A Decade since the Millennium !

Another year coming to an end and another occasion to celebrate for the people. Those who had a bad year would love to move on and leave behind the pains. And those who did well over the past twelve months would try to consolidate on the gains.

2009 gave us the Great Recession, The Bird Flu and the Swine Flu. So many institutions collapsed. When AIG went bankrupt, I was worried because I had invested some of my hard earned money in AIG. But to my relief, I received a very nice and soothing letter from TATA group, the Indian Partner of AIG assuring me of continued service without any problem. This is why I admire the name Tata!

2009 also gave us some very nice movies. Paa, 3 Idiots, Luck by Chance, Ajab Prem ki Gajab Kahani were good entertainers. In Malayalam we had a relative windfall of good movies compared to the period of drought during the previous years. Paleri Manikyam Oru Pathira Kolapathakathinde Katha, Passenger, Bhramaram, Pazhassi Raja, Ividam Swargamanu, Loud Speaker and of course 2 Hariharnagar were not only good; but also set the box office on recovery path.

Team India went onto lose the only title it had won since 1985; the T-20 World Cup. They also lost miserably at the Champion's Trophy. But on the positive side, they went onto win more tests and climb to the Official No. 1 position in Test rankings. With Gambhir becoming the Top Test Batsman and Dhoni, the Top ODI Batsman; it was a double whammy!

On the personal front, 2009 was a fairly good year for me. But for a severe acidity problem that has prevented me from enjoying my most loved drink coffee, it was pretty good on the health front. 28 May was the last time I tasted coffee and ended up sleepless for almost half a week due to 'An almost Peptic Ulcer'. On the positive side, I managed short but very nice breaks to visit Goa, Tirupathy, Karkala my beloved native place, Kumarakom and then Guruvayoor with my entire family including in-laws. But the dampener came with my failure to make it to Madikeri to meet up with old chums from Medical College due to one unavoidable commitment. I wish myself better luck for 2010.

It sounds as if it were only yesterday that we welcomed Y2K or the Millennium Year. And it is already 10 years since! A Decade has passed since and that only means one thing! We all are getting older, but thankfully wiser too! The Internet has penetrated into our lives to unimaginable levels. Try not to check mail for 3 - 4 days and see your in-box bursting out on your face when you finally log on.

If you're not on Orkut, Facebook, Twitter or Linkedin, you don't exist in this world. Correct me if I am wrong. Blogging, Social Networking, Micro-blogging and so on... The world clearly is getting younger, quicker and impatient. The younger lot have everything going for them and clearly are in a majority. The middle class like me, are forced to learn new things every other day just to appear 'Up-to-the-hour'. Up-to-date was fashionable when we were young. Now things change in hours; including marriages that happen and are broken within a matter of hours.

So at the breakneck speed the world is moving ahead, we only stop for a few hours to celebrate 'The New Year'. Not all are as lucky or as optimistic as some of the younger lot. I have never been an ardent celebrator of this 'New Year' thing. But I have gamely sent Happy this festival and Happy that festival messages to almost all my contacts during most of the festivals. I will be doing it again for the 'New Year'. It doesn't hurt to wish and to celebrate. Not if you have 6000 free messages in your monthly package!

So let me wind up wishing all my friends... A Very Happy, Healthy and Hopeful New Year!
Question: What major change will the year 2010 bring into our lives?
Answer: The Calender!

Footnote:
Finally remembering those who departed during the past 12 months leaving a lacuna behind them...
My Uncle, Guide and Godfather: Mr. T. M. V. Shenoy
A Family Friend: Nithin Shibu who died at 23 falling victim to a two-wheeler accident.
Malayalam Cinema people: Adoor Bhavani, Rajan P. Dev and Lohithadas!
My Childhood Hero: Vishnuvardhan who left on 30 December 2009 just before the dawn.
Though he was never a favorite, just because of his fame: Michel Jackson.
And many more, especially those faceless thousands who die everyday due to someone Else's mistakes!

