Kindly Adjust

I happened to go through an article about Pondy cuisine and that prompts me to write this. Looks like, there is a national trait called ‘adjusting’!

Everyone everywhere wants someone to adjust. Be it a crowded seat in a bus, accommodating more people than what is possible in a small car, giving lesser money than what is due, not keeping timelines, everywhere this trait is evident in full glory. It is taken for granted in this country that people will adjust.

Maybe this is because of the famed tolerance the religion has inculcated in us. Hinduism without being asked, kindly adjusted many practices and heresies and thus was born Buddhism, Jainism and Sikhism.

While in many occasions this trait has worked for good, I also believe that is the weakness of the system. Let us look at a few good ones. India is cultural bedrock for the world I would dare to say. The religion thrived because it was willing to adjust and hundreds of missionaries and thousands of invaders could not manage to kill it. Within the nation, with so much of diversity, we have always been willing to adjust and accommodate in many things starting from basics like food. You probably will have the most adjusted Chinese food in the whole world only in India. While catering to the taste buds of Indians, they somehow manage to retain the Chinese flavor. And such attitude always gives room for two different types of restaurants. Authentic Chinese and Chinese! You name it; you will get all cuisines of the world even in a place like Ratna Café, but cooked the Indian way.

But look at the flip side of this trait. We accept the most immoral and corrupt criminals as our elected leaders. We don’t care whether bigamy is practiced by a CM, but arrest a guy if he is a commoner. Because we adjust! We adjust with poor customer service. We adjust with bad time sense. We adjust with vulgar behavior. We adjust with lousy leaders at work. We accept mediocrity. We accept husbands as God. We adjust with thieves as maids. We adjust with drivers because they have their idiosyncrasies. We adjust, we adjust and we keep on adjusting. That was one funny and thoughtful campaign by VIP for their briefs. But how true it is! We can’t say no to someone who wants jostle in our car when we look forward for a peaceful 2 Hr drive with good music. And that someone will not even matter to us.

The nation is infected with a malady of not being able to say NO. In bold letters to anyone! You are asked, whether you like it or not, you adjust. And nothing happens out of good spirit. When it really comes to a situation to adjust, they won’t. In a 5 star beach resort, the steward would not allow me to sit in a table, because the restaurant is supposed to open 10 minutes later. A mobile phone that is just 3 weeks old malfunctions and I don’t have the service guys quickly fix it. When it is needed, no adjustment is made.

I am just wondering, whether people cannot say No, or is it that they will say No when it involves effort from them. If they are not directly impacted, maybe they will adjust.

I am at loss completely to figure out. But I will adjust!

Artificial Milestones

Lately I am getting feedback that I keep writing for the sake of writing and some of the posts do not mean a thing, but for the fact that they add to the number. Consciously there is a couple that would have been done that way. But, almost all of them are written with the same earnestness.

When I start writing a post, it surely is because a thought is triggered. Some thoughts grow further, some gets stunted. The grown ones find better expression and the half-baked thoughts with the some masala fillers get classified as ‘Bhlongu’ ( stands for Bhongu Blog and Bhongu can be loosely translated to unreal/superficial ). But I know that I don’t write anything for filling up space. There is no necessity also. If I start thinking about the relevance of everything I want to write, then I may dismiss most of them. Who cares about many of the funny episodes that I write about what happens at my home.

I don’t get burdened about saying something meaningful in everything I speak/write. Unnecessary pressure that is!! Not always you can do that. If I say so, I will sound like a director who is still wet behind his years talking about giving a social message in the movie he has done. After all who cares about a message in a movie? I look for engagement. If it engages me, then it is Paisa vasool. Similarly, when I say something the only thing I attempt is keep readers engaged.

All said & done, the blogs are expressions in a written form. And I am yet to see someone who always is lucid in his thoughts also. If only we can hear thoughts!! Then all of us will meet the fate of Mel Gibson in ‘What women want’. Anyway, such a preamble was needed because I was toying with some stupid thought as I was nearing my 200th post here. My daughter was asking what I was planning to write about. And I thought of Artificial Milestones.

Somewhere deep inside, all of us are driven by milestones. Or deadlines! Not like the cricketers claiming that he would have been happier if the team had won. Bunkum it is. Who on earth has ever done that? These guys who would be running like a steam engine without brakes will start moving like a bullock cart at the sight of a century and then give sound bytes which are so very altruistic.

We are happy about milestones. I was happy when I first got my 5 figure salary and got sloshed. I didn’t waste an opportunity to tom-tom about it. And in each and every such minor accomplishment, I was always happy. When this blog was just about 10 posts, it was already a conversation starter and ice breaker with girl friends.

‘You know, that is the same thing I have written in my blog too’
‘Of course I have my blog, I do blabber something in that’

So all of us have intents, some malicious, some useful, some harmless and milestones do excite us. We always want to reach somewhere and when we manage to recognize that thin line between a pipedream and a goal, we want to reach that goal and get happy when we do that.

So folks, I am happy about crossing 200 posts. I am first of all, happy about the fact that I overcame my inertia, my fear to write something and masking it as laziness and most of all gained the confidence that I can frame my thoughts in a coherent manner and put them down in words in an acceptable manner.

And thrilled about the fact that I can pick a nothing subject and waste 1000 words on it! And my ability of pass off a Bhlongu in the pretext of being honest! :))

Apocalypto

’Apocalypto’ as a movie triggers a lot of thoughts in your mind. The tag line for the movie is ‘When the end comes, not everyone is ready is go’ and the quote with which the film begins ‘A great civilization is not conquered from without until it is destroyed from within’ tells the story themself.

It is about the declining period of Mayan civilization and one man’s fight to escape from the sacrificial altar. Powerfully captured in the visual sense, the language is which the movie is dubbed gives tremendous scope to see the movie more visually than anything else, suspending the viewer from reality to quote Mel Gibson. Learnt later that the language is Yucatec Maya language! He has been absolutely right, because I have never watched so many pairs of intense eyes in a single movie.

Sometimes a movie can leave such a tremendous impact that it keeps running in your mind even after it really ends. At first I thought that tag line may well be apt for describing the movie itself. You don’t want to go, when the movie comes to an end. Very few directors have the art of making the viewers empathize with a movie completely. A feeling that you belong there and you are watching a story unfold in front of your eyes! Mel Gibson is one such guy. Be it the ‘Braveheart’ or the ‘Passion of Christ’, Gibson transports you to another world altogether. His penchant for perfection is very apparent in the construction of each scene.

Apocalypto is no different in that aspect. It is shot in such a way that you feel that you could smell the wetness of the soil and the fear of the people. A simple storyline of abduction & escape can never get more thrilling. The movie just draws you to the edge of the seat in the 10th minute and keeps you there for another 2 and a half hour’s.

There is a lot of gore and violence but somehow, as a viewer you tend to accept it, maybe because the story is set about 1200 years back and having been doled out a lot of senseless violence in contemporary movies, you somehow think it is perfectly OK for the men of that age to behave that way.

I kept thinking that though centuries have gone by, some fundamental human traits have never changed. The blind beliefs about God and our rituals to please Him, the fight for supremacy, the strong subduing the weak, the family ties, the loyalty to clan, the senseless behavior towards tribes that are not yours, civilization and barbarism coexisting and the scant respect of human lives, nothing has changed in 1500 years.

