old torn "lunars" slippers, embracing her feet. She can be seen in green and yellow sarees on alternate days for I believe she has only two sarees to select or wear.

Kamatchi paati led her simple life by cooking for some bachelors. The customers of kamaatchi paati were very loyal to her. The secret of customer’s loyalty can be traced from the incomparable taste of hot idlis which owes a special profile of kaamatchi paati’s idli making plates (those plates possess a complex shape due to aging and infinite handling occurrences)

Kaamatchi paati had always made me and everyone nearby to think about hard work. I have hardly found her taking rest. She did everything, however difficult may be, with love and enthusiasm. She used to call me as “laddu” as I was too fat then (even now). Her affectionate calling me as “laddu” helped her to harvest some little favours from me like going to shop for her, fetching water for her etc.

She has one son and two daughters. I have never seen anyone though I have heard that they are all nearby. She sometimes can be seen very depressed. That day she might have met her grand children and her daughter in law must not have allowed them to mingle with her. During such times my mother had been her only source to outpour her sorrows.

I think I had been thinking about kamaatchi paati for a long time; my little rippling thoughts were constrained by amma’s calling me for breakfast. She had made dosas and sambar for me. I don’t know whether it is because of her excellent preparation, I like it very much; whatever may be the reason, uncaringly I started my breakfast. Amma is special for her sambar. It is famous among our relatives too. The excellent aroma emanating from the cooked mixture of vegetables with dhal and sambar powder, a collaboration of various ingredients in definite ratio can’t be compared with anything. I think with sambar, I never wish to break my breakfast. By then, with the breakfast, my thought about kammatchi paati had almost vapourized and gone. At that time, our neighbour, sheela aunty knocked the door asking my mom whether she can spare a L.P.G cylinder for her. Sheela aunty is working in A.G.’s office and her tension in getting late was explicit in her face despite her trial in hiding it under her pretty smile. Sheela aunty’s asking for gas cylinder brought me back the memories about kamaatchi paati. Kamaatchi paati had a wonderful network of people around her with whom she exchanges gas cylinders regularly. She had enough orders and she is the most inefficient lady in using L.P.G. So her cylinders empty very quickly and she was forced to depend on others. And she faced troubles even there. One of her links in the network once cheated her by exchanging a duplicate gas cylinder. She had to pay the fine for which she had to work two more hours for one week thereby making her that week’s total working hours as one hundred and nineteen.

I had always wondered about kamaatchi paati. She hardly has something to eat everyday; yet her kindness and care is incredible. She never can see anyone starving. I have many times witnessed her giving her food to beggars and later suffer due to acidity. She got a marriage order once for sweets. When she came to know that the bride’s family is too poor to conduct the marriage, she did the order without any making charges for her..

Such incredible instances have occurred to me lot many times. I, unable to avoid my curiosity once asked her neighbour how and why she is so magnanimous. I didn’t expect that my question will give me a great flashback about kamaatchi paati. I never could otherwise have known that kammatchi paati actually was a rich lady who can’t see anyone suffering and donates whatever is available. It is god’s nature to place a good amidst bad, said my intuition. Otherwise, though Mr.kammatchi paati is as nice as her, how could her son and brothers be so rude? How could they leave her alone with no physical or financial support after her becoming a widow? But difficulties she encountered made her even kind and she helped others as far as she could. That may be the reason why raju, auto driver in our street never accepts money from her whenever she goes to market.

By this time I had finished my breakfast some how. Amma went to take a pain balm, for her hands must have started aching then due to my non-stop eating. I couldn’t avoid asking amma then about kamaatchi paati. Amma, after a brief pause told without enthusiasm and with a little grief that kamaatchi paati had been asked to vacate the little house by her owner. She is too weak by now and even her business is now weak like her. She had to shift to a much more uncomfortable little house in much more remote area to make her ends meet.

I felt sorry for her because that was the only possible thing for me to do then. I later went to meet my friends. The cheer in meeting them is always wonderful. We had elaborate chat. I ate with them and amma didn’t forget to admonish me for my lousy behaviour. My short holidays were faster than any time and I was leaving for bus-station after checking my packing under my dad’s supervision. I walked through the third cross street and entered the lane which leads to main road.

Suddenly I heard an old, much familiar voice. “laddu, can you please fetch me some water”. Yes, it is kammatchi paati’s voice only and I turned back swiftly. One small boy, busy in riding his bicycle told paati, “ what paati? You always make me fetch water.” I was intelligent enough to understand that this young gentle man is the new owner of paatis “laddu” name. An elderly person scolded the boy. That must be his father. The elderly man seeing me staring them smiled and told me “this old lady is one of the greatest human in the world. She saw an orphan and has adopted the child inspite of her difficult living. I respect her more than anyone in the world”. Kammatchi paati is still busy and working for her and for many others. I wonder how it is possible for anyone to be so ideal throughout. I won’t be surprised if someone say that she is one of the so called “messiah” or messenger of god to teach the world how to live even if you are subjected to infinite tests.

She is still the same though her laddus change often. I went wordless with tears trying to explore my shaved cheeks.

“God has created some people with some purpose and message. If you happen to meet any, please try to read the message god has sent”.

A short story

2007-11-03T08:10:00.001-07:00

Till my joining the company, everyday was new, interesting and different for me. From the day of joining, the further days are repetition of the first day like an infinite loop of ‘C’ program. Starting the day with kissing my five year old daughter, ‘roopa’, adjusting my nameplate in my cabin reading “Rahul.N, production manager”, hearing the previous shift’s problem, meeting with GM to talk sophisticated terms and targets which will never be transformed or translated to the lower levels, everything were the same everyday. I’m even used to the everyday admonishing of my wife, ‘sheela’ for coming late. In fact she is used to it.