'Great' 'Grand' 'Paa'

‘Paa’ is the talk of the town; not only the town but the whole of India and beyond among the film lovers. It is true that there are a lot of people who say the movie is lousy and Bachchan is crap. Surf the net and you’ll see every piece of writing admiring ‘Paa’ will be countered by articles abusing the movie in general and Bachchans in particular. But then you immediately know they are biased and motivated. So let me not dwell too long on these issues. I am writing about something unheard of in Indian movies before.

There are critics who compare the movie with the ‘The curious case of Benjamin Button’. But this movie is absolutely different except for the ‘Progeria’ issue. This movie is about life and about living your life to the best of what you have got. This is also a movie that celebrates the ‘Greatest Indian movie star of all times’.

Amitabh Bachchan, He has acted in so many movies which were plain dumb. Toofan, Jadugar, GJS, Lal Badshah, RGV ke Aag and many more. But then he has given us some of the most poignant moments in movies like Mili, Anand, Deewar, Muqaddar ka Sikandar and Baghbaan. He also gave us many outrageously funny movies like Amar Akbar Anthony, Khuddaar, Namak Halaal and Satte Pe Satta.

Cheeni Kum was a nice and intelligent movie. Sarkar was intense and good stuff. He did well even in multi-star capers like KANK, K3G and Mohabbatein. But the one thing missing was ‘Something Special’. All he did was good, but nothing great!

And now finally Bachchan has broken the jinx. At the age of 67, he plays ‘Auro’ a 13 year old boy with a very rare congenital illness that leads to accelerated ageing and early death, Progeria or “Hutchinson–Gilford Progeria Syndrome". Auro, his mother, grand-mother, his teachers at school and even his friends take it as a matter of fact. There is no lamenting or no melodrama. But all are concerned about Auro and they take care of him well. He grows up to be a funny and fun-loving but a little too head-strong boy with a very sharp brain. In spite of his frail health and awkward looks, he is a very popular character at school. And he comes up with one-liners that are simply funny. When his grand-mother starts getting on his nerves, he tells his bear, “Are you not a non-vegetarian? Why don’t you eat her?” He is a boy with an attitude too. Written on the door of his room, “Knock, else I will knock your head off’. He also has his way when he decides to leave his best friend Vishnu back as he joins his Politician Father on a trip to Rashtrapati Bhavan.

R. Balki, who also made the delightful ‘Cheeni Kum’ with Bachchan and Tabu has come out on top with a fabulous idea and a wonderful movie experience. The beauty that Bachchan brings to the role of the 13 year old Auro is matchless. You feel like you are one of those characters in the movie as you cheer on towards a climax. Vidya Balan as his Gynecologist mother and Abhishek Bachchan as her estranged lover and Auro’s father are very good. Arundhati Nag is good too. Only Paresh Rawal is perhaps a little wasted. Auro’s friends are cute and loveable and Vishnu is too good.

There are moments like the little girl apologizing to Auro and presenting him with a caricature of himself made of ‘Sorry’ that are touching. You will not be wetting your hankies even though Auro has to depart at the end. If they were to re-promote this movie, I have a slogan for them. “His birth did them apart. He lived as everyone’s loved. And his death had to bring them together”.

A very mature and sensitive movie from the Bachchans and R. Balki. Let us all stand up and applaud at this moment for a truly wonderful movie experience gifted to us during this Christmas by the Big B!

And especially a huge thank you to Balki!

People who have made a Difference... 2

‘Wife’ is a ‘Four’-letter word; so is ‘Life’. They both rhyme and there will be a wonderful harmony in ‘Life’ if the ‘Wife’ and ‘Hus-band’ are in tune!

There are millions of ‘Wife’ jokes. Many are funny and mild. Some are mean and wild and some others downright offensive. I too have shared and forwarded some of them. But to be honest, I don’t really subscribe to any of them. I respect women too much to generalize about womanhood.

I have mentioned about my admiration for “Womanity”! Well, I don’t know if anyone has coined this word before. If I am the first, then let me be firm, this isn’t a ‘typo’. ‘Womanity’ is ‘Humanity’ with a Feminine touch!