The Maya civilization is a Mesoamerican civilization, noted for the only known fully developed written language of the pre-Columbian Americas, as well as its spectacular art, monumental architecture, and sophisticated mathematical and astronomical systems. At its peak, it was one of the most densely populated and culturally dynamic societies in the world. And yet, there are behaviors that are completely incongruent to what civilization is defined for.

Now after a millennium, we are far more advanced but hold on to the same traits. So fundamentally nothing changes in such a short period. I had always maintained that whatever changes that is required in many touchy areas like female emancipation etc, the change can only be evolutionary and not something that can be achieved in a few years. Traditional men remain traditional.

Though I see plenty of movies, reviews or mention about them in my blogs have been rare & few. Unless I am really touched by the story, narration and the performance of the actors and the packaging of the movie as a whole!

Apocalypto fits the bill, perfectly.

Biting Truths

My house is becoming a veritable comedy show. As it comes in the Jim Carrey movie ‘The Truman Show’, if someone plants a TV camera at my place and airs a reality show, I am certain that folks will have laughs of their life.

For starters, what will call you a place that has more toothbrushes than the number of teeth itself in the household? And we have 3.5 people at home. Every morning starts with the challenge of finding your toothbrush. Maybe that is the reason I am so sharp in my brain, because I start the day with the challenge. Being color blind, my ordeal is doubled. I am lucky if I get up as the last guy amongst the 4, so that I can feel the wetness of the bristles and figure out which is not my brush. It still doesn’t solve the purpose of finding my own. But atleast I eliminated three brushes. After a sincere attempt, I proceed to brush with one of the leftovers, which need not necessarily be mine.

I was using a different technique altogether. It stemmed from my habits. I apply huge pressure if I am using my right hand, even in writing. So much so that you can see the imprint some 10 leaves away in the notebook. The same was true with brushing also. In its 3rd week of existence, my toothbrush appears as if it hasn’t seen oil & shampoo for a hundred years. So that was identification that it is my brush. But, in the 4th week I was almost brushing with the brush handle than the bristles, so started changing them every month. So once again they appear so very new and similar. The technique is no more in use.

With all this, you are tempted to think that we should have the cleanest set of teeth in the universe. Sorry, that’s not the way it is really. Because my elder daughter takes exactly .01 second to brush her teeth, so much so I seriously think that she just applies paste on the brush and washes it off, without coming anywhere near her teeth. So, the brush actually is more sparkling white. The younger one is not that bad. She likes the taste of paste, so takes it to her mouth and eats it. So her timing is around 10 seconds. Maybe she has sparkling white intestines.

So, as you would know by now, the stand in which brushes are kept broke down one day unable to hold the weight of all of them. Now they are in a container type standee. So, even if you succeed in spotting your own brush, extricating it is another challenge. Invariably they all come as a bunch. Pretty social folks they are. And sometimes or most of the times, the standee becomes a sleepee and all brushes fall down.

Guess, I am going to make stickers with our names on it and also start keeping them in our wardrobes. After all each one of us have separate wardrobes and the brushes can’t get mixed up, unless the servant maid ( who is an interminable source of comedy herself ) picks them and give for ironing. That way they will get mixed up again or really get pressed that I start using the handle again for brushing.

Never realized that marriage can bite me like this!! But then the smiles of the kids, whether yellow or disorderly, are worth having a yellow set yourself.

Shangri La aka Finding Maggi

What is that with these tortured souls I don’t know!! And I am not including myself in that. Wherever I see an intelligent soul, whatever I read about the geniuses, all of them talk about a calling in their life. And some responded to that call, a few still wait for the call. I am in the second half of people. I am waiting for that call too, but nothing but stupid phone calls come to me.

Sometimes I feel that there is going to be no call at all. It is not as if I am waiting for a miracle to happen one fine morning inside my head and I construe that as a call. I am wondering what that would be, if at all that happens. It is always about finding a purpose in life. Beats me!

I don’t know what is wrong with the current purpose in life? Someone pays me handsomely and I go around kicking asses. May not be a glorious purpose in life, but still I kick someone else’s ass, so I don’t feel tired about it. Maybe if mine is kicked I would suddenly start searching my purpose. Long time ago, I wrote a piece called Chase, and then also I had the same confusion. Later, discovered that the chase would be to find the lost combs! Now that Airtel has introduced ‘Search made Simple’ my search for the combs would also stop.

Jokes apart this purpose business baffles me. I see a pattern here. All these searchers travel east and land up at India and that’s where they find their calling. Some smoke hashish and see God, others simply follow a modern guru like a lapdog and consume whatever he dishes out. They learn some mantras and keep repeating it in an anglicized manner like a broken gramophone record.

So what do we do now? We are already in the place where called folks arrive! Maybe God is my next door neighbor, I don't know. But,I can’t understand why instead of just peeping above the wall and yell for me, He wastes ISD to call these firangs. I think this whole ‘calling’ business is some industry. Maybe secretly funded by Indian Tourism Development Board! Should be bigger the Voice industry itself.

There are plenty of books that sell dreams of the exotic east and the meditation and yoga ( I am not discounting these at all, but I don’t know whether they are panacea for a materialistic white guy ). And there is word of mouth also. Guys who go back home and spread the good news of the magic of the Orient. Not that I disclaim the power, but I guess the search is something really deep inside you. You dig yourself deeper and deeper, and then you understand what you want to do really. And that could be as simple of status quo, go back kicking asses and retire or maybe just give into your wanderlust and roam for a while and come back hoping that everything from now on will be different.

Sometimes you dig too deep also there is an issue, you would not comprehend a damn thing and get completely clueless about what little you knew already about yourself. There is this series of articles that come in a Tamizh weekly in the title of ‘Care of Platform’. Those guys don’t have a roof above their head. But they seem to be happy within their purview.

Sakichi Toyoda popularized the concept of 5 why’s and Jim Collins also talks about that in his book ‘Built to Last’. For anything and everything, simply ask 5 why’s and you will arrive at a root cause. At a more philosophical level, the 5 Why's also demonstrate Dr. Deming's principle that the real problem usually lies in the deeper system rather than in the performance of an individual who is working within that system. So instead of simply worrying too much and searching for a answer a conscious drill down will help more.

Having said all these, if one is living in a concrete jungle and works in another for 18 hours a day, an Eastern book with its glorification of the serenity of the Himalayas, the pristine Ganges, the Hindu mysticism would definitely give a ray of hope.

There are just Bisleri bottles lying around in all these places nowadays. And of course you can get Maggi noodles also. But that can’t constitute a purpose, isn’t it. Finding Maggi?!

Music - My Soul

I am really not qualified to make such lofty statements. In fact, modesty is not a virtue that I possess. And I am always keen to showcase what I know and sometimes showcase as if I know also. So, if I say something that is remotely modest, then it only means that I respect it too much or I know too little about that. I can’t say that I know too little about music, but the sheer vastness of music makes me feel that I would not have heard even .001% of it.

I used to keep saying myself that Ilayaraaja is a God. And make claims like I became a theist when I discovered music and if Ilayaraaja and music is true, then God does exist. I was not really feeling odd to say that, because I knew a fair number of people who don’t stop with making such claims but also perform pooja.

It is just not Raaja, though he is the one who could make a discerning listener from a novice out of me. At various situations, various forms of music and different composers have occupied my heart fully. I was a late bloomer so to say. Didn’t read a single English book till I left college and haven’t listened any other music than Tamizh film songs till around the same time.