My life has become more oriented to factory atmosphere. One day when roopa sat on my lap, resting her small cute head on my hairy chest, I told her,” your intellect must be as sharp like carbide coated inserts; character must be as good as the finish of fine boring; while in a company you should be flexible with others like a CNC machine and at any cost in character, you should be brittle like cast iron”. That was indeed too much for a five year old female, who then stood up and went to sheela. Holding the end of sheela’s green sari, roopa saw me with confusion. I felt sorry for troubling roopa. Many such incidents hinder me everyday. I just went into my room and shouted “let me go and relax”. I, not only shouted, but did too.

I took my bike to M.G Park on that Sunday evening. That is a peaceful park with no great attractive features except broken bench, swing stand without swing and a very old building called ‘library’ amidst trees and grasses. The park is as old as those trees. The plants around the library are maintained improperly and a gentleman called gardener is paid for that. Due to these features, it is almost empty. Thinking ‘park’ as a preserver of nature, passersby answer nature’s call also there. In a solitary mood like mine, that is a wonderful place and I found a place under a neem tree. Smooth breeze embraced me and I slept with the available comfort. I don’t know how long I slept, but when I woke up, I heard a grunt old voice talking behind the tree to someone.

I realized that the conversation had begun sometime back. The owner of the voice continued,” our troop was marching towards the enemy camp. It was winter and the land was marshy. We had to walk through a forest. The forest was dense with lot of danger. We still walked. I was leading the team. We had to pass through a small rope bridge built by someone sometime ago. When the bridge was full, it couldn’t bear the weight and it broke. We fell down into a marshy land. We, with greater difficulty got out of the land and were proceeding. In that dark night, we heard a helicopter approaching with a flashlight. I ordered to lie down. The light caught my last man and dropped a bomb. We lost around five men in it. We shot the helicopter down. We marched further. We walked continuously for a day. My men were tired. We saw a pond, camped there that night unaware that the enemy camp fetches water from the same pond. When our enemies came there that night, they started firing at us. We were startled initially by the assault. Our commandos were precautious and made tents hiding under bushes. Sentry posts were spotted and fired. The sentry jawans became alert and alarmed others. Within jiffies, everyone was ready with weapons at their points. We placed ourselves in such a way that we are away from the tents thereby the enemies will be firing in and around the tents only. We fired them back. After few moments, we took over the situation with three non-serious casualties. We took rest for few hours and proceeded.

The journey continued next day too. I got message to conquer a particular enemy post by that night. We reached two miles before the point. We were able to see the camp. As it was four or five hours after dusk, the enemies couldn’t see us easily. There were lots of people with them then. I sent five persons and asked them to fire continuously from one direction. Leading the front, I took the others through the other direction. We reached the camp slowly. The enemies were alert and were concentrating much on the five men only. In the mean time, we surrounded them from the back. We started firing. They were confused; but were strong. They had three times men than ours. But, my men were brave. One jawan’s bullets were over. He used his bullet less rifle and just a dagger to defend and defeat the enemy side. The heroes of our side took them aback and smashed their confidence and motivation levels. We were defeating them. But, suddenly one bomb exploded and killed most of my men. Remaining men fought for a long time. At the end of the three hours battle, I and five more men alone were there and we took control. We took the enemy point and sent a wireless message to the headquarters about the victory”.

Hearing this, my patriotic emotions went high and I arose to see the hero. I looked towards the direction of the voice. Under the magnificent banyan tree, over the grass bed, amidst ants and running squirrels there sat two old men. Everyone around were busy at their work not listening to the old brave marvel. I wonder why these people don’t care the importance of him. I think, I too must be one among them had I not come over there to take rest.

The old man was in an old but neat coat. The dark, wrinkle skinned, tall gentleman with grey tint in his moustache was talking to his friend. With an old pipe, he was still talking, ”the next stage of the war was more interesting…………..”. I went and stood before him. I told, “I was hearing your brave story. How brave and intelligent you are. I’m happy that I have met a warrior in my life. I’m really happy to hear from you. I wish to hear more of your war deeds in war.”

The old man looked at me and smiled, “I’m pleased by your patriotism. And unfortunately, I’m a retied teacher. What I was talking is about a computer game my grandson brought home yesterday”.

Birthday- Short story

2007-11-03T08:09:00.001-07:00

My birthday

That was December 2^nd. Even Sun was lazy to get up on that winter morning. My getting out of the cozy, soft bed was witnessed by amma (my great mother) with a cadbury’s chocolate in her hand. It is only once in a year I get a chance to chew that wonderful chocolate with my unbrushed teeth coated with nocturnal saliva. Perhaps, my mom’s confidence in my toothpaste and my regular brushing before bed would have given her enough courage to feed me so. After all, it is once in a year and that too on my birthday. Years down, the same day, I entered the world screaming which was heard by few medical professionals and my tired mom within a closed clean room.

While chewing my chocolate, amma kissed me wishing me a happy birthday. Uncared of the kiss I was concentrating on my chocolate with the fear of probable share to my sister. God bless her, she was there right in front of me wishing me again, followed by my dad. That was a nice morning. After coffee, amma came with mixture of certain powders in two three jars and asked me to take bath with those. It is supposed to have some medicinal values and when applied during an oil bath, it gives a smooth finish to my spring like hair. I went with my dad to temple; the customary ritual we follow religiously.