This rather weird introduction is necessary because I am writing about a ‘Woman’ who has made a huge difference in my life over the past dozen years. That is my wife. We first met as a part of our arranged match at her home on 9 June 1997. When I asked her opinion about me; she told me, I was ‘no problem’! I wonder if she still thinks so.

We had a rather short courtship and were married on 3 September 1997. It was a culture shock for me. I had grown up being pampered by my sisters. But this was different. She knew very little about the world outside her circle. My short temper had to cause a few problems. During a journey to Ponkunnam from Kochi, I had to shout at her because she was walking on the road without noticing a speeding bus, which certainly would have knocked her down. Through the entire 3-hour journey, she was sobbing and the see of humanity was staring at me as if I were some kind of a villain who had committed a sin!

Then it was a learning process for both of us. For her, everything from cooking to cope up with a temperamental husband. For me it was about learning to teach. Teaching her how to cook what I liked. Teaching her to manage our time, money and so many other things. 12 years down the line, she now manages all our money matters, banking and shopping single-handed. She has an Orkut profile that has a burgeoning list of visitors. When we went on our first date, she didn’t know what was a ‘soup’. Today, she manages to bail me out of it whenever I need her. For a girl who didn’t know how to walk on the road without her mother, she is now taking care of both her parents and mine!

We aren’t without our share of quarrels, disagreements and follies. But we are together at the end of the day because, we have become used to each other. I can’t wake up without her and she can’t sleep without me. When we do a balance sheet of our life together, she has had to change much more than I have. She does more work than I do and she keeps the home tidy in spite of my laziness.

Her weight is a heavy-duty issue and I have always managed to remain below the BMI mark for my height. My anger is the danger our relationship faces constantly though I never raise my voice and she can’t keep her volume down even during the times of peace. She forgets what I had told just about 3 minutes ago but reminds me to wish my cousin on his wedding anniversary. She also remembers every single birthday, wedding anniversary and such things in our circle. I am happy that I somehow manage to remember our own wedding anniversary and her birthday. She doesn’t think much about those comedies of Malayalam actor Sreenivasan that I love. She loves spicy food and I just can’t stand them. I remove all kind of Chillies and spices from my food and she gorges on them. I can laugh any time and most of the times and she finds it hard to understand why I am laughing.

So many differences and yet we stick to each other. Why? Simply because I need her and can’t do a thing without her. She has stood by me through some of the most difficult times of my life. It is no exaggeration if I say she is an addiction. She is not fond of reading except those scraps on her Orkut page. But I hope she reads this and understands how important she is to me. Love you and need you to be with me till I live!

I have only one message to her:
Live [For Me], Love [Me] and Laugh [With Me], because I Live [Thanks to You], Love [You] and [Love to see You] Laugh!

People who have made a Difference... 1

Vande Mataram - A Salute to all the Mothers of the World...!

I have always wanted to express my feelings about how different people have made a difference in my life. Life has been so special and I have had so many wonderful people coming into my life; I may need an entire lifetime to write about all the people. So let me start now before I run out of time!

I have written about my Uncle, Father some friends and even Sachin Tendulkar, Amitabh Bachchan and Anil Kumble. But the most important, enduring and everlasting influence has been rightfully... My Mother! Mother will always remain the most important person in my life. There might be exceptions, but the rule is... Mother Rules!

Why is Mother so special? I am not talking about my Mother but any Mother and every Mother. Well, try carrying a constantly growing mass inside your tummy for 9 months. Think of all those kicks from inside. Think of those bouts of vomiting. And those spells of hunger at midnight. Also those excruciating backaches. Then the weight gain, the loss of shape and the swelling on the feet. And finally most importantly the love, affection and absolute devotion after the baby is born. I don't know how my mother went through all these, three times in seven years. But I have seen my wife go through all these when we had our daughter and I forever remain indebted to Womanhood and Motherhood! When I love, adore and pamper my daughter, I have but one regret; "I am Not her Mother".

