Block Officer !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Again a story from the first days at work. When we joined we were about 150 together, divided into 5 batches of 30 each. I made friends with some and one day we were in the cafeteria to catch our lunch. We got settled in a table and the chair opposite to me was vacant. As fresh recruits, we were scanning all around in an effort to increase our "network". While we were gladly scanning and having lunch, the unstoppable happened.

This tall guy, from our own batch, whom we are yet to be friends with, comes and sits on the chair opposite to mine. I got so irritated and told my friend in Malayalam "What is this block officer doing here, blocking all our views". He never seemed moved by the comment. We too were not bothered, as we thought the guy did not know Malayalam.

Later, when we got introduced we knew that he is a Malayalee, born and brought up in Rajasthan, but speaks and understand Malayalam. It wasn't too much of an embarrassment for us, as he was very friendly and we had already made friends with him.

Moral : Appearances can be deceptive.

Humanity in danger!!!!!!

Isn't humanity in danger?? Yes. I am sure it is. Read across and you will find many researches and studies which says human beings may not stay long on the earth. The mercury is rising, the ice is melting, the sea is eating the land and one by one species are getting extinct. What are we, humans? Another species, who thought, are the masters of the universe.

Humanity is in danger. We ourselves are our enemies. To rephrase, we suicide. We are killing ourselves and the generations to come. Some generation of humans in the future will curse their past generations.

Future generation will curse us. For inventing automobiles which sent out gases which choked the earth and its atmosphere. For inventing refrigerators and air-conditioners. For cutting down trees. For constructing buildings all around. For inventing all the products that are killing the earth little by little.

I remember a poem I had written sometime back : Little by little

"Little by little you lose my love, my care, my concern.."

I would like to rephrase it:

"Little by little we killed ourselves"

Little by little we invented machines,

Little by little they poisoned the earth,

Little by little they killed the Earth, and

Little by little we killed ourselves.

All over the world there are movements to reduce carbon footprint, reduce greenhouse gases and campaigns to increase the greenary. Will this help? I dont think so. Why?

These does not help because if we want to save humanity from destruction, we would have to walk back. We would have to walk "the walk" back. The walk which we considered is the golden era of humanity. The walk in which we ruled and ruined the Earth. The walk in which we were proud that we invented the truth of the Nature. We never invented any truth. We only invented our own graves. And we dig it deeper and deeper so that we can bury the future generations too.

A generation will not recognize the effect of their doings in the human history as they live very less. 100 years may be. Changes on Earth should be taken into account with long term vision. Just gather data on how much change/increase has come to the temperature of your town in last 20 years, in last 40 years, 60 years, 100 years, 200 years. How much difference has come to the climate. How much changes has come to the vegetation.

I can see the facts in front of me. But what will I do. I will reduce the usage of vehicles, air conditioners, plant trees. But can I walk the walk back. NOOOOOO. I am stubborn. I am bound to the comforts of life that all this give me. I cant sweat a little for my great grand children. I cant. I am not worried for the generation to come. I dont care about what comes in future.

So, my dear fellow humans, let us realize this. We are just another species in the world which will extinct in the due course of time. Lets be ready to get extinct. Do not try too much. Do not be so stubborn to cling to the earth. We say, something happened in earth that Dinosaurs were wiped out of Earth. Some other species on Earth in a later age will say "Humans invented things that killed them in due course. They did a suicide."

Jeans!!!!!!

Jeans. Everybody loves it. Everybody wants to buy it. Everybody wants to wear it. The whites, the colored, the aged, the kids, all love jeans.

I got my first jeans when i was 10. It was bought for my cousin's wedding. It was some 20 years back and I just have a vague memory about it.

The second one was bought when I was 16, during my 10th class(1996), after a long fight with my parents as they considered it to be worn by hippies!!!!! RUF-N-TUF!!!! Yes. The famous brand endorsed by Akshay Kumar. The ready-to-stitch wear. I bought it from one of the shops and gave it for stitching. Whatever happened, happened bad. I wanted the five pocket style and the tailor stitched it like a normal pants and more - with pleets in front. I can remember friends making fun of me for wearing jeans pants!! I just remembered, there was a big reason for me going for a ready-to-stitch. Besides the fact that readymade ones were costly, I had this problem of having a narrow waistline. So not many readymade dresses fit me.

I was very upset for not having a jeans. So after so much of pleading, I got one more RUF-N-TUF. This time another color, light blue. I gave it to a different tailor. It was still not my time to wear a decent jeans. The tailor did follow the five pocket pattern but made such a mess of my jeans that the bum part was too large, too big. As if I had an extraordinarily huge bum. I had to adjust it by not tucking in the shirt or the T.