When I came from temple, amma had already taken bath and was preparing my favourite gulab jamuns. Wav, those small spheres were wonderfully taking bath in sunflower oil. It is fun to watch those white balls turning golden colour when entering the pan with oil. Amma held my right hand with her left when I attempted to pick one from the heap she had made. She admonished me to wait till jaggery process those edible jamuns into appreciable sweets. It is pain to sit infront of sweets without eating them. It is not an uncommon scene in our house. Whenever amma make sweets, she will prevent us the first piece by saying that it should be offered to god first. Childish queries of how god will eat those were gone by now. Gone are the days when elders can threaten me superstitiously about my becoming blind if I eat before those are served to god. Being a student in class sixth, I was matured enough and cannot be fooled so easily. It took twenty seven seconds from then to eat the first gulab jamun. Amma was fast; really I was amazed to see the tiffin readily served in dining table. How she managed to take bath, make coffee, prepare tiffin, pack lunch for all of us, get medicines for granny, prepare special sweet-free pudding for grandpa, clean utensils and make gulab jamuns all simultaneously? She also had to find dad’s missing file, answer our maid for her unnecessary questions. Oops! I was able to manage just a coffee and bath. Amma’s activeness makes me think more. I was lazy to think further and hence proceeded to dining table forgetting everything at the sight of gulabjamun.

Amma takes arithmetic tuitions at home, mostly for higher secondary classes and also for some C.A students. That was a Friday and higher secondary second year class was scheduled on that day. Amma declared a leave for her class. I saw Ranju, Kavitha, Preethi, Keshav, Vijay, Shahul and Rajesh leaving our home with a subtle joy of cancelled tuition class. When they saw me, they smiled at me. Perhaps to thank me for my birthday which won them a stress free morning. But, to be frank, amma’s class never ever have been stressful. It is always cheerful with jokes and fun and some maths in between. All of them loved amma and amma loves everyone in the world except my class teacher as she treats my soft palm very badly with a bamboo cane, a property of sixth standard class of S.M.A. higher secondary school.

Even that day’s school hours were great. Yes!! our class teacher was absent and the period was converted to P.E.T. (Physical education and training), the one period for which we long for Wednesdays and occurs only 50 minutes in a week. Getting a P.E.T on that Friday was a real surprise. In fact, I took it as a birthday gift from god. P.E.T periods are always fun. One group of guys will play football with a tennis ball, hurting each other toes. Another group will sit and chat under the age-old banyan tree. There will still be one group who got to library in P.E.T periods, who were called as elite group by a bunch of teachers who really didn’t know that they were sick stupid who don’t know what to do in P.E.T periods. I was in the football team; not because I’m a Ronaldino but because of my mass grown by mom’s food, I can get enough uncontrollable momentum and foul opponent team. The diameter of my tummy was big enough to stop at least two strikers of opponent team. Still, I was a true sportsman. Please don’t ask, “Who said so?” To be frank, except me, no one. To make others at home say so, I had a witness. Yes, my spotlessly clean white shirt was then red with mud. Before reaching home for the second course of remaining gulab jamuns, I had to sit through two more periods in that cage like classroom. Ramu told that one day he will become the headmaster of this school and will announce complete second half of Friday as P.E.T periods. That statement was worth only a giggle and we were very much used to it. Such type of statements was quite common among us. One-day Vijay told that he would become education minister and abolish exams; one day Siva told that he would become prime minister and would at least remove “thirukkural” (famous set of ancient two line poems compulsory in any curriculum which involves Tamil as a language).

Completely exhausted, I returned from school where amma was waiting eagerly in front of my home for second half of birthday celebrations. Amma must be little sad with the colour of the shirt. She didn’t express, but I was smart enough to understand it in that weary look. She was already upset by my previous day’s dirty shirt. She took extra care to wash and iron it for my birthday and that too is gone now. Common, nothing was possible for previous day’s shirt. Even after washing with the best washing machine of the world, the maximum possible tidiness was the one that was achieved. Hey, now I know everyone would be eager to know about that world’s best washing machine. Its nothing but, me. Ha, ha! I know that it is a bad joke and only Sandip will laugh for it as he is also famous for such bad jokes, which are usually poorer than the one stated above. Ah! Nice to mention about Sandip here. Sandip wanted to give me a treat for my birthday. He took me secretly when everyone at home was sunk in the serial at 8:30 p.m. The monochrome ‘Weston’ TV was centre of attraction for lot of people in our neighbours list and literally there would be struggle for the back row. Many a times, our family members wont get a seat in the hall for that particular serial.

Well, about Sandip’s treat; we walked to the corner M.K. stores at the end of street, which was as bright as a 100 watts Philips bulb. The “M.K.stores “ board was enough illuminated by the streetlight. Entering M.K. stores, Sandip proudly took out an one rupee coin out of his khakhi trousers. He bought a packet of groundnut for 50 paise and the rest of the money was completely spent for two candys (each worth 25 p). Sandip was proud when he offered his treat. Finishing the great treat from my friend, I returned home for dinner. Routine followed then. Dinner, Panchatantra stories from granny, multiplication tables from grandpa and a cup of milk from amma… Followed by our brushing with pepsodent and then to bed to welcome the new day.