Now, how special is my Mother? Well she is 'Our' Mother. I have two sisters; one two years older and another five years younger. We three have so many things in common; like our easy-going nature, our vulnerability to emotions, our ability to laugh and share laughter and then our "Parents". But the most striking aspect of all 3 is our absolute and complete love for our 'Mother'. She is the most important person in our life. I am writing this with total conviction and without even consulting my sisters, because I 'Know It'.

I never liked the idea of celebrating 'Mother's Day'. You can celebrate birthday, wedding anniversary and so many things. But how can you assign just one day in a year to the most important entity on earth? Beats me! I might disagree with some of what my mother says. I might fight with her on some issues. I have even advised her about how to deal with certain people and situations. There have been occasions when I have felt 'let down' by her and there have been occasions when I have felt "Oh my goodness, what a rotten thing have I done!". There are instances when I have hurt her and even seen her cry. But then I have gone back to her and we have lived perfectly fine.

My Mother was a confirmed beauty of her times and beyond her times. She has been compared to Waheeda Rahaman of 'The Guide'. She was also the favorite daughter of her head-strong father. She married into a huge joint family. Overcame partisan in-laws and often unfriendly house and has brought up three children to be fiercely self-respecting yet equally sensitive. She has retained enough charm through all these years and looks more like fifty something even though she is past sixty. She is an unbelievably good cook and picks up recipes by just one look at the dish. On the negative side, she perhaps does carry a few ghosts of the past on her back and that could be the reason for some of the bouts of depression and insecurity she shows sometimes. But overall she is a perfect package of a 'Mother' and you can't get any better than that!

It is almost like 'I have taken her for granted'. I can't tolerate her falling ill. I actually get upset when she complains of some illness. I admonish her for something or the other she did in the immediate past as the reason for her falling ill. After I am out of home and alone, I have thought about it. Why do I behave like this? Why do I blame her instead of soothing her? Then I found the answer. I simply can't imagine her falling ill. I just can't tolerate the thought that 'Mother is mortal'. I have never met God. But if 'God' were ever to exist, it has to be in the form of 'Mother'.

Some characters of my Mother are perhaps unique to all mothers. She loves to feed us, her children and grand-children. She will do anything, including learning a new recipe to make her kids happy. Though she doesn't like use of bad language and cursing, she will even curse those persons who'll talk ill of her children. I saw that when I was abused by a drunken man. I have seen her feel miserable and even brake down when I couldn't eat some of my favorite dishes due to severe acidity. No other force on earth can understand humanity better than Mother.

My 'Mother' is the most important person in my life. My Father is very dear to me and my Wife is one person without whom I don't even open my eyes most of the mornings. Two Angels were born just to make my life better; one before and one after me. They are called 'Sisters'. I love and adore my daughter. She is a mission for me. But 'Mother' remains the 'Edifice' on which the beautiful life of mine rests comfortable.

I want her to read this along with my sisters. I want her to know how important she is for all of us; the kids and the grand-kids. I know she understands all this and more! Because... After all She is "Mother".

In these days of controversy over the recital of our national song; I have no hesitation in chanting this to 'My Mother' and all the Mothers of the world...
Vande Mataram !

Bored? Read the Board !

Travel can be inspiring, enjoyable and also be a learning experience. Travel also can bore you to your bone marrow. I was never really a good traveler. During childhood, I had severe bouts of travel sickness. I had to be sedated with ‘Avomin’ tablets like a tiger in a zoo to prevent my bouts of retching and vomiting. Even though I loved to go around and see places and the people, the travel part used to scare all of us.

My daughter has inherited some of this problem. But luckily for her, she is comfortable in air-conditioned vehicles. I overcame this sickness once into teens. Today, I don’t have much of a problem as long as someone doesn’t puke in the surroundings!

I am not really good at driving. I have very little patience on the road and hence prefer not to drive on long distance journeys. But once I am not driving, I tend to fall asleep through most of the travels. My cousin Rajesh changed all that about a decade and a half ago. Whenever we traveled together, he would poke me at the slightest hint of my dozing off. He never used to sleep on travel and never allowed me to either.