Another ready-to-stitch came during one of my birthdays from my uncle. This time luckily I got it properly stitched. And I remember using it till it was torn so much that it would have been a fashion now. It was not a fashion during late 90's. He hee..

Later I had many. By the time I was doing my PG course, I joined the 26 inches club which was the least size for branded jeans . I had a couple of them. But still the narrow waist problem haunted me.

I joined work and there I made some progress and managed to become 28 inches and remained for a long time. Around 4 years. And now.......

I got married. I grew. I grew more around my waist than anywhere else. No wonder people say I put on weight. I did, I agree. But now, I sit in a 30 inch jeans, bought 4 days back thinking how to get rid of this tight jeans. Whats your size? He hee...

Summer vacation at amma's home

Its the memory of the vacation in my mom's home which makes me sad, that I have grown up. Wish I had never grown up, wish I had ever remained a child with all the pampering around. I bet you will agree with this once you read this.

The second part of our vacation is at my mom's home. My mom is the eldest kid of my grandparents. And before you know anything you should know a lil background of the family. My grand-grand father was a wealthy man. He has eight daughters and one son, my grandpa. He is the fifth in the family. Marriages happened at late teens for girls and early twenties for boys those days. My grandpa got married to my grandma at the age of twentyone. She is convent educated, English medium(trust me, she speaks better English than I do, sings poems, tells stories), and was around twenty then. There wasnt much age difference between my amma and her younger aunts. Less than ten years difference. So they were aunt-niece and they were friends too. My grand parents have 11 kids - 4 girls and 7 boys and hence I had 7 uncles. Alike, my amma's aunts have four-five kids on an average. Have you heard of labour room? Ever had one at your home? We had one at my mom's home. I said my grandpa have eight sisters and he have four daughters out of which one is a nun. Rest all are married. One after the other - aunts, grandma and the nieces(my amma and her sis) had bourne kids and delivered and there was this room where they all stayed sometime or the other. For some years, the room was occupied by one or the other mother and child. It is a bigggggg family during gatherings. Still is. All of us count around two hundred people and still counting. So much about the genesis.

Moral of the story was that I have seven uncles, we have. My sisters and me. Then my mom's younger sisters' kids - same like us. Two girls and a boy. So six of us had seven uncles to serve us. And they were of different ages that we could do anything with their help. All this because the elder ones were working and earning and the younger ones were so young that there was no age difference between them and my elder sisters. Nice no? My eldest uncle used to tease the youngest uncle who was a kid himself calling "Jais mon uncle" and raise him into air in his arms like a small boy, as he did us too.

So the routine during vacation. The day starts early because there are more mango trees than at my own home and there are more mangoes to be collected. Once the light shows there are many takers for them - crows and mainas and every other bird. So we wake up a bit early and start the hunt. Since sisters were elder they will lead us. Once the basket is full, we will transfer them into their skirt which they will hold like a fabric basket. Girls are too good at finding simple solutions, you know. Yes, so we gather all mangoes and then we attend to the nature's call. Its grandpa's duty to handle the mangoes and the realted stuff. He makes juice for us and the rest is dried and kept for use after the season. The memory still waters my mouth. After breakfast,we play for sometime, find the ripe coco fruits and eat. Find other fruits - sapota, guava, egg fruit etc. When exhausted, we go to the mill - rice mill which my grandpa owned. There will be people who work, boil the rice, dry it in sun, grind, fill the sack and load the lorries. Its all so green in the memories. I was so very fond of the mill that I used to ask for spoon similar to the one used in the mill(a showel). Also, at my mom's home, we used to have plates like those in hotels. One plate with different spaces for rice and curries. And i used to ask for that when i go there. Now a days I am so grown up(30 yrs old and married too) that I feel ashamed to ask for it.

The lunch is a big gathering again as all family comes togather. We had a big table with benches on both sides. I remember we had a wooden boat in the ceiling of our dinig hall, an old boat used by my great grandfather and grandpa too. My amma says, we owned an island somewhere nearby which was surrounded by the great periyar river. So the boat was used to bring coconut and other things and also to take people across the river.

After a nap, we all wake up and head towards the mill's office. There we will have one or the other of the eldest uncles. Its our right to have something from them and they know what we have come for. Its the sip-up. Yesssssssssss!!!!!! We had a small shop on the other side of the road where there were sip-ups of many colors. Orange, grape, mango flavors. We buy as much as we can with the money given by uncles. We stay there for some time. Entertain uncles for sometime and then we leave to the next destination.