Suddenly I was startled. Yes, my cell phone was ringing. After snoozing the alarm, which rang at 7:30 a.m, the past one-hour was spent in the sweet memories of my sixth standard birthday. The cell phone displayed “P.L calling”. I picked up the phone with haste. “ Hey Hari, Selvam here”, grinned that cacophonous voice on the other end. Yes, Selvam is my project leader. His dark gigantic figure came in front of me even in those sleepy eyes. Selvam told that we have a meeting with an important client and he asked me to come to his home so that both of us can go together. I said ‘OK’ before which the phone was already cut. I got up and refreshed myself. Entering my bulk body into a set of formals and partly hanging myself with a ‘Zodiac’ tie, I started. Casually, I tore of the daily calendar to see December 02.

Afterall, It is my birthday.

Gayatri- short story

2007-11-03T08:02:00.000-07:00

That was a rainy Thursday night. The whole S.K.S apartments including watchman at officer’s colony, Annanagar was sleeping. Any normal person would do the same at 1:00 A.M. And Gayatri was still awake with wide-opened eyes and heart full of joy. The joy over flew through her mouth as a gentle smile. Her parents were sleeping then leaving Gayatri alone to enjoy. With the assistance of light-splitting night lamp, she was smiling at Rahul’s photograph. Rahul is of course smart enough to be enjoyed. The red colored T-shirt he wore went wonderfully with his fair skin. The T-shirt and why, even the hairstyle of Rahul is Gayathri’s selection. Gayathri miss Rahul too much; obviously he too. There was no one to ask her the reason for sudden joy at Thursday night. Had there been any, Gayathri would have easily told that she is going to meet Rahul the next evening. Unlike every day’s prayer “Let sun come late”, she looked at east for the dawn to come soon. She even hated why ‘second’ is so slow or why 60 minutes an hour, why not 30 or 20 minutes. She somehow with great difficulty passed the night.
Friday morning Gayathri was on wheels. She was smiling and hence her brushing was easier. She was dancing while bathing. She was smiling and doing funny things. Her mother asked, “hey gayu, what happened to you?”. Gayathri, “I’m very happy today mom”. “You have gone crazy”, replied mother.
She rushed to office in her new ‘scooty pep’. Gayathri is working in a software company in tidal park. Today traffic didn’t irritate her; hot sun didn’t trouble her. Gayathri was entirely in a different world. She can think only about Rahul and nothing else. She parked her vehicle and entered her office.
She was quick at work. Every ten minutes, her seeing the time went automatically. Her colleagues asked, “what happened to you gayathri?”. You haven’t taken lunch and you are thinking something else and laughing.” The reply for that also is a smile.
Gayathri is a programmer in the software company and she has joined the company only few months back. Professionally, she may be a software programmer, but most of the people she has met had thought her as a model. Five feet seven inches tall, fair skinned, beautiful gayathri is not just a female of 65 kgs. She is known for her intellect. She is solely responsible for the success of company’s latest project.
There sits gayathri in her cabin in front of a clock. As soon as it struck five, she got up. With fast steps of frequency higher than the normal, she reached her scooty in no time.
She missed her evening tea and just drove to Besant nagar beach. She had asked Rahul to come there only. Gayathri is first to reach the place. With lots of expectation hidden in her small eyes, Gayathri was tensed in waiting for Rahul. After ten minutes, a white colour “Indica” car passed near Gayathri and Rahul got down from the rear. Gayathri didn’t even notice who drove the vehicle, but was just looking at Rahul. He was wearing a dark blue T-shirt and khakis. That was Gayathri’s selection for his previous birthday.
In that evening, with that dress, Rahul looked even smarter. His smile never leaves him till he lives. He rushed towards Gayathri, embraced her and kissed her. Gayathri left no place in Rahul’s face for kissing. Suddenly, Rahul asked Gayathri, “ Why don’t we live together like before”. Gayathri’s smile became volatile. Tears gushed through her narrow eyes. With tears on her cheeks, Gayathri replied “dear son, after my divorce with your dad, court allows me to meet you only on Friday evening. What shall I do my love?”.

New Friends at IIT hostel

2007-11-02T04:42:00.000-07:00

We always crib about their michievious invasion at our rooms. Now its time to exclaim at their mutual love. (Shot by one of my hostel friends in IIT madras)

A music concert

2007-10-06T19:19:00.001-07:00

28/09/07

Today evening, I attended a Hindustani concert organized by IIT madras music club. The concert was by Smt.Lakshmi Shriram, wife of a respected faculty in IIT madras. Last week, the same music club had organized a flute concert by famous artist Smt.Mala Chandrasekhar witnessed by single digit crowd. Hence, with no great expectation about the audience, I entered the MBA seminar hall, which to my surprise was packed with people. A mischievous thought crept into my mind “How come so much crowd for a not so famous person, especially after such a poor attendance for Smt.Mala Chandrasekhar. I thought, perhaps the vocalist might have invited all of them to attend and fill the hall”. I can't stop thinking stupidly; so I accepted and digested my thoughts and settled in a nearest cushion chair dressed neatly in a romantic red fabric. The stage was too big for the three, vocalist, harmonium player and the tabla player. The vocalist, who have already crossed her thirties was a tall lean figure draped in a dung coloured silk sari. The harmonium player, who was around 50 covered himself in a purple coloured kurta and pajama (if surf excel marketing get hold of him, they may use his kurta to show the whitening power of their product by labeling it as “before washing with surf excel”). To avoid my acrid criticism on whiteness, the tabla player sat there inside his saffron coloured kurta.