That is how I started to stay awake during travel. And this opened a new and a very pleasant window in my life. I learnt to read Tamil during my travel to Coimbatore in 1995. While passing through busy roads of Tamilnadu, I started to configure Tamil letters and before I knew, I was able to read boards without much of a problem!

This habit of reading boards has stayed with me to date and has given me numerous opportunities to smile, chuckle and even guffaw! When I say ‘Boards’ they could be signboards, advertisement hoardings, banners, milestones or even menu cards in hotels. I have realized that if we keep our eyes open, every single journey can be fun; howsoever short or long it could be. You’ll never get ‘Bored’ if you keep reading ‘Board’ after another ‘Board’.

My first memory of such a board goes back to an age long before I made it a habit to read boards. It was somewhere in central Karnataka and was in vernacular. So I am afraid the essence will be lost in translation. But that was one real howler!

‘Indian Hare Cuting Saloon’ was an interesting board I remember from Karnataka. ‘All type of Alopathy Medisins sold here’ was another. “We deel with repare works of wach, cloaks, time-pice and atometic goods”. "Dublicat Kee for any lock" was a locksmith advertising! What will you buy from "Kalpana Reddymade Cloth Shope"? How about "Hole sale and Re tail Merchants"? The list can be endless.

I remember an old joke from one of Khushwant Singh's book. It was written at the back of a Petrol Tanker "Mera Bharat Mahan" and underneath there was ... HIGHLY INFLAMMABLE !

Does ‘Meels Reday’ board enthuse your taste buds? Kerala perhaps has given the maximum number of occasions to enjoy for this compulsive board-reader in me. Then there was this board outside a fruit-stall cum coffee shop: “Appil, Orenj, Gripe joose and Laim Soda”. They also sold ‘Milk-Sheik’!

One legend of a board went thus “PNP Memmorial Hospital”. When I pointed out this mistake, the authorities just brushed aside the issue saying any way it is pronounced as such in Kerala!
Kerala can turn Shah Rukh in to Ghan and Cricketer Gagan Khoda into Ghoda! It is the patented style of enhancing the ‘T’s and ‘M’s and converting the ‘K’ into ‘G’ and ‘P’ into ‘B’ and ‘T’ into ‘D’ that makes so many howlarious goof ups unique to Kerala. Hindi in Kerala will make for another story altogether and let me deal with that some other day.

Menu cards in many hotels not only tickle your taste buds, but also your funny bones! So you travel by Otto Riksha and keep your luggage in Clock room. Then you go to a ‘Hottel’ and taste some of the exotic items available in Kerala like Gopi Manjoori, Chilli Chikkan, Beaf Rost, Papper Dosa, Buttar Nan, Sweat Corne Soop, Hoat and Sore Soop, Vegittabil Cutlate and finally the most delicious Omblate!

Many small eateries in Kerala will be helpless if you want coffee. They’ll serve only ‘Kappy’. If there is a crying baby, you give a ‘nibble’ to soothe it. And if you have to relieve yourself, you’ve to go to ‘Toilate’.

If you keep your eyes and mind open, you’ll never have dearth of entertainment on the roads in India. So next time when you travel, try this. Perhaps we’ll have more to share. As and when I remember more or come across new ones; I will come back… Just remember that!

Parting shot: A board outside the 'Board Room' of an institution went thus... "Bored of Management"

The Numbers Game!

After a lull, I am back with something to blog. I was inactive because of a lot of factors. But for now, I am dealing with 'Numbers'.

When I was a small boy studying in primary school and then high school, I had a fetish for using words like ‘Dozen’, ‘Score’ and ‘Peg’ almost as a rule. Very few of my friends knew the exact meanings of these words. In those days of the Amitabh Bachchan dominance; I enjoyed every opportunity to call him the 'Numero Uno' of Indian Cinema. Two weeks was too weak an expression for me; I preferred the 'Fortnight'. Thus I used to ‘Score’ over my peers by using words that were not very familiar to others. In spite of my fetish for exotic words, this wasn't exactly Sesquipedalia.