Then Beatles happened. It was easy listening because I could make something out of their music and lyrics. It was simple and it was as if I could relate to what they sang. Then one by one, I graduated into many composers and genre of music. And got this huge realization that music could be anything and one does not need to be particular about what he hears as long it pleases the ear. So with equanimity, I listen to everything from basic Carnatic to 50 cents. My mother could not fathom what I listened in rap which she used to call as mantras at a funeral ceremony. But for me it was just as cool as anything. There was a rhythm in what they did as music and my brain could decipher it. No big hang-ups about the social messages they claim to spread from within a deluge of bad words. It is just the sound that touches some chord inside me.

But lately it does more than touching a chord. The other night there was an involuntary smile in my face when I heard a strain of Raaja song. Once, while I was listening to Yanni, I dozed off with a smoke in hand and burnt my shoulder. Now, with the advent of Prem Joshua and Karunesh in my life, there are strange things that happen. I can feel the music spreading in my body. I may sound insane. But I swear that it happens. I can now understand the IIT’ians favorite pastime of Floyd, Vodka and Grass. Those guys probably would have even communicated with God.

The more I think about music, the more I get surprised about the simple yet powerful sound forms creating such riot inside the head. It creates some kind of anamorphism. Or like a chameleon, it can take the shape of whatever situation you think of. Sometimes the blue sky, sometimes the sea, the green grass, the rain, a river, expanse of a valley, immeasurable universe, endless travel, on and on!!

It really is a gift to play and create music. I guess they are God’s favored children. To be able to manifest a feeling inside you by their sheer genius! Subbu tells that he feels that he is almighty or feels closer to almighty when he listens to Prem Joshua. How true he is.

If there was a choice in life, I would rather wander aimlessly playing music and live with nature. In my wish list of going to Himalayas and listen to the Vedas, I should probably make a correction. I want to listen to a musical rendition of the Vedas.

I will then die peacefully. And more importantly silently! For it seems that is the best form of music I can produce.

Peculiar Men

Every one in the world has some idiosyncrasies. No two persons are alike and it also robs the charm of life if we are all prototypes. But there is something that we assume as basic traits and we have drawn a code that human beings live this way.

But, once in a while I come across really peculiar people. And I get reminded of the Simon & Garfunkel song ‘A Most Peculiar Man’. The song goes like this.


He was a most peculiar man.
That’s what Mrs. Riordan said and she should know;
She lived upstairs from him
She said he was a most peculiar man.

He was a most peculiar man.
He lived all alone within a house,
Within a room, within himself,
A most peculiar man.


He had no friends, he seldom spoke
And no one in turn ever spoke to him,
cause he wasn’t friendly and he didn’t care
And he wasn’t like them.
Oh, no! He was a most peculiar man.

I have deliberately omitted the last stanza as of now.

But I am surprised about such type of men. Complete misanthropes. Living in a world of their own! No, they are not autistic. I have seen many a child that is autistic and to a great extent I understand their behavior. These men I talk about are perfect guys holding senior positions in good organizations, have a great family, but their world is the one where only they belong.

They don’t worry about what’s happening in their partner’s life. Maybe they would have the best person as a partner, but he would care a damn about it. After all he would be worried about a small incident that happened at office in the past and call up home to warn that he is in a terrible mood, so it’s better that no one comes across him when he return, lest he loses his cool. As if he ever was cool!!

Would live a few blocks away from relatives, but never once would visit them or encourage them visiting his home. Would never attend any social gathering and if at all it something is social about them, it would be hanging out to have a drink with their cronies. And then the drinks will help them draw further into their own world, unless there is a deliberate intent of wallowing more into misery, so that the rest are concerned about them.

Would have habits like not eating in any friends’ or relatives’ place (hotels are ok ) and would have the temerity to order for food from the friends' home, in the rare occasions of visiting a friend. No, they are not austere either. Money does mean a lot to them. Would always be thinking and worrying about how to make more money. But it will be extremely difficult in a world of fools according to them. Pretty ironical I would say. Their world is just them and a world of fools for them would be a tacit admission of them being a fool.

They would be embodiment of chauvinistic male traits because they anyway don’t respect human beings and women are lesser human beings for traditional men like them. For them, it is a question of how no one understands them in this imperfect world. Would have no interests in arts and music should probably sound like bats screaming in the night ( maybe there is something wrong with their ears, they can listen to sounds that are more than 20000 decibels and that means they live a very loud world )

Nothing else but their own welfare is primary and they refuse to acknowledge that there is something wrong with them. Would not attempt to listen to friends ( if someone claims to be a friend ) and it is impossible to have medical counseling. After all there is nothing wrong with them.

I am at sea to understand such misanthropic behavior. I would really like to carefully notice someday whether they can smile at little child, look at flowers; listen to what others go through in life. What kind of people would lack basic social skills? Even the Selfish Giant of Oscar Wilde creation understood that his trees started bearing fruits when he allowed the children to play in his garden. What would change these people?

They should, because if they don’t, life will be like what the last stanza of what Paul Simon sang.

He died last Saturday.
He turned on the gas and he went to sleep
With the windows closed so he’d never wake up
To his silent world and his tiny room;
And Mrs. Riordan says he has a brother somewhere
Who should be notified soon.
And all the people said, what a shame that he’s dead,
But wasn’t he a most peculiar man?

Why are you the way you are?

First, sincere apologies to Subbu for flagrantly lifting his title ( which is so far obvious ) and the possible lift of content also. It is bound to happen that way, because from the time I had known him, I don’t think I have thought any different from what he had. But there could be variations also. Mostly that happens because he has the head-start of 10 years on me and in his speed, probably that would translate to 20 years of additional thinking. Maybe when I catch up with his age, I would have realized the basis of his logic and agree to him.

But as of now, in this it looks like we would have some differences in opinion. Subbu sums up that we are made in a particular way and we don’t determine that, so we stay the way we are. Well I disagree. If traits are embedded in DNA and we act only according to that, then a killer should have a familial history of killing, isn’t it.

Way back, the British had a law that prescribed criminals on basis of ancestry and genetics. In an impoverished, drought ridden district of South Tamil Nadu, people had to resort to crime, to keep their stomach from gnawing. And many of them ended up in jails. To keep the district free of crime, the police, basis the new law, repatriated a huge bunch to North Chennai. And there are people who still claim that this is one of the reasons why more criminals come from that part of the city. While there could be some merit in the argument, I think it is too much of generalization. In fact, the terrain supports crime. It is tucked in one corner of the city, has the ocean as an escape route etc. But yet, there are many who had channelised their energies into constructive stuff. Atleast 80% of the boxers from Tamil Nadu come from North Chennai. So not all end up as criminals! If positive change can be brought upon, so could negative change be also.

My take on this, to a great extent we determine what we are and what we want to do. Some have the courage to do it, some have the foolishness to do it, some have the good fortune to do it, some have the genetic support to do it. And, stuff like killing, we don’t do, because we are afraid of getting imprisoned. As the revolutionary Periyar used to say, people tonsure their head for God, not because of their belief in God, but because of the belief in the fact that hair will grow again. I have not seen anyone sacrificing teeth or limbs to God. They are smart; they know that these items don’t grow again. Likewise, it is the fear of punishment that holds us back from heinous acts. When we were kids, we would have easily dissected a dragon fly or a butterfly. At that age, the only thing that stopped us was the grandparents telling stories about we will be tortured the same way at hell when we die. Otherwise, we would have gladly continued our killing spree and graduated to bigger living things, that’s what the psychopaths do.