Inside the seminar hall, with black board background, the lean vocalist was singing with one of her folded legs perpendicular to the other, in a typical pose of Hindustani recital, allowing the big bellied tambura to rest in between. The pure sound of “shrudi” crawling out the moments following the vocalist’s slender finger plucking the stretched strings of tambura filled the air; a joyous feeling also spread along, like a fragrance of ‘cycle brand’ incense sticks in the study room, or like a tint of elachi in the evening tea. The ambience was softened by the cool breeze spit by the 2+ ton A.C machine. In the cozy cool atmosphere, I think even the dead skin of animals stretched in tabla also started hibernating; not yielding to earnest efforts and hammering of tabla player. The fine technology in the A.C started sucking more air than it pumped resulting in lack of air for harmonium. The harmonium player forced it to inhale and vibrate the swaras; I think poor harmonium was suffering from asthma like my ‘appa’; it was really suffering to breathe between its bellows.

Smt.Lakshmi was singing wonderfully; her beautiful vocal cords strainlessly reaching the fine gamakhas and swaras; I sat spellbound for some time. The nuance and finesse in her undertaking the greatest art was really appreciable. I don’t know anything about Hindustani music, other than my cousin’s bhajan “Krishna na diwani”, bhimsen joshi’s one old album and title song of “om namah shivaya”, I haven’t heard much to mention about. Normally, whenever I hear some good carnatic music, say by Sanjay subramoni or Aruna sairam, I imagine myself singing with them. Believe me, with shut mouth and complete silence in yourself and in pure imagination you can really feel like producing great music; silence is that much powerful. But, in this occasion, when I tried to imagine, my mind conflicted with my conscience, “stupid, don’t even imagine that you can twist your vocal chords like this”, such a powerful delivery in the decent silent crowd, generating heat to beat the A.C.

However, despite her great delivery, I felt some sense of incompleteness. Well, as an idiot, incapable of expressing my views in the technical terms, I would like to compare her with masters like Bhimsen Joshi or Abdul Karim khan. Well, she’s definitely not equivalent to great men like Joshi. It would be a sin in my part even if I attempt comparison. Had she been at least 1% equal to them, she would have been proportionately famous like them, about which I think she’s not. But, since I don’t have any other choice, I shall continue comparing. I would say that Joshis swaras and brigas are like a free turbulent flow; like a rocket piercing the blue sky challenging newtons gravity with its escape velocity. Whereas Smt.Lakshmi’s flow is like an intermittently choked flow, may be like electron flow in a high resistance wire. Something, something was missing. I dare not to identify as shrudi, may be something else failing to fill the gaps. I felt her like a new cyclist driving zig zagly without balance in a supposedly straight line. I may not reflect the reality as whatever I’m detailing is based on a emotional impact she made on my mind.There is a reason in my describing it as an emotional touch; I found Hindustani music sinking in my emotions than the carnatic music. Well, I would like to take an anology, if I take an investment brochure, I may dwell upon the better performing sectors, share market prices etc; but if the same thing is handled by my handsome nephew ‘ayush’, he would have wondered about the advertisement and bar graphs and would appreciate only those soft unimportant aspects. Similarly, I, an idiot in the technical details of Hindustani can’t enjoy the core Hindustani music, but can attempt to talk only about the boundary impacts it generates. I was telling that the vocalist was lacking some inexplicable details. But, so what? A humble music lover like me is like a hungry beggar; quite contented with any food, whether a swiss chocolate or previous day’s food demanding bio-degradation. It’s good to be an innocent hungry music lover like me, because

you are happy with any music you listen to
your expectations are either nil or very low
any music appears new and above all
You can’t find any technical mistakes in any music.

I’m happy in being dumb in music. After all, I can appreciate the musician wholeheartedly instead of finding faults. After enjoying the aalapana, meera bhajan and kabhir bhajan, I left the auditorium longing for the next opportunity to listen some good music.

A book review

2007-10-06T19:16:00.000-07:00

A book review

I wanted to do some light reading and after half an hour thorough search, found the thinnest book of IIT library between two other fat books. I was reading Nirad Chaudhri's "Three Horsemen of the New Apocalypse". This is the first book of Nirad Chaudhri for me; though this was written in his ninety ninth age. For that matter, owing to my very poor reading habit, any book I read will be my first book of that author's. Usually, whenever I start a book, I open a dictionary before opening the preface of the book. Unfortunately, this book was opened when I was traveling and handicap without a thesaurus.

I thought it is a light novel and tried with enthusiasm. First few chapters of the book were very vague to me as I had no clue what the book is about. But one good thing about the book is that the author in every chapter explained all the meanings of the important word he uses and also the meaning he applies in the chapter. The three horses in the book represent individualism, nationalism and democracy and its influence in the fall of western civilization. In the initial few chapters, the author talks about his ideas, assumptions and lot of quotations from French books. There lies significant reference to the great "Pascal's" quotations. I was really amazed when the author talked about second law of thermodynamics and evolution of universe in a placid way.

