Lesson Learnt

In the past 4 days life has taught me more lessons than it did in the 26 years and 30 days prior to that.

To be quite honest with myself, the losses I have suffered personally have been quite minimal I have been quite lucky in that regard. I lost my paternal grandma when I was 12; I did cry; it was an age where I knew what death meant, an age where I realized it meant I would never be able to see her again; I did realize I will not have her support when my father scolded me anymore; I did realize I cant eat her tasty home-made jam and home-made samosas; I did realize I can never sit on or sleep on her lap again; I cried, along with my sister who was 9; but my brother was just 6; he cried, because we were crying and all 3 of us were ok the next day.

I did not experience any personal losses for the next 12 years! My paternal grandfather died in September 2008. He was a very special person in my life; I was the first person to call him “thatha” and the mutual love was very high. I was 24 and I not only cried, but also sorely missed him and mourned for several days. I still miss him; but then, his death was not a surprise; he was 82, and he was deteriorating since 80, bad memory; there was once a time when he thought I was his son! I couldn’t really bear to see his suffering and a part of me was thankful that at least his suffering ended in a way. But; I missed him very badly and regretted that there was so much I could have done for him.

Two years later came the biggest shock and the worst tragedy to strike me ever. I am not sure how I can get out of this; not sure whether I would at all. Oct 3^rd 2010. This date would remain etched in my memory forever. It was back in April 2010 that I last saw my chithapa’s (I always called him cheenappa) smiling, handsome face; my chitthi’s beautiful face and my sister’s bubbly, bold, cute smile. Nobody except my mom knew how close my cheenappa was to me; I did not express to anyone else what he meant to me. He knew me before he knew his wife or kids. He loved me as a kid; and I loved him as a father. My dad is an angry person; my cheenappa’s temper was shorter; but it was extremely short-lived too. His temper and tantrums would disappear in a matter of 5 minutes and he would be a totally different person. He also possessed this rare ability of showing the anger only towards the intended person. I only too well remember the time when he was simultaneously blasting his son off to Pluto whilst engaged in a pleasant conversation with me sitting by his side. I was always special to him. All my numerous trips to Coimbatore and Salem had been extremely pampered with almost everything that I wanted. We always went to places I wanted to go to; ate at places I wanted to eat at; and dinner was mostly what I wanted.

He was highly respected by his colleagues; something that I understood later in life. He could get anything done at a short notice. He was a very practical person. I always forgot to wish him on his birthday; but he never forgot mine; not one birthday has gone by without him wishing me.

He allowed his kids to do anything they wanted; he was strict with them till he was sure they wouldn’t take the wrong route and then gave them their space and allowed them to do whatever they wanted. They never strayed; my brother and sister.

My cheenappa and chitthi had their last kid in September 1997; she soon grew into a courageous, bold, charming girl who never thought twice before speaking to a total stranger; she had no fear whatsoever. When cheenappa was transferred to Chennai once again in 2002, my bonding with this last daughter, Gayathri (called Pattu by everyone I knew till she drew her last breath) grew by leaps and bounds. We grew so attached to each other and became inseparable. In 2007, he was transferred to Salem. How much Pattu cried, came over, and hugged everybody with every bit of affection her little body allowed her to shower, cried with every little drop of tear her tiny eyes allowed her to shed. I was sleeping when she came over to hug me; her eldest brother; and I hugged her back; lazily! Pattu, if you are reading this; I swear I love you more than that hug conveyed. It hurts to think I can’t hug you again di. All her photos are a testimonial to the charm she carried. I wanted to snap her in her many innovative ways of posing with my DSLR; ironically she decided to go away the next day I got it.

Cheenappa got a transfer to a place called Purnea in Bihar in 2010. He did not want to go. None of us wanted him to go. He wanted to quit the job. If only he had. Cheenappa. Chitthi and Pattu went to Darjeeling; enjoyed their trip, went by train and God knows why; returned by car. The car fell into a gorge, apparently 500 feet; all occupants, including the driver died on the spot. Cheenappa – 50 years old; Chitthi – 43 years old and Pattu 13 years old.

I have hugged, kissed, carried, fed Pattu so many times. She has never slept on my lap; she has not even slept hugging me. I have never lied down on Cheenappa’s or Chitthi’s lap. I have never told them how much I love them. I have never thanked them for the so many zillion things they have done for me. I have never repaid them for all the love and affection they have showered on me. I have not even hugged Cheenappa or Chitthi. I just have waved a casual bye thinking I would be seeing them sooner or later. It was the same casual goodbye that I waved without any real thought or sincerity going into it in April 2010. That was the last time I saw those eyes look into my eyes. Come what may; I can’t look into those warm and pleasant eyes anymore.