Well, everyone knew a ‘Dozen’. Some of them who had heard about Bar and Booze knew vaguely about a measure of Alcohol being called a ‘Peg’. But a ‘Peg’ means a third of anything was not known to any of my friends. Not a single friend of mine knew ‘Score’ was not exactly the Cricket Score but actually ‘Twenty things together’. I also knew what was ‘Baker’s Dozen’ and why was it called so!

So I never dealt with numbers and milestones in ordinary terms. When I completed ten years on this planet, I was actually a ‘Decade’ old. I was never really twelve years old; I was a ‘Dozen’ years old. In one of my elocutions, I went on to say, “Maha Bharat war went on for One and a half Dozen days where a Handful of Pandavas fought with a Century strong Kauravas for two less than a Score days”. Looking back, all that sounds stupid today. Taking this stupidity a little further, I am 'Three and a Quarter Dozen' years old today.

I think ‘We, Indians’ have the greatest admiration for numbers, landmarks and milestones. We as a Country are so enamored by Cricket primarily because of runs; centuries, records and a hell of a lot of numbers conjured up by this game. So much so, I know many women who can’t differentiate between a cover drive and a back-hand cross-court shot; will rattle up statistics about the number of centuries Sachin Tendulkar has raked up in ODI matches and Test Matches. I have seen people who have never invested a single penny in the market gushing about ‘Sensex’ crossing the 16K or 17K mark!

I think it all started with the Great Aryabhata contributing the ultimate weapon to Mathematics, the Zero. We are obsessed by this one single entity. We ought not have been what we are today but for this singularly patentable entity! When it comes to Zero, the more the merrier for us. Sunil Gavaskar told this when he reached the milestone of Ten Thousand Test runs, “When I played my first test, I did not know I would last this far. I thought for myself that if I can score one thousand runs in tests, that would be magnificent”. The newspapers ran the headlines next day “Ten Times Magnificent”!

By the way, on September 3, me and my wife completed a Dozen years as man and wife. What inspired me to write all this? Well, I am reaching a landmark here. This in itself is not really a great affair. But for someone who still has a long way to go in communicative writing; this is an achievement. With this post, I have completed a 'Half-century' of blog-posts.

Intelligentleman

I have an extremely intelligent but unbelievably modest friend. He calls himself UMD on the Face-book and the Twitter. He is a Graphic Designer and works somewhere in the middle east. Those names always elude me. Riyadh, Rial, Dubai, Abu Dhabi, Kuwait and so on... But that is not what I want to discuss here. It is about a man, who will never give you even the slightest of hints about his real wares.

We know he is a Graphic Designer and is damn good one at that. He writes poetry is what his wife told me. He also writes very intelligent posts on the Face-book wall. He also makes some very intelligent sounding sounds. He is again very proficient in creating art out of vegetables and drawing on his mobile. He is driven by the word "Expectation" and loves challenges.

He has a very talented wife who is an accomplished Kathakkali artist. They all have great taste for art-forms. I keep getting invites from them to attend programs. But unfortunately I am neither as smart as them and nor do I understand any of those 'Arts'.

But the best thing about UMD is his humility. I never knew anything about him till I realized what kind of a guy this one is on the Face-book. The more I follow him, the more I've started to admire him. Actually I have no hesitation to add here that I am a 'Fan'.

This is not a blog-post to gloss about a friend of mine. This is just to say... We have a lot of people who are very simple and down-to-earth but are in reality 'Great Souls'. His nickname is 'Unni' and whatever he does is Unique to him. Hence I call his innovations... 'Unnique'. Due to his intelligence and gentle nature; I also have coined a new identity for him: "Unnique Intelligentleman"

And he has two adorable kids. The younger one, a boy is too young to make an impression. But his elder; a just turned teen daughter is a hyper-intelligent girl who looks and promises to go places. I sincerely wish a wonderful life to this adorable family!