The short book crisply dotted lot of aspects of decadence of western civilization. However, the author has quoted his earlier publication to fill many of its pages. While Chaudhri discusses about the factors of society and culture influencing the decadence of the civilization, I more or less felt like an usual old man's lament "in our days it was like that.. and the current generation have ruined". Of course, it is not nice in my part to make such an abrupt comment as the author have stated after his years of observation. But, still the reason for my comment on the author geriatric behaviour is because of his generous reference to India's culture in terms of its Hindu undivided family etc. If someone goes through his book, he/she may get a feeling that India's cultural decay doesn't demand so much worry as that of the western civilization. In fact chaudhri's observation on people's poor attitude towards family, sex, money etc is applicable to India also. In fact, I was expecting the author to charge on India's loss of tradition due to western civilization and also to discuss the question of how to preserve the tradition under the influence of western domination, which itself is under decadence. Chaudhri's reference to Bengali women and Hindu family gives me a feeling that Chaudhri loves India close to his heart. But a great lover should be equally pained by the decadence of its families and society. The author was discussing about sexual harassments, robbery, poor democratic government, crime etc. in Britain to a greater extent and lesser reference to India.Though there was one complete chapter to discuss the decadence of India, i felt it was not comparable to authors description of britian. Author accused people and culture of Britain than the government for England's decadence whereas somewhat reverse case for India.

One great thing about the book was the interest it creates in reading. I was actually disappointed when I understood that I was venturing into some serious discussion by Chaudhri. The artistic way of the great scholar's account on western civilization mixing individualism, philosophy with the early twentieth century history is great. One very evident fact bubbling through out the book is the author's vast knowledge in the area of the topic under discussion. The author's account gives a feeling that this topic is close to his heart and one could feel his personal emotions peeping out.

Another specialty worth mentioning is the language used. It is not a book where the author tried to vomit all the words he had mugged from websters. He used a very simple language, but difficult words decorate the passage only in appropriate places, driving the full impact the author expected. It is a boon for people like me as it is difficult to look at the dictionary ten times for a single line. Similar style I have appreciated in R.K.narayanan's works too; very simple yet powerful with tough words coming in between only in appropriate locations. I would like to point out a concept of strengthening mechanism in metallurgy. In metallurgy, it is a general practice to introduce some obstacles inside a metal to decelerate the micro level material movement, thereby increasing the strength of the material. Similarly, the tough words in appropriate places strengthen the image of the reader on the greatness of the author.

If you are interested in one century old history and also interested to talk about western civilization, it is a concise and interesting material to read.

My favorite lines in the book

"it is one of the disputable fact of history that friendship between nations is fragile, while hatred is ineradicable. In respect of strength, love can never be equal to hatred".

Soolamedu- Short story

2007-02-17T01:36:00.000-08:00

If I say my village Soolamedu is not in India map, that’s not a big deal, because I know our map misses a lot. But if I say my village is not even in our Salem district map, it requires some attention. It is sad, but true. The two hundred odd families spread in that small village make life cheerful over there. It is neglected by anybody and everybody except the host villagers. Before every election, we have jeeps and cars in our village with men promising funds for development. The promised funds are also allotted properly. But the first allotted fund went to local M.P’s swimming pool construction in the seventh floor of his house, the second fund allotment went to M.L.A’ s new club development and the third went to the collector’s garden. Frustrated, we did not bother about funds and knew not what happened to further funds. So, the village remained as it was thirty years ago. Unmetalled muddy roads, shabby huts on both sides, paddy fields around, it don’t attract people; yet I love my village. My father, who passed two years ago, was an ayurvedic doctor. His clinic is big enough to accommodate five people. He had a thatched hut behind. We are supposed to call it as the clinic’s ward.

I go to the clinic by two wheeler (Hercules cycle). Though I travel the same route, the same paddy fields, the same banyan tree under which I fell down and broke my chin at eight years, the same pond which supplies water to the villagers and their buffaloes, the same thatched roof school which had, has and will have only primary classes; I enjoy my village everyday. I don’t know what craze I have for the useless village. If it is called craze, yes, then it is. I see same faces every day, even the school master. My son, Ramu is also studying under Mr.Chakravarthy under whom I studied. Bus comes thrice a day and where people are crowded is the bus stop; till now it is the only possible identification, even for the bus driver. Not only the atmosphere, but also the people’s hearts are not polluted. Even my wife kaveri told me the same. When kaveri, I and my only son go for a walk, everyone enquires and talk to us. The people here work hard. Whenever I talk about hard work, I just can’t stop thinking about kamalamma. Kamalamma is crossing her fifties now. The short, stout, dark kamalamma whose white teeth is coated with betel juice, grey hairs, near her ears and in top of her head, gets up early in the morning, pluck jasmine and sell it; then she works in paddy field; evening she sells vegetables. She strain so much for her daughter to get married. Like a pigeon’s nest, she also builds her assets slowly for a promising future of her daughter. She cares a lot about her daughter because she has no one else to take care of now. Her husband left her at a very early age. No one knows whether he lives or not. But kamalamma has his memories alive and her one inch dia kumkum on her forehead betrays that. One specialty about kamalamma is her constant smile evergreen as the mango trees of our village. I haven’t seen her sleeping, for I want to check whether she smiles even while sleeping or not. Though I respect kamalamma, I usually have no or very less words with kamalamma as I bother much about my white shirt which gets easily spoiled especially with kamalamma whose mouth is a perennial nozzle of betel juices.

Oh! I haven’t introduced myself. Of course, I have hardly introduced me as I’m known to everyone as doctor’s son. My father, an efficient ayurvedic doctor with no degree was the only degree he had. To follow his line, I too did diploma in ayurvedic medicine after my schooling, thus claiming a qualification for my father’s post. People believe that my father is more efficient. That’s true too. He had made the village healthy leaving no business for me. When I see my rusted name board reading “Hariharan, Diploma in ayurveda”, I sometimes feel why people don’t feel to call me ‘doctor’. But I have never bothered too much for it.