We always see that during riots and calamitous situations, perfectly gentle people acting extremely funny. There are recorded events of how property was amassed by God fearing middle class Delhites during the anti-Sikh riots in 1984. And we did not have any compunction whatsoever in occupying the houses of our fellow countrymen who fled to Pakistan fearing their lives. Let us say, we are facing a severe drought and things are rationed. If my children were hungry, and I see a weakling as someone who will share the ration, I would not hesitate smashing him up and take his share also for my folks. Psychologists say that when there is extreme duress or sadness people tend to get extra-punitive or intra-punitive. They either harm others or harm themselves.

I believe that all of us are capable of doing anything and a strict diet of rules, regulations, fairness and fear is what keeps us sane. Otherwise anyone would do anything. These days in Punjab they ingeniously use washing machines for making lassi.

So you are not the way you are, you are simply what you want to be!!! Sorry Subbu.:-)

Shame on you Houdini

If Harry Houdini was alive today, he should be living in penury. I am certain about it. How can he make money by acts of disappearing & extrication now? No, nothing has changed as far as the bewilderment that is associated with such acts even today. The reason is pretty simple.

Our household would be more popular than him and he would have lost his market to us. Because, we are even superior to him!! We simply make inanimate things disappear, which he cannot do. And we are also masters in extrication. Let me elaborate.

In a normal household, what do you think can be lost? A few handy things that you keep can be misplaced? Yes, you are right. Only such stuff gets lost in the maze of a household. Then would you not call bigger things disappearing as a Houdini Act then? That’s what we are masters at.

Since yesterday morning I am looking for the remotes of my TV & Set top Box. There is not a trace of them anywhere. All possible and impossible places have been searched and they are still absconding. I was tempted to release an advertisement in the newspaper this morning to get them back. Then I consoled myself that if both of them are missing together, it should be a case of consensual eloping. After all they lived together always and can’t function without each other. So they might have decided to run off somewhere just to escape my younger daughter.

OK, if that was a mystery, what do you call the disappearance of shirts, handkerchiefs, one sock of a pair, all the combs, sewing needle, Vicks Vaporub, weekly magazines, footwear’s, watches and everything that you need urgently!!

And we guys don’t help the cause either. If I could be the culprit of misplacing the TV remote somewhere, my wife is capable of misplacing the TV itself. And my daughters are out of the world. You cannot find one book of theirs when they have to study and if at all you do, you need to enlist the services of some detectives to ascertain the cause of death of those books.

And similarly when it is time for studying, my elder one can extricate herself beating Houdini, only to be toppled my by younger one at the time of hitting the bed or eating. They will simply evaporate. As if they are made of liquid nitrogen.

There should be something really mysterious with the house. I named it as the Spooky House this morning. Because there has never been an occasion when something has been found when it is required. Simply impossible! One day it happened that I found the comb which I was looking for and then it was my turn to disappear. To the ICU!! Where else you go if you have a heart attack.

I am now convinced that my folks are not to be blamed. Actually this place could be the perfect story material for Manoj Night Shyamalan. The events are definitely paranormal. No I am not being over dramatic here at all.

In fact I say this with a very heavy heart. The stuff which I humorously kept complaining about getting lost are inanimate things all said and done. You never really have an attachment built with them. You are not going to sit and cry if a comb is lost reminiscing about the great days you had with the comb ( you can read this as the great days when I had hair in my head also ). It is true with all the objects. All of them are replaceable. You can buy them again.

But this morning I found out that one of my fishes, a very beautiful one at that, is missing. This has got to be paranormal stuff! How else you will describe a fish missing from the aquarium? :(

No males please

There are certain things that are distinctly Indian as a behavior. I don’t intend to list them here. But just talk about only one such trait!

Blame it on the Bhagavad-Gita maybe. But how many people in this country have read the great book? So it should be something that is ingrained in our DNA by our forefathers who would have read the marvel. But there is a problem in reading it and understanding yourself and passed on wisdom. When it superficial it becomes a question of your own interpretation.

The Gita says that you keep doing your duty and don’t think about the outcome. We all get a hand me down of this wisdom from the mentors and the management guru’s too. Just focus on the efforts, results will automatically come. This is the catch phrase. If someone does not say that, then he will be ostracized from the Management community. So, all of us do that.

But the flip side is that, everyone thinks that the converse of the theorem is also true. End justifying the means!! Let me be honest, I am one like that. I would employ all honest & fair means (according to me) to get what I want. The corollary of the theorem becomes even more interesting.

Like when they make a movie script and the subject is an anti-hero one who resorts to illegal ways, they invariably establish somewhere that it is all for a good cause. He is bad, but then not that bad, he has his sense of fairness is what everyone would want to say. Or, there will be a movie where the hero has an affair because he is incompatible with his wife, but in the climax it is the lover who will come between him and the bullet, not the wife. Or let us say that the heroine gets raped by a drunkard, it is imperative that the drunk is her mother’s brother or her own cousin. In effect, it is like saying ‘yeah she got raped, but then in all fairness he could have been her husband if we go by relationship’. That is giving some credence to the guy that he can afford to rape. This will go a long way for the heroine to shed the taboo of a rape victim. And then, come what may the heroines will not remove their mangalsutra. Even if it is tied by a dog!!

There is an inherent fear to be iconoclastic in this nation. Things should be accepted by the larger society is what everyone’s desire. Let us say that there is something which is deviant from normal way of life. The thought will be ‘Fine, let us find out how much we can limit the damage’. This is so very pseudo. Bunch of hypocrites we have preaching for us.

Look at this news item. ‘Desi Porn start strikes it rich, to marry’. I said wow to myself even before I clicked the link. Here comes the crunch. Apparently she is an admitted bisexual, but has done only one male- female film so far, rest had all been lesbian stuff. And now the guy whom she is marrying is that male co-star. The only guy she has had sex with (in film of course)!!! Completely bamboozling!! She is a porn start all right, but she has been a one-man woman. Hahaha!!

I don’t know what is running in the lady’s mind. But one thing that bothers me is that, having chosen porn as profession, why this charade. ‘I am willing to do something on camera, but no males please’ is an odd condition, when she is clear about sexual preferences. She anyway is a bi. It takes a lot of courage to chose a profession like this and having done that, why these Indian traits?! People in the US, do porn movies as part time because they want to get through college. For you know, if you are working in the US, your boss could have been in porn films earlier.

Maybe I am being too cynical about everything in life. That’s what it should be. But I am unable to accept many things that go around me. Wish people could be brave, really really brave.

A Funeral where you smell your own flowers

A friend called me a while back saying that he wanted to share a quip with me. I am still trying to fathom why he chose me to say that. Jokes apart he did it in right earnest because he knew I would love this.

The one-liner goes like this ‘Wedding is a funeral where you smell your own flowers’. Awesome quote! Now you know why I pulled his leg about the choice. I am increasingly getting annoyed at these wedding functions and lavish ones at that.

I try to figure out who exactly is celebrating? Is it the parents who put up the pomp? If so what are they trying to achieve? The fact that their wards are getting wedded?! The fact they have plenty of money? The display of joy and relief having reduced one member of the family! (I was only mentioning about the count, don’t read anything between the lines and take reduction as a word with face value and get into some philosophical analysis, though that is what I want you to do). Or is it to showcase whom they have found for their children!