Thats an electronics shop run by one of my uncles. He will be there working on the tape recorders and the radios. Once I got an electrical shock from there. I was on the process of getting some money, giving him kisses and tickling him. He was seriously working on some radio with a soldering iron and suddenly it happened. I got the shock. He dint as he was wearing chappal and sitting on a wooden chair. I suddenly stopped and went and laid on a cot nearby in the shop itself. He felt something happened coz i stopped all wooing atonce and was a nice kid suddenly. He asked if I got shock and since I could get scoldings too, I said no and escaped from there. We usually wait near the mill and the shop and get hold of any uncle who can give us some paisas to get some sip-ups.

The younger uncles treat us during weekends. They were in college and were cricket champs themselves. For that they should thank grandpa for being such an enthusiast in sports and games. He still is. He knows more about sports and games than any of us, I must agree, because he consistently watches and follows them. Cricket and tennis are his favorites. So, my younger uncles used to play cricket at home and on Sunday, they had the real pitch - the mills open space were rice is dried. Wowww!!!! nobody else had this opportunity. After the game, uncles will buy yummy yummy tuty-fruity bread from the shop nearby. We had a retail dealer for modern breads very nearby, near the shop from where we buy sip-ups. Those were so tasty. I still have the taste on my tounge.

I remember one incident. I got an eye infection. The medicine was made at home, an eye drop which cause so much discomfort. It feels like a hundred bees are stinging inside. I dint know this for the first time and I happily agreed to put the drops. Second time, I knew the sting and I started running all around. My grandma missed one shot in the afternoon. But in the evening, uncles were home and there were enough of them to catch the running me and put me on a bed and hold me tight on the legs, the hands and the head. Side effects of having so many uncles. He hee.

Its time!!!!!!

Its time that I come back to my readers. I have a beautiful memory to be shared. A beautiful past, where I was pampered in most ways a village boy could ever be. Sure those days are worth to be called "the good ol' days". I believe it's been the same with you too.

Its summer vacation now. When I see out of my door, in Bangalore, I see children playing cricket in the narrow corridor of their houses. When I see it, an alarm rings inside my head, it says "this might happen to your kids too".

During our days(Every generation has one 'our days' that they consider the 'golden era' of the history. So do I.) it was a celebration, the vacation. There are two main spots of vacation - Own home and mom's home. Which one first, it depends on my aunts, uncles and cousins. Simple. When my cousins are coming down to my home, we(my two sis n me) defer the journey to the second spot. How many cousins? Let me count. 5+4+4+2=15. Plus 3 at my home including me. Its a whopping 18. I forgot to tell you, I got 5 aunts, one of them is put up very nearby. So, from the 18, I have to subtract 5 people who are my eldest aunt's sons and daughters. They were a bit older than us and hence dint come under our group. (Generation gap, you know. he hee). And yes, one more. She wasnt shy. But she never stayed overnight. May be her dad-mom couldnt sleep without her. ;-). Hence we were a dozen. Wow. my math is still good.

So, whats the agenda? Actualy I cannot remember all but some. And thats the reason I started writing this. I just rememberd one of our favourite sports. I have to specify, its a biys game. Guess what?? No. I wont tell this now. You read this full then you will know what it is. Hide and seek, its fun. Isnt it? So, the routine. Before even brushing our teeth(by the way, when did I start brushing? I remember, before it was "umikkary" that we used to use. Mind you, its the best, the teeth shine like whitest white, m sure even the best teeth whitener will fail before it. And the bundle of old "eerkkili"), we go to the mango trees. Why mango trees? You guessed right. Its summer, mango time!!!!!!! How many mango trees we had? is that the question? We had many. One "komavu" just in front of the house. The mango was not so sweet. So we were not so interested. Two "moovandan mavu" in the west boundary. Then one more "panchara mavu" or the famous "chappi kudiyan" in the west boundary. And two more "moovandans" in between. We get plenty for our needs. Once we collect all those which have fallen down, its time for the "umikkari" treatment. For all who do it themselves, its nice. For others, its one of the hardest part of life. So sad, they have to undergo the umikkari treatment by some elder and for sure they will make sure the teeth looked white. Ufff. This was torture. First of all the rule - to do the umikkari treat daily. and that too by and elder. Limits. For a five year old, it is one of the toughest situations. Mummeeeeeeeeeeeee. The session is near the open well in front of the house. Elders will get water. No motor. Old "kappi n kayar". It will take some time for us to finish as the elders will start, young ones will run to escape the umikkari and needs to be caught and then cleansed. In the meatime, some kiddo will try to reach the well wall and try to look into the well and that needs a screw near the fleshy butt. ssssssss. I can feel it now. he heee. By this time the middle aged will start sprinkling water on each other.(FYI - At a time when 'pichkoos' were not available, it was the natural pichkoo that was used. THE MOUTH. he hee). Finally, it will be a bathing session too. Most of our dress will be wet and either amma or ammamma will say "I wont let you in like this. Get them cleaned and bring them." The order is for the elder ones. Whatever the younger ones do, the blame and punishment is for the elders. And they sure will pass it on without fail, sooner or later. he hee.. But, it was fun. It was great fun. Believe me, each item that i said here or the ones which are about to be said are long enough to be written as a novel. I dont know how I would tell you all that. I would tell you the precise contents and the imagination is left to you.