That Monday morning I reached my clinic. The muddy front portion witnessed the previous day’s rain. My cycle is full of mud. I came to the back yard. It was wonderful. It is always nice to look at the village after a rain. The trees and shrubs were happy. I saw the ground. A few mushrooms have come to our earth. And with it, patches of Riccia and some ferns also. I still could see the raindrops sticking to the clit of the Riccia’s doublet leaves. The gymnosperm is a frequent visitor to my clinic. The mushroom beside it brought back my good old childhood days memories. I used to pluck the mushroom and count the flaps in its bottom. Then keeping it over mud made fort, I claim it as my kingdom.

By concern over mushrooms and riccia, please don’t think that I’m a member of some green club working for the protection of the environment. I call them visitors because they are the only visitors to my clinic other than two lousy dogs which lie opposite to my clinic.

When I started my day with no work as usual, Kamala amma about whom I was telling came with a boy who must be around 12 years. That must be her grandson. The broad, short nose, huge eyes, joint eyebrows, in a perfect round black face which are exactly duplicate of Kamalamma’s supported my thought.

I understand that the boy is my patient. I tried my level best to show that I am very busy. I don’t know how far I succeeded. I asked the boy, “What happened?” Kamalamma interrupted, “he is dumb”. I asked sorry and asked Kamalamma. Kamalamma told, “He fell from the top of a building and have broken his hands”. Verifying the boy I understood and diagnosed it as a multiple fracture. Suddenly something flashed in my mind. The previous day when I went to market with my son Ramu, he was looking a kid’s cycle without taking his eyes. I asked him whether he liked it. He nodded his head with infinite expectations.

Until I saw the price as 800, I too was admiring at it. Ramu’s eyes came in front of my eyes and nothing did. I wanted to grab the opportunity for i define ‘luck’ as the same. I told Kamalamma that it requires 16 days to cure. I told her that oil per day costs Rs.75 and consultation Rs.5 totaling Rs.80 per day. Fifty rupees extra I collect every day for oil must be sufficient for me to fulfill ramu’s wish.

The treatment stared. Next day she came late and tired. When I enquired the reason, she told that to meet the oil cost every day, she has taken a part time job. I felt bad. But next jiffy, Ramu entered my mind I did not feel bad. The treatment went on smoothly.

Kamalamma loved the boy very much. Every day she enquires about his health. She ensures proper food and care for him. One day I saw her with her ear rings (the only gold ornament she owns) in a pawn broker’s shop and then bought new clothes for the boy with that money. Very soon my expected 16^th day came. The cash tray completed 800. The boy is perfect now. I rushed to the market and came with the cycle which Ramu wanted. I was happy and started thinking how Ramu will react by seeing this.

Kamalamma came to me with the boy. I with the puzzled look asked, “now what?” She handed me a chit. “This boy cannot speak. So he couldn’t tell his address and he has written in this chit. Can you help me to know the same?” I was confused. “Is he not your grandson?”, I asked. Kamalamma smiled, “I have only one unmarried daughter. I saw this boy while coming from work one day “.

That was really a hard blow for me. Without my knowledge, Ramu’s cycle fell from my hands. And something ………, something else heavier fell down. Ah! That was my heart the worst thing I had ever known in the world.

A train journey- Short story

2007-02-11T03:26:00.000-08:00

A Train journey (a short story)

The train left the station as usual after half an hour of the scheduled time. Train always has a fancy in our minds however old we are. Though I travel in electric trains everyday, I still like travelling in trains with the same spirit as I had years ago. I believe and am sure that every train traveller share similar feeling. The only possibility being the constraint of time and other mind occupying business, which is jealous of our train memories, and hence hinder our thoughts about trains. While traveling in metre gauge trains, which I can boldly claim with the reformations of railway department as yester year’s train, I always had the feeling of a cradle, which oscillates me gently (sometimes wildly). The smoke vomited from the head of the engine sometimes (many times) gifted me with nausea. Yet I have felt it with joy and pride.

Being a marketing executive in “J.K. Watches”, travelling to Tiruchirapalli from Chennai is so frequent that it has become like my daily travel. But, this is not the usual trip with a briefcase full of documents related to my business which hardly allows my shaving kit to breathe and mind preoccupied with full of data and figures; even my dreams are occupied with ‘ms excel data sheets’ swallowing the reservation for pretty ladies. This time I’m going to our family temple for the annual ceremony. The mere thought of the temple brings along with me the old memories of the temple. It is a small ‘Shiva temple’ wonderfully placed in that village. Anyone entering the village has to cross the temple. East side of the temple is full of paddy fields mostly the property of temple itself. Behind the temple is a slow running stream from which water is taken for shrine and later distributed to devotees as ‘theertham’ (holy water). The common sense when we become devotees is almost nil that we don’t even consider the fact that the holy water we take reaches us after bathing hundreds of buffalos and other cattle of village in the upstream. I remember, once when we went to the temple after my getting job through campus, Venkatachalam shastri, priest of the temple telling my father, “you people come once in a while to god and he gives job to your children and I’m coming here everyday; he doesn’t answer my prayers for my son’s job”. Very caringly, when my dad asked what his son studied, he innocently replied “eighth standard pass”. This statement is an example of the village’s vivid innocence; but my dad was little tensed when he compared an eighth standard education with a M.B.A from ‘Symbiosis business school”.