I have learnt a lesson. I have seen so many movies talk about expressing love; so many messages about expressing love. I have never paid any attention to those; never taken them seriously; but now I know what they all meant; what those people meant. Do Cheenappa, Chitthi and Pattu really know how much I loved them? I will never know…

Rain Gods and Midnight Hunger

17th of August 2010 went on as normal and as monotonous as any other day at office; me droning on about viruses and worms and trojans and other unpleasant stuff that could happen to your computer (just part of my job, am not really a pessimist) and how you could protect yourself against other people from hacking into your computer or prevent your computer from becoming a generous give-awayer (I know that's not a word, thanks) of worms; and as always, 28 faces looking back at me with a longing as to when I would utter the three magic words "Take a Break". When I had finally decided I had doled out enough 'gyan' for the day, I realised that how much ever my brain tried to remind, my stomach did not seem to remember the 3 rotis, a mango ice-cream and a cup of buttermilk I had eaten in record time (because I was hungry). A normal person with normal friends who are hungry at the same time would just walk to the cafetria and hog together. Though I would never lay claim to being a normal person, I can swear on God that not all my friends are normal by any stretch of imagination. The friend who was as hungry as I was, never gets any ideas that you could call normal.

Who would suggest going to from Velachery to Egmore at 1 in the night to eat when you are ravenous? At this point of time, my manager was done with his work too and was getting ready to go home and had given his bike away and wanted a lift. He had this idea of the three of us going in the bike, drop him off an the two of us carry on. Even though his house was just a couple of kilometres away, people who have seen me would understand why exactly this is difficult in practice.

So, we did it, triples, on an apache, riding in the narrowest lane I have ever set my eyes on. Since this friend and I, happen to be the luckiest people on the planet, (if this was a voice blog, you would have caught the sarcastic tone, since its not, I have to mention it) it started to drizzle. We drop off my manager and come to the main road, the heavens opened up; I like rain, I love getting drenched; but I like it when I am walking; its not very enjoyable when you are travelling on the bike. This was a wild pour, so we decided to shelter; when in the shelter, we found out that we were as wet as wet can be, but still waited for it to ease up a bit, and three minutes or so later, it did. So, we started again, travelled about 5 seconds when it started pouring heavier than it ever did. We were now wetter than wet can be, decided against shelter and moved on. Lady Luck decided to be extra nice with us today; while I was busy appreciating the wonderful art forms being created on my trousers by the rain, the bike started wobbling a bit while riding down one of the gazillion fly overs; we were rewarded with a flat. We got down, pushed the bike a bit and to our surprise and amazement, something did go against our rotten luck; there was a petrol bunk just 10 feet away from where we realised we had a flat. I did forget to mention that my friend had, by this time decided to go to his house in Ramapuram first, take his car and proceed to egmore. (yes, we were quite determined on getting there even after all this) So, we filled in air in the flat tyre, he thought it would be enough to take us home. You guessed it, it wasn't.We had to walk a couple of kilometres, pushing the bike, though a graveyard at 12:30 in the night. To add to the spookiness, an old man was walking behind us for atleast 800 metres, he looked old enough to belong to the place we were walking through, so naturally, we were petrified till he entered a house after crossing the graveyard.

The unpleasant, though adventurous experience ends here. Reached his house, started the car at around 1 AM, went to egmore not knowing which was the best route. I am sure somewhere I mentioned we were very well favoured by luck, so we were also quite unsure of whether the restaurant which normally functioned till 2 AM would be open today. But yes, after giving us the flat tyre and after we had courageously walked through a graveyard at midnight and came out of it alive, luck pitied us and we heaved a heavy, audible sigh of relief when the guard at the gate of Mathsya opened the door with a salute.

So, for people who did not know, Mathsya in egmore is open and allows people to enter till 2 in the morning and don't deny ANYTHING you ask for. (anything thats there on the menu card) The ambience was fantastic; I would say the food was terrific too, but I was not in the right mind to judge as I was ravenous and even raw green vegetables would have tasted as divine as my mom's Pori Saathumadhu or Bisi Bela Baath.

Aahh yes, here is the route that we took that eventful night.