Any which reason it is, it beats my imagination. If you have plenty of money, bloody well use it somewhere else where it is valued more. I have 5 elder sisters who got married and we should have spent a fortune on that ( ok, one was a smart person, didn’t allow us that option ). And for 10 full years lived in front of a wedding hall seeing marriages happening every third day! I now visualize that as lambs being taken to slaughter. Invariably there will be one nasty comment or other from the audience, a mean old aunt or the groom’s entourage in all marriages. Millions of bucks in food which is not appreciated and a bunch of beggars standing outside for the leftovers! Sickening feeling it was. And I am certain not a single soul including the relatives care a damn about how they live afterwards and whether they are compatible.

If it is a question of having fulfilled a responsibility of getting a child married off, how can that be true and if it is so, are you sure that you fulfilled it to the best of your ability. The mean family sniffing around like hyenas for largesse is where your daughter goes to. And does your responsibility end with that? Obviously not! You are always worried about how the folks live together but stay at a distance because you are not supposed to be interfering.

And the couple themselves! What a big waste it is! You don’t know how the well made up gent or lady next to you would turn up to. The very same quality that has endeared the other to you is the one you would get to hate the most. Oh she is so brilliant you would say when you want to get married, but can you stand living with a genius if she is screwed up in head? The attitude that looked so very hip & cool will become detached and self-centered. The sharp focus you loved will become single-mindedness. The happy-go-lucky nature will become irresponsible in a future date. The pride in which you showcased your partner saying ‘look what I have got’ will turn out to be exhibitionist tendencies of the other. The interest in which you shared about going out for dinners will become a allegation of laziness to cook. The neatness that you displayed will become an object of ridicule & irritation and you start assuming that you are suffering from an obsessive compulsive disorder.

Any damn thing you take, it becomes a question of taking a vicious about turn in the future. And to that you add yourselves responsibilities like mortgages, kids, routines and you complain about them. Actually I would say, we should not have any weddings at all and if we need to, it should be a hush-hush affair that no one in the world will know and one day you will wake up and wish that you aren’t wedded after all and that is true.

OK, this is my own blog and I cannot put a disclaimer saying ‘These are the views of the author and the publisher does not necessarily share them’. How I wish I could!!!

The Boss from 'Dilbert'

The Boss – A character from Dilbert by Scott Adams

He's every employee's worst nightmare. He wasn't born mean and unscrupulous, he worked hard at it. And succeeded. As for stupidity, well, some things are inborn. His top priorities are the bottom line and looking good in front of his subordinates and superiors (not necessarily in that order). Of absolutely no concern to him is the professional or personal well-being of his employees. The Boss is technologically challenged but he stays current on all the latest business trends, even though he rarely understands them.

This is my blog and I can say whatever I want. This has been my refrain always. And in a way I also felt that it provided a vent to my feelings which otherwise get bottled up. Sometimes issues are dealt humorously as I put it down in the blog, sometimes it pours out as agony. But for me, as a feeling it has got dealt with and that’s what is important.

Despite all this I had been holding myself back talking about a few characters in my ex-employ. Honestly I didn’t know why I had not dealt with my anger about them so far. I could have done that even while I was still working for them. Used euphemistic expressions which only the intelligent guys there understand. But then all those intelligent guys were anyway my friends and they knew what I felt and I also knew that they shared the agony. Bottles after bottles were drowned only on marveling at the stupidity of some creatures that somehow managed to soar up in the hierarchy.

I badly wanted to expose these guys even while I was there. Had a couple of skirmishes and that was about it! And while I was agonizing about letting them go scot-free, I was counseled by one of the rare occurrences like Haley’s comet. The rare occurrence was a man with brains and lots of them. And he told me simply ‘If you wrestle with a pig in the mud, both of you get muddy and the pig loves it’. That sealed my uncertainty of whether to fight or not. Not that I minded getting muddy, his analogy to the pig about the other guy was so very right and I didn’t see myself fighting with a pig, though I may smartly avoiding getting muddy and still win. In Mahabharata, there is a term used for fights amongst equals ( If I am right , it is called Thuvantha Yuddha, my Sanskrit is anyway pretty rusty ). As per agreed norms, a cavalry man fights only the enemy cavalry and so on. Here there was no equal for me to fight, so I just let it go. I was also tempted to have the last laugh and I drafted my resignation mail which was encrypted. The first letter of each word if strung together would have said ‘F*** You …….’ . I was advised against that also by a well-wisher and I just faded away from the scene. After nine years of passion, moved without a whimper and an exit interview!

OK, after two months why am I agitated now? That’s simply because, there had not been a single day in these 2 months where atleast 3 old colleagues had called me to pour their heart out. I am now a declared ‘Agony Uncle’. Stories after stories about the current & ensuing madness! The irony was that even while we were all working together, we managed to make time for ourselves where we discussed stuff that was not about business and company. But now, nothing else they seem to discuss with me. So, the clowns have succeeded in robbing my pleasure time off, which they could not manage while I was working with them.

And, while I was thinking that there is a saturation level for stupidity, these guys prove me wrong everyday by being extremely innovative doing more stupid stuff after stuff. And the worse thing being, not a single guy in the system believes a bit about what he is doing. Seemingly intelligent guys had no recourse but to follow the clown at the top and in the process become laughing stock themselves. The passion in which the second rung leaders try to convince the team to scale to greater heights with no apparent conviction in their voice and body language seems to be the latest fad. A couplet in Thirukkural says that you need to laugh when you face adversity. Very difficult art to practice, but then if there is something to thank these jokers, it is their attempt to induce humor in an otherwise bleak proceedings by being the clowns they are.

Apparently, a guy who is something one day is a different thing another day which he himself is not sure whether he is capable of. I am eagerly awaiting the day when that coffee boy grows into a National Manager. Atleast I like that guy and he is more intelligent than the current crop. They have faced tremendous success in killing the business. And they actually celebrate that. More than half the team has quit and a few of them had the courage to tell the HR guys what they think is messy there. But then HR knows that and they don’t want to or cannot act, hence very little interest for them to know further.

In midst of all this, the top clown and his crony clowns are happy. They feel on the top of the world doing things irrelevant to the business and too far moved away from reality. And they don’t want advice and there aren’t many who can give at this stage. It pains to see your efforts being killed like this, but then it doesn’t matter to me but for the pains I see in my erstwhile colleagues’ faces. People willing to jump out of the ship even if it means that the shore is so far off! Absolutely sickening and creates a terrible rage in me. How that is there could not be one single top guy who cannot bell the cat? How could there be so much apathy from the top management about a business? How could there be so much of gullibility amongst the intelligentsia of the company?

And the persons responsible themselves, how is that there could be so much superciliousness? I have heard of Megalomaniacs from history, never seen one in flesh & blood though. Does he really believe that what he is doing is right? Is he so blind about reality? Or is it just a brave front hoping for a miracle everyday? And what about the sycophants?! Do they really believe the cause or just that they make their living by being ’yea sir’s? There are more questions in mind than answers.

My moral dilemma occurs when I know I could fight and I don’t do. But then life is full of such compromises. Some you choose the right way, some the indifferent way. As long as I am convinced that it is not the wrong way, I guess I will keep finding platforms to vent my spleen.

Divine Retribution

I have some wretched luck with the air conditioners. In fact I don’t think air conditioner is the right name for this machine. It just doesn’t condition any damn thing.