With these thoughts, I haven’t crossed the fifth page of the daily whose pages were dancing with the blowing warm wind. I saw the time. It was half past twelve. The train halted to take rest in a station before its forthcoming acceleration. An elderly man entered and seated opposite to me. Pure white dress in his dark body was contrasting. Had he not have a clean shave; his moustache would have reflected grey similar to his cotton like hair. He smiled at my co-travellers and me. He said a “hello” to everyone around and gradually started his conversation. I’m usually impressed by such characters about their ability to accost and adaptability as well as their talent to win others attention. I have not only been brought up as a reserved character, but also made least attempts to change myself for which I even faced some difficulties in my profession. The new member of the compartment introduced himself as Mr.A.K.Swaminathan . He turned to a man next to me and asked whether his sun sign is “Sagittarius”. The man with red colour T-shirt wondered lifting his long, thick eyebrows as much as possible and asked, “how do you know?”. The elderly man whom we started calling as swami sir replied, “You have a long nose and broad forehead which naturally symbolizes intelligence. Besides your palm lines show that there is a diversion from the main line and the secondary line tends to coincide with the lifeline. This is peculiar for Sagittarius people says books, and my experience also told me the same.” As soon as he finished the sentence, lots of people including me looked him with some curiosity. One of them who looked like a student came forward and asked whether swami sir knows palmistry. Swami Sir smiled very gently and told that he got interested in palmistry and later developed his knowledge through books. He also added that he is actually a journalist.

Much more looks came towards him. In the mean while the topic turned towards spiritualism as one of our fellow traveller told that he is returning from “mecca”, a pilgrimage for muslims. Swami Sir told that he has great respect for Islamic religion. He told that islam is the only religion which calls its fellow men personally by its “baang” unlike other religious practices of ringing a bell. Also the cleanliness maintained by muslims is great. He explained the difference between “mosque” and “darga”. When one of the other passengers argued that Hinduism is the best, swami sir intelligently quoted verses from “bhagawat gita” and “Quran” and explained that both meant the same. When swami sir told that Hinduism principles are polluted due to age, there were none to say no as everyone knows it is not “no”. The fluency of swami sir and the way he put forward his points were so wonderful which naturally proved that he is a journalist.

Then he turned to a child named “vignesh” and asked him some basic mathematical problems with apples and mangoes instead of numbers. I don’t know how vignesh got attracted to swami sir, but after some time swami sir had a lot of children around him, playing with him. He asked questions, acted to them, taught some games; if a blind man had traveled with us, he must have thought that swami sir is also one of the children in the gang. I really thought of my parents. In fact they too are same like swami sir to veena and venkat. Veena and venkat are my children. My father takes them for an evening walk and they learnt a lot from him. The association of children with grandparents is really the initialization of their intelligence in infancy.

I had a call in my cell phone. Oh! Long lives my dad. It was my dad on line. I said hello and told him that just then I was thinking about him. He must be happy with the statement. He asked me to come to my uncle’s house in tiruchirapalli as our family has been invited there for that day’s dinner. I said “ok”. After a usual normal dialogue, I kept my mobile.

Swami Sir was then talking about “Feynman lecture series” and “Stephen hawking” in physics. He talked about music, recreation, London publishers, world business, sensex, share market, discussed some classic novels, admired H.G.Wells and Robin Cook in the hands of my co-travellers and lot and lot of things. One man very seriously asked, “How come you are so informed and knowledgeable?”, the very question I would have asked had he not.

He recalled his flashback and said that he was working as a journalist in England. He writes novels also which are usually published by British publishers. He came to India to write a novel, based on an average Indian. He stayed in his native village in Tanjore district. His short period in India after very long stay in other land created an affinity towards his motherland that he stayed back in India. His son in England admonished him for the same. It was not very abstruse to feel his patriotism and in fact the crowd around accolade him for his decision. He further added that he was getting bored in India and have started a fortnight magazine, which is not yet popular; but he was sure that he would make it soon. One of the men in the crowd whose palm was first looked by swami sir subscribed an annual subscription for the magazine. Soon swami sir won lot of subscriptions. It is a very common practice in our society which psychologist, Mr.Edward sebastin quotes as “slave attitude due to fear in self”. Yes, no one is confident of deciding him or herself but try to go behind the crowd. Only for this reason, I didn’t subscribe controlling my greatest temptation thereby creating myself an exception in the list of psychologist, Mr.Edward.

I was feeling hot inside the compartment. Discussion with swami sir was still continuing. I was not abhorrent towards such discussion, but took less interest in participation. I slipped to the door to enjoy the breeze kissing my face during its busy voyage towards an aimless destiny. After some time, train abated its speed. I was an experienced traveller who is enough informed to understand that one of the railway stations is approaching to decelerate my train’s wheels. I moved beside when I saw swami sir with another old person who is almost dressed like him in the metal slab near toilet.

The new man asked swami sir,” what about today’s collection?”. Swami sir smiled till his lips touched his ears showing a bunch of currencies,”all heads are enough thick to be fooled. I started simply, but seeing the response, I continued and everyone believes that I’m really a London returned. Don’t worry; today’s collection is enough for one week. After returning this dress to laundry, we shall enjoy. “. The new man smiled, “you are lucky as well as talented. You can fool anyone easily. My compartment people didn’t respond properly. I just could win my lunch and little money. Let me hope best in my next attempt.”

They laughed and started a cigarette. Only then I really felt, the breeze was not that comfortable and went to my seat trying to recollect whether swami left any clue for others to understand that he is actually intelligent as everyone thinks, but a Fraud.