Its breakfast time now. "Kangi" or the rice porridge(wow.. what a name.. isnt it? "Rice porridge") was the usual breakfast. Also, one usual item during summer - "manga chammanthy". Then some "uppery" or the other. You know how good it feels to take one single bite in the group of your beloved ones than having stomachfull of best dish in the world, alone. Most probably you would have seen that. In classrooms, fighting over one another, holding ones hand, struggling hard. Thats the spirit, thats the joy. He hee. Games. What games? Whatever entertains us for a while is a game. There were so many that we never got enough time to play all in a day. After sometime it will be lunch time and this is when we(boys) do our special game!!!!!! What shall I call it?? "Pump game"?? "Pump action"?? Whatever. Before you guys take any wrong guesses, let me explain. It was simple. We had a verandha from where we(only kids) pee. Specially during night time when we are afraid of all the villians waiting for us in the dark and when moms are tired of daily work and tell us "do it from here". So the game. We boys stand in a line. The one who pees farthest wins and wins the bet or whatever we have bet for - may be a sticker( a sticker label- dont you remember?). Yesssssssssssssssssssssss. We used to try the game in the night too. But couldnt see the pictures that we Michael Angelos and Da Vinccis drew on the muddy ground near the coconut tree whose trunk was the farthest that we could reach by our "streams". Never wondered how girls would play this game, we were so innocent then. he heee.

For lunch, mango again is a hero, which comes in different styles everyday. "manga pachady", "manga curry" and many more. After lunch, its bed time, rather its "paya" time. Amma will give payas and pillows for all. All lie down, fight for sometime. Fight for not getting a specific pillow, big one, small one, what not. Some yelling, some crying, some "screw"ing from elders, all calm, all asleep. Mid-day sleep is broken by the smell of some snacks or our famous "nalu mani unda". Yes, since the snacks are served at around 4 in the evening, the rice unda got the name - "nalu mani unda". For this the ladies - amma, ammamma and the elder girls (who get scoldings for sleeping like kids. "Sleep sleep and sleep. Dont you need to go to a guys home one day and manage a kitchen there? What will you do then? Come and help me? Sleep sleep and sleep.." The murmuring will go on and become louder if the elder girls dint respond. And eventually a thud if they dont get up before amma gets free time.) work hard in the kitchen. People, do you know who has got a longer work time in the world? The housewives. Or the one who cooks at home. Whoever it is. We have to appreciate the task that they do. Wellness or sickness, they are to work. From early morning to late night. They had to work. Ladies and those few gents who do this task, I salute you. Time has changed. But timings has not changed in the kitchen.

Evenings are very busy playing around and watching all elders play. Nearby children come home or we go somewhere to play. But for small kiddos the role just becomes that of spectator's as the elder ones dont put them in a team as it may weaken the strength and spirit of the team. ha haaa. How many times I have done it myself. Sorry kiddos, I was a spectator once. But mind you, I was happy to have one if the other team took one with them. Clever, huh?

Finally, the time of the villians, night. Its TV time. As I remember, Doordarshan used to start broadcasting at 6 in the evening or something like that. I dont remeber being stuck near the TV for a long time during childhood(but now is different. Almost 10hrs a day is a whopping time in a life. Either its a monitor or the TV. What difference does it make?). Krishidarshan, the news, etc had no glitz and glamour attached. But I have to tell you, I was so attached to a series - "Space cities sigma". I still remember vaguely how the set was - it was a space ship and happenings in it. There were laser guns, or sophisticated tech in it. By the time pappa will be home. Appappan too. Dinner time. Small small quarrels, patch ups and paya again. Oh sorry, the "Pump action", then paya. Good night.