I had this old AC that was without a remote. And it was definitely not an intelligent machine. Either it made me freeze or sweat. So I used to set it at some medium chillness and wait for it to freeze me and then get up, switch it off and sleep. And after a couple of hours will wake up again and repeat the rigmarole.

And I always believed that my daughters have better luck with their AC. Their room is so very pleasant to enter. I was trying to figure out the reason. Initially I thought it could be because of the fact, there were a million living things in that room and a temperature of 18 degrees was shared by the 120 lizards, 1504 ants, a few cockroaches, million bacteria ( a few lacs of them hitherto unknown to the microbiologists ) and these two kids. And then I made a very honest assessment. That way my bedroom should have all those living things barring a few which my daughters create in the lab conditions of their room.

I zeroed in at the brand being the reason and changed the machine. And the new one seems to suffer from dyscalculia. It is zilch in numerical skills. Can’t understand a basic thing like 16 means 16 and it comes after 15 and before 17. And it is completely disobedient as a pair. Never does anything the remote says. If the remote says 16, it will display 25. And blow some hot air. They just don’t go along well at all as a pair. Maybe they are already divorced in a court of law and by some quirk of fate landed in the same box again and chose my bedroom as a battlefield.

It has some 10000 buttons and none of them are useful in any sense because even the machine does not know what it is supposed to do if some button is pressed. All I get to see is some colorful display but the lack of cooperation is pretty standard. It does what it wants to do anyway.

After some solid disagreement, me and the machine reach some kind of a truce and try to settle down. But that’s when the chinks in your marriage surface. My wife has this huge disorder of misplacing things. Now that is something common you may say. I am talking about misplacing things like TV and stuff. She would carry the television and put in some place and the entire household will get into a hunt ( ok, I needed to use the TV as example to really describe my plight, she isn’t that bad, she only misplaces everything that is movable )

So, if she hasn’t slept before me, then there is every possibility that the remote could be misplaced and I will suffer when the truce breaks. In the event of that not happening, I place the remote on my side and sleep. That creates a whole new issue. She turns back and sleeps on the remote and that changes the temperature setting. Now, this is where the irony starts. The hitherto disobedient & dyscalculic AC puts up its best behavior and promptly changes the temperature. The other day I was cursing the bad cooling and chose to walk out to the living room and sleep. And it was amazingly pleasant. Actually the bedroom temperature was higher than the normal room temperature.

Now I am trying to do a research on this instruction manual, but more than that I simply hope that it is just a resettling issue for my AC and it will start behaving in a while on its own.

But I am convinced about one thing. I and AC are not made for each other. In the office, they have made me sit right under the vent and sometimes I feel I am sitting in the rain, it literally pours. And as if I am suffering from incontinence, I go to the loo every 30 minutes. And I don’t know what else folks at office would be thinking of me. Same luck with the car also. It freezes you sometimes that the fingers go rigid and you can’t turn the steering wheel properly. Else, by the time it cools I reach home. Or sometimes it completely fogs my spectacles when I get out and I walk around like a blind man to reach wherever I want to.

I need to do some detective work about my ancestors. I am certain that atleast one was a AC scrap dealer in his vocation. He would have smashed all the AC’s without mercy. What else but divine retribution would cause this kind of luck? :(

The Second Sex

I think it is this book named ‘Eppodhum Penn’ by Sujatha. It is about this woman who is extremely smart and occupying a prestigious post as a lecturer in a college being married to a cheat and even after realization continue to stay with him, but of course maiming him at the end.

I have always wondered about the male-female relationship in a marriage context. But before that, there is a disclaimer. I don’t claim myself to be a woman’s lib guy or a perfect husband material. Maybe the other end of the spectrum would be a correct definition of me ( ok, that was modesty, in reality I am neither there nor here ).

I come from a family that is infested with women. 5 sisters, mother, aunt & an old grandma living with us while I was young! So I have seen extremes from female subservience to daring acts by my sisters. Atleast no typecast was seen. My father whom I hero worship, on hindsight seems to be a very poor husband. My mom was always worried about his anger. And worse is that we never knew what will cause that anger. My mom on the other side was not someone who will lie down and take whatever is dished out. She had her way when she wanted to. And my aunt & that old grandma were widows whose life was practically over in a very tender age and that fact was easily accepted by them without a single murmur. My sisters are a mixed lot. While they stoutly defend their husbands, I am certain that they pretty much have a say in stuff that happens around in the household. Sometimes more say. Each of them believe in themselves and do not hesitate to put their foot down on causes they believe strongly about.

But, the curse lies in the societal outlook about man-woman relationship. Sujatha acknowledged that his reference book for the story was ‘The Second Sex’ by Simone de Beauvoir. She calls the females as the prey of the species. There is whole lot of stuff she has written about master-slave relationship. Pretty intriguing!

I have always believed that a master is a master only till the slave accepts to be a slave and not otherwise. So it is strange for me in a modern society we still have relationship types where one is subjugated and it is accepted willingly just claiming that to be a norm.I guess it is more a lack of will to fight, that all elements that makes a norm is brought in.There is some comfort level somewhere in whatever stage it is, and while there overt cribs about the state, there is no attempt to get out of the state. And abuse ( I am talking verbal & mental here ) being accepted is one of the most shameful things in a marriage. Acceptance because of love is even more shameful.

If one goes by Hegel’s definition of the master-slave relationship, the modern women are very much masters & men in their own right because they open the future when they seek out and not wait for the male to do so. And divergence is becoming lesser & lesser.

But despite changed times and beliefs, somehow men get their way even in an educated world like today’s. Maybe because women want to belief whatever they wanted to believe than what is real. But honestly I feel all of us do that. I am unable to put a finger. Just looks very strange to me. I tend to believe that in certain areas women just don’t want to confront. And again I am not sure whether, this generalization is right. But this is more prevalent in women than men. And that is not very right.

Men refuse to be educated and even worse is women refusing to educate them. There lies the irony.

What’d you do before the end of the world?

Funny to think of it! I always used to ponder about such crazy stuff. Not about what I would do, but more about what others will! Never stopped to think about myself!

In a way it is gratifying that there are folks who think like I do and conduct surveys on that. The results are somewhat obvious. More than half of the people would want to spend it with their loved ones. And in a material world, it is surprising that 13% of the people have a hedonistic streak reaching out for champagne. Some want to eat and 9% would apparently have sex. And a meager 3% would pray. Maybe the rest feel that any which way we are marching to meet the Maker and why waste time thinking about Him in those precious 60 minutes left. Or maybe, all of us are aware that we have a bagful of sins that we can’t confess to, in just 60 minutes. Or maybe we are certain that there can be no amends at all.

I remember reading a sci-fi short story. Could be Arthur C Clarke I guess. Not very sure! It has a similar situation. And invariably people turn to love. Love for their neighbors, strangers and countries which had been fighting since their birth get together in a moment of reality.

It is strange about what people can do when they know that their time is out. There is a good piece about Bhutto’s last day by Kushwant Singh and he explains how once a suave but dictatorial person who had scant respect for the lives of people, turns maudlin when he knows that time’s up. Apparently in a rare moment of indiscretion he blurted out where the money was stashed and it was impounded before he was hanged. I have read about people while walking towards the gallows; carefully sidestep a pool of water lest their legs get dirty. But the common thread is that everyone turns stoical or religious. Suddenly remember God or their shortcomings, when it’s anyway too late. This is in contrast to the survey results. Maybe it is one thing to imagine a holocaust and tell what they would do and facing it is another thing. I would anytime go for the real accounts and not the survey.