World No.1

Started writing a blog about the ICC Test cricket rankings and found Greg Chappel made a piece on it on Cricinfo. Drove out the motivation to write about it. :|

Lost and Inception

Connections between my favouritest American Sitcom - Lost and Favouritest movie - Inception. Totally amazing.

Flashbacks
Flash forwards
Daddy issues
A sequence of six numbers
Cliffs crumbling into the sea
A Japanese man who offers a choice
A boy and a girl who fans think don't age but who, if you look closer, definitely do
The idea that this existence is false, and the only way to escape is to commit suicide
Anchoring yourself with an object of personal significance that exists in multiple realities
Washing ashore on a mysterious beach that might just be limbo
Escaping a flooding car, then buddy breathing to escape
"Dare you take a leap of faith? Or become an old man, filled with regret, waiting to die alone?"
The main action takes place on a flight from Sydney to L.A
An arrival at LA X that may or may not be part of a fantasy
And a shared dream between the characters, populated chiefly by projections, in which the main character is haunted by guilt and images from his past, making the overall theme of the entire work "letting go". 

am stunned!! Happy to love works of geniuses!! Proud!!

Rahul Dravid

You score Golden Ducks in all your forthcoming test innings' till you retire; I will still love you!

cant think of a witty title

Ok, it has been exactly 13 days since my mom decided to go on a world tour (actually just Tokyo and LA, but from India; one is the East and the other is the West). This journey of 3 months, will break the previous record for the longest time i have been without her - 25 days; which was when I was 13 years old, an age where you are tended to by all living relatives as you are still "too little to take care of yourself". But now, 4 kazhadha vayasaachu, so, no one really croons over you, which kinda set me on the backfoot right from the moment her visa was stamped. My daily routine consisted of exactly:
(i) wake up
(ii) eat
(iii) go to office
(iv) back home and sleep
so, you can easily guess; i don't exactly fit in the category of "physically active" persons. Things get further complicated when you have a dad who has as much knowledge of cooking as Ajit Agarkar has on pace bowling. So, the story so far has been, I have to say (and proudly) not as bad as i expected.

Achievements:
(i) re-discovered my tea-making abilities; the last time i made good, drinkable tea was way back in 2006; i am slowly getting the hang of it again.
(ii) learnt to cook rice in microwave; last time i made rice in Hawkin's pressure cooker right under my mom's nose is a story better left untold.
(iii) not hibernating anymore. when my mom is here, time spent in house (minus time for brushing, bathing and err.. everything else) is equal to sleeping time.
(iv) feeding the kakas and the kuruvis and the other paravais, mom was lapping up all the punyam by doing this, now hopefully the kakas bless me with a better birth next time around. Oh, while my mom used to feed it only rice, i am dishing out a lot of variety - marie, milk bikis, cheeslings, kara chev, sev puri (yes, sev puri).
(v) talk to my dad without using a mediator
(vi) biggest achievement - haven't called the fire service yet!!

proud of myself for sustaining 13 whole days!!

Sigh!! 77 days to go!! :(

Immortals of Meluha - Book Review

I had to put in a lot of thought before buying the book. Being a religious person, I was apprehensive of about how one of the most revered Gods of Hindus would be handled by fiction. Two travels to Landmark did not convince me to go for it. The book cover was luring, but I decided I wouldn't fall for it. The picture on the cover kept coming back to my mind and I decided to check out the website. The 'About Shiva' section of the website had the effect on me. 

So, the third trip to Landmark was solely to get this book. It describes the author's interpretation of 'Mahadev' and how 'Shiva', a Tibetan national, leader of a tribe of 'Barbarians'; a tribe called 'Gunas', learns the legend of 'Neelkanth'; accepts his destiny and chooses to fight for the righteous and takes an oath to 'destroy evil'.

The Gunas are under constant threat from another local tribe called 'Pakratis'; the two tribes are always at war and the leader Shiva, is convinced to take the 'peace offer' by the Meluhans, who live across the mountains in India. The book follows the entrails of Shiva as he chooses the 'right side' to fight for 'righteousness'.

The book is absorbing; keeps you enthralled. Shiva speaking words like "Goddammit" and "Bloody Hell" are a bit of a dampener, but as you go along, you get used to it.

The author provides a legal copy of the first chapter of the book. I strongly recommend this book. Go ahead and indulge yourself. Guaranteed to keep you thrilled! I am eagerly awaiting the second book of the Trilogy.