Coming to think of it, what would I do? It is pretty blank to forecast. I don’t think I have any unfulfilled desire that I would want to pursue in those 60 minutes. Or that I would suddenly discover what I have not done so far. Maybe I have not called many people for a long time, not told them that I care. But in my own small circle, I have never missed an opportunity to display warmth and affection. I spend all my free time with the loved ones. Maybe for a change try calling up some lowlifes and tell what I think of them, lest they die with a grand thought of they being good. Few things that I would want to do will take more than 60 minutes, like turning out to be a great musician.

Incomplete things like the book that I had been trying to write will anyway find no meaning in completion. Had enough and more of beer in life, so I may not reach out for that. ( anyway who wants a warm beer as a send-off drink ) . I don’t think I will pray either. I see no meaning in that, when all I had been taught and known to pray is about everyone being well. When you know that none of them are going to be in existence in the next hour, there is nothing you can pray about. And there is nothing to confess for I have always believed in what I was doing at any time. I would not be scared either.

I have always been a hedonist in my life, so it is pretty difficult to think of what is left to pursue. The only thing I can think of doing is complete the book that I would be reading at that time. Why die with some suspense!!!

Come to think of it, looks like the running life is so full and pleasing and to realize that it takes a damned doomsday dream.

Why do People fall in Love???

There are many theories that float around about why people fall in love. Someone once wrote that it is because of excess secretion of phenylethylamine in the system. Sigmund Freud said that ‘Love and work are the cornerstones of humaneness’, but at the same breath said that ‘One is very crazy when in love’.

Psychologist Zick Rubin proposed that romantic love is made up of three elements: attachment, caring, and intimacy. Attachment is the need to receive care, approval, and physical contact with the other person. Caring involves valuing the other person’s needs and happiness as much as your own. Intimacy refers to the sharing of thoughts, desires, and feelings with the other person.

John Lee compared styles of love to the color wheel. Just as there are three primary colors, Lee suggested that there are three primary styles of love. These three styles of love are: (1) Eros, (2) Ludos, and (3) Storge.

Continuing the color wheel analogy, Lee proposed that just as the primary colors can be combined to create complementary colors, these three primary styles of love could be combined to create nine different secondary love styles. For example, a combination of Eros and Ludos results in Mania, or obsessive love.

Lee theorized more styles out of the three primary styles namely 1. Eros – Loving an ideal person, 2. Ludos – Love as a game.3. Storge – Love as friendship & Three secondary styles: 1. Mania (Eros + Ludos) – Obsessive love, 2. Pragma (Ludos + Storge) – Realistic and practical love, 3. Agape (Eros + Storge) – Selfless love

There is also a triangular theory of love by another psychologist, once again a combination of 3 factors of intimacy, passion and commitment.

Enough of the theoretical aspects and definitions of love! It is just beyond my head. I don’t think that love is something that can be defined so precisely and it is just one crazy stuff like Freud said. It just appears from nowhere and occupies a major part of your thinking, giving sanity a long holiday. But at the end of it you feel so great being insane. That seems to be the beauty of love. As John Dryden said, there is a pleasure in madness which no one but madmen know. And, love looks like a perfect fit to endorse his quote.

But, what bothers me is a small thing. Maybe something to do with the English language! And that is ‘Why do people fall in love’ and not ‘rise in love’???

Fishy Stuff

I have been always a character who came across as someone who held some intrigue. That’s for people who don’t know me really. The closer folks know that there is no secret in my life and am as open as they come across. So there is actually nothing fishy that I am going to write about. This one is different.

I had always been fascinated by pets. And when I say pets, I don’t have any bias. Anything that knows it should not bite the master will qualify as a pet for me. Though not to the extent of Steve Irwin, I have always fancied myself to be closer to animals than the Homo Sapiens! I have never feared them. On the contrary my dream job as I claim is to be a zoo-keeper. Live with the animals day in and day out! Maybe because they don’t talk back! They give one look at you, sometimes if they are feeling friendly, may offer a gesture that you can presume as a smile, or most times they ignore you and mind their business. And I see it pretty close to my character. And amongst accepted peer groups, friends and families, they are as friendly as anyone can be.

I am mad about dogs. I think I can understand what they express without fail always. A dog Dr Dolittle!! And more often than not, I had been right in my guessing and with Gabriela I lived a charmed life. She is a very funny character. I sometimes called her as MRP, standing for Mentally Retarded Pet. But, a fiercely determined one! No one can express as much as her and here I include the human beings too. Maybe we had a common language, which mostly could have been love and hence there was never a need for words. When she died, it was a very bad loss. But I thought that it could be repaired. Had another couple of dogs, Anbu & Maggie, but both of them never turned out to be Gaby. And there were more difference of opinions than agreements and I felt very tired having them. Luckily for them, they found a good home for themselves and are having a fabulous time.

My destiny with pets, I guessed was at wit’s end. Kept dreaming about getting into a villa and have a pack of dogs and maybe find another Gaby in that somehow. When the desire got the better of me and I make a feeble attempt to bring another pup home, I face fierce resistance from stronger species. And then it happened. Our servant maid’s son landed up with a fish tank and left it at my place.

The fishes were so tiny that I needed an electron microscope to see them. And they were such boring creatures. The ones in that tank was dull colored and generally floated around almost looking forward to their date of death. I started wondering about my philosophy of managing my life with any animal species, because these guys didn’t even acknowledge my presence and they were swimming in my home. But anyway I was curious about them. Out of the 4, one fish ended belly up one morning. The second one disappeared without a trace. Broke my head on finding that Houdini fish and gave up! Maybe it committed suicide by jumping out or just didn’t bother to come back to the tank when the cleaning happened.

And suddenly, I announced that I will have an aquarium at home. Wanted to provide the best of the environments for the fishes to live! I never knew that setting up one could be so costly, but having decided there was no going back. It was one big learning process. What all goes into an aquarium, the fishes & the works. Blowing a fortune, I have now built one. Got about 5 pairs initially, as the fish doctor advised! I really wanted some 20 pairs because the aquarium could hold all the fishes in the Pacific Ocean, but the fish guy wasn’t too keen. He warned against two things. One is the adaptability of fishes and second is their peaceful coexistence.

The naming ceremony was big fun, they are called

Manjula & Jaldi Haldi,
Neelambari, Sigappi, Azhukki & Dirty Harry
Kallan & Kullan
Karuppasami and Mundakanni

And then my understanding about them changed. These fishes are amazing. Never knew that they had a mind on their own. My perception about fishes was limited to what you get at the restaurants. But 10 days with them now, I realize they could be real good pets. Each one has its own idiosyncrasy. The mean black sharks display maximum cowardice. They are scared about people’s voices. How come they are going to survive in a veritable zoo my home is, I don’t know. The yellow ones are extremely social and they can’t stand any fish being morose. They keep poking the out of mood fishes and encourage them to join the mainstream. The other bunch which the fish guy claimed to be friendly is living up to the name. Jumping at each other and generally swimming around as a school, they make the entire aquarium colorful.

The sad story is about the other pair, Kallan & Kullan. Third day on arrival, one of them died and I will spare the graphic details. And for the next 7 days, the other one has mourned for it, just staying at the same place only breathing. Never knew that they were so sensitive. And all of a sudden, I have started seeing them as real pets, the ones with real heart and care.

Now, I am worried. About the welfare of them! And going by the trend at home, it won’t be too long before a fish doctor is spotted and keeps visiting for maintenance. And we go thin because these tiny creatures don’t eat. :(

Change of Address

Hi Guys,

For a while I am hanging out in Sulekha. Check me out there.

http://tsganth.sulekha.com/

To Fix or Float

No this has got anything to do with my wanderlust nature. For that matter, if I ever thought in these lines, my choice would have been pretty simple. I prefer to float. Fixed is not my thing.

But if life’s philosophy by any chance is guided by home loans, I guess I may never float. Think about this. I was a happy-go- lucky guy who was peacefully staying in rented houses. Lived in 13 houses in 13 years! My job was the primary reason, but then staying in a rented place gave me the flexibility. I coolly answered that I am mobile. Since I never had the worry of renting my own house, adjust in a new place blah blah. And every time it was a change too. A little bit of an expense here and there in changing furnishings, but nonetheless a welcome change from the faded window screens and curtains that you convince yourself to live with in your own house. And in a way rented houses helped fueling my imagination about what my own house could be. And always stay optimistic that one day life is going to be great.

Then all of a sudden all this changed. One day I ended up seeing an advertisement that offered 110% loan for homes. Now that was my kind of loan. With just about 60 bucks in the pocket and a sizeable credit card loan, owning a house was a pipedream to me. And whenever that fancy occurred to me, I was brutally tossed away by the realities of real estate markets. 30% black money and in the balance 70%, you can get a loan for only 75% of that amount. In effect I needed to have atleast 45% plus of the property cost as my own funds. This was possible, only if any Nigerian royalty bequeaths his estate to me like it is claimed in the spam emails. So, I gave up my dream as soon as it cropped up.

And this 110% thing brought some real hope. I thought that maybe that Nigerian royalty has reincarnated as a Marketing Manager in IDBI bank. Jumped at the offer and mind you, my payslip was really respectful to fetch me a handsome loan. That is because payslips are not bank statements and they don’t tell the story of your credit-worthiness. Once I got the loan sanctioned, I started hunting for a house and found a real dream house which was just about 30% above my budget. Well it is a different story that I stayed dreaming big and eventually managed to buy the same property with 60 bucks in my hand, with a kindhearted friend buying tea for all the folks who turned up in the registrar’s office.

The bankers were also present to handover the first installment cheque to the builder. And in the melee, I don’t remember what I signed on. Not that I was an expert that on carefully reading the loan document, I would have taken a learned decision. My knowledge in money matters doesn’t really matter at all. My child can give me a lesson or two. ( OK, this was an exaggeration, being my child she also is zilch in that. Maybe some other child would be better ). Apparently I had chosen a Floating Interest rate.

That’s where the trouble is now. Things were ok for a couple of years and one fine day I got a missive from my bankers. They kindly asked me to make a part prepayment of the loan to retain the EMI amount and period as such. Couple of year’s progress only meant that instead of 60 bucks in my hand, I now had some 180 bucks in hand. And 180 bucks was not considered as part prepayment by my bankers. I took their alternate suggestion and increased my EMI amount by about 10%. Then life returned again to normalcy.

But then bankers are a different tribe. They will first allot sub prime loans, meaning they will provide loans what you don’t deserve and then come back at you heavily. I don’t know what kind of a honesty that is. So they started again. This time around though they knew I would be incapable of making part prepayment, what with the qualifying criteria for the amount not changing. So unilaterally they have just decided and informed me that my loan tenure has been extended by just another 13 years. I initially was overwhelmed with their best wishes of me living for another 13 more years than scheduled.

But then it pisses me off also. I was a happy-go-lucky guy. Didn’t I tell you that? Now I am worried. I don’t know whether my children will inherit the home or the loan. And I am also cursing myself for not being smart to choose a fixed interest rate. I don’t know when this ordeal will get over. I am certain that in another 2 years I will get one more letter stating that my tenure is now 120 years and I should nominate my grandson for repaying the loan.

One saving grace is that, they say that not a single bank offers a true-blue fixed rate and always retains the authority to change the interest rates as it deem to be. And 90% of the loaned population floats. Irrespective of whether they have read the fine print

Afterall I am an intelligent guy and I know I would not make a mistake. A dream penthouse with a 140 year loan tenure is not easy picking ok ?

Irumbukkai Maayavi

In my first post I reasoned out that I am going to blog because someone will reach out to me and give information on ‘irumbukkai maayavi’. And after almost a year, I did get some dope on this. Of course on my own! No one really reached out to me. I wonder about what these search engines do in life. But anyway now they helped me.

A bit of history before going further! There was a time in this Planet Earth when the television did not exist. And entertainment during that time was either playing out in the streets without wasting a single ray of the Sun or if the going really gets tough ( I am not talking about the Sun, but the heat that is generated at home because of my wanderlust ), one invariably land up with some comics. Well, I was still struggling with English and that meant comics were not the Tintin’s and the Asterix’s. They were Tamizh comics.

And Tamizh comics were of two genres. One was serialized in magazines with India and Indian characters as the base. My favorite there was ‘Moondru Manthirvathikal’ ( Three magicians ). One guy was capable of crossing 100 miles in one step, other guy was capable was drinking the whole ocean and the third guy I don’t remember. Their exploits to save a princess from an evil guy whose life was secretly vaulted inside a small flower that resided underneath an ocean which is beyond a million mountains blah blah, was simply awesome and I was really empathizing with the princess was mighty worried about her life ( Now I know why I am worried about the welfare of women and get friendly with them , it’s all because of the comics ). It used be great fun.

The second genre was comics translated from English. We had Phantom, Magician Mandrake, Irumbukkai Maayavi, David & Lawrence etc. While in most comics the characters just appeared as it is with the same name and just translated, irumbukkai maayavi alone had this special name. Was he any good!!! Don’t even ask, all my life I only wanted to be him. He had this steel hand from the wrist and if he put his finger into an electrical socket he will disappear. In the seventies, I guess there was nothing more exhilarating than this. Book after book I read and still it was always insatiable. And even after I grew up, I still have this craving to read about his exploits and been researching in the Net to figure out more.

And I hit pay dirt recently. I learnt more about my hero. He is Louis Crandell a.k.a Steel Claw. A British secret service agent at a later date, he starts as a Lab assistant who loses his hand in an accident and the metal prosthetic he fixes makes him so powerful. He gets invisible when he comes in contact with electricity. He becomes a crook first and does evil stuff with his newfound ability and later becomes a good guy. Now I am hopeful of getting some Louis Crandell comics from the US and read to my heart’s content.

Come to think of it, I guess these are the stuff that forms you as a person. What you read, what you believe while you are very young. Sometime so naïve to believe everything ( I once tried putting my finger into a socket like him and had a huge shock and thrown a few feet off . Hasn’t told anyone about this foolish exploit till now, then because of fear, till now because of shame.

Most times these days when I see my daughters glued on to the TV, I start cribbing that they miss all the fun in life, maybe it is the Parent ego state in me talking. But somehow I am certain that it was more fun then than what they have now. Graphics simply has killed the imagination of the kids.

Even now sometimes when it is kinda depressing I wish that I could become Maayavi and become invisible for a while. Or when I come across stupid but lucky guys, I wish I could just scorch them to ashes as a Maayavi.

The boy in you never dies!!! Or the idealist in you never sleeps!!!

http://www.internationalhero.co.uk/s/stclaw.htm