A snake-boat sighting. By chance.

Divya was at my parent's home last weekend and we had a whale of a time going
swimming, visiting the Ambalapuzha Unnikrishnan temple (a post on that is to
follow soon) etc. When we went swimming on Sunday, we were pleasantly surprised
to see a snake-boat berthed across the river. I was sure it was not there the previous
day when we had come to the river.


I try to zoom-in with my phone-cam and this is the result.


After our swim, I decide to take Divya close to the boat for what I think must be her
first close-up view of a snake-boat. I move back as much as possible without falling
into the river, but still can't get the whole boat in the frame. So had to take a diagonal
snap. Divya trying to dry her hair nearby.


This is the "Chennithala chundan" belonging to our area and as much as I hate to
admit it, it is more show than go. In the sense that this one does not win any races,
but is just decorated and taken to the Aranmula temple every year for Onam.


Anyway, I am still proud of it. After all how many people have a snake-boat in their
backyard. And anyway not many people outside Alappuzha would know that this one
comes last in races. :-)

Divya sitting at the elevated end of the boat, which sort of looks like a cobra's hood
and thus giving the boat its name of 'snake-boat'.


The other lowered front-end of the boat, which slices through the water, powered not by
horse-power, but human-power (some 90-100 people row a typical boat).

Since I would not be going home for Onam, I am glad we came across the snake-boat

last weekend. Else, the next sighting would have to wait a year.

The more things change, the more they stay the same.

When I started work in my current organisation, we used to have a 'Nescafe' tea/coffee
vending machine in the pantry. Neither tea nor coffee tasted like it should, but since
there was no other option, we had to make do with it.

This system prevailed till a few years ago when this machine was thrown out & instead
the organisation out-sourced the job of supplying tea/coffee to a contractor. And so we
would have a guy come in and brew a pot each of tea and coffee decotion. He would also
have boiled milk ready in another flask. A tin of sugar completed the picture.

You had the choice of how you want your tea/coffee in terms of strength, flavour and
sweetness, by adding decotion/milk/sugar to your liking. While there still were some
people who had complaints about the quality of tea/coffee, the majority were happy
with the new system. However, all good things have to come to an end and this system
ended on 31st July.

To be replaced again by a tea/coffee machine that was installed on 1st August in our
office pantry. This time it is a "Cafe Coffee Day" machine, with lots of bells and whistles
and different beverage options like Cappucino, Espresso, Milk, Tea, etc.

But guess what, the tea / coffee still taste like crap. Now whoever it was that said that
'the more things change, the more they stay the same' sure had some grey-matter.

P.S. : The best workplace beverage dispenser that I ever came across was at our Belgium
office. Guess what it dispensed ? Beer. Yes, light beer during workday lunch. :-)

The extent to which people would go to make money quickly.

One of the main job functions of my wife as a Q.A. Manager with Supplyco is to inspect foodgrains procured by her organisation, which is then distributed to the public via a
plethora of channels like the PDS (ration shops), Maveli stores, Laabham stores, special
Onam bazaars, the school mid-day-meal schemes etc.

There are set specifications to which each item must adhere to so as to pass inspection
and to be accepted by her organisation. Apart from rice, wheat, chilli, pulses etc, which
are inspected by the Q.A.s on delivery, her organisation also sources packed items like
cooking oil, spices in powdered form, etc. from various vendors.

These are not inspected on delivery because physical inspection is not good enough to
determine their quality. Instead samples are taken randomly from various stores and
sent to food-testing labs which check for any kind of adulteration. Recently a sample of
cooking-oil was sent to the lab and the results indicated adulteration.

I am aware that many suppliers compromise on quantity or quality or both so as to
make extra profits. But what shocked me was what they used for adulteration. They
had mixed waste petroleum oil (known in local lingo as kari-oil) to oil that is used for
cooking !!!

Can you imagine the audacity of adulterating edible-oil used for human consumption
with something as far removed from it as petroleum oil ? Imagine what people are
actually consuming when they prepare food in this oil.

Predictably, the supplier has been banned from supplying anymore to Supplyco, but
the adulterated products would still continue to find place in stores that are not part
of the Supplyco chain & uninformed buyers would be harming themselves by cooking
with this oil.

Wonder what all harmful substances we are ingesting unknowingly with other such
adulterated products in the market.

Spare the rod and keep the elephant in line.

A recent visit to the neighbourhood temple revealed an interesting facet of elephant
discipline. As usual I was there with Aman as he wanted to see the elephant when we
saw that the animal was being decorated for some temple function.

There was this elaborate headgear which was being placed on the animal by the two
mahouts. Every elephant has 2 mahouts - First Mahout & the Second Mahout, known
in Malayalam as "Onnaam Paappan" and "Rendaam Paappaan" respectively.

Due to some reason, the elephant was not keeping still and was moving its legs. Since
this was making the job of the mahouts difficult, one of them takes a steel rod that the
mahouts always have with them and leans it against the leg of the elephant, as seen
in the snap below.


In elephant-school, what this means is that the rod should stay that way till the mahout
takes it away and under no circumstances should it fall down, which can happen only if
the elephant moves its leg. A trained elephant will stay without moving its legs for hours
to ensure that the rod does not fall down.

So, once this rod was placed, the elephant stayed still without moving and the mahouts
were able to put the headgear properly. Ofcourse in between, it did reach out with its
trunk to grab the balls of jaggery that some people were offering to it.

However, the poor thing gets confused when the other mahout who was on top of the
elephant signalled to it that he wanted to get down. For him to get down, the procedure
is for the elephant to raise its right front leg on which he climbs down. But since the rod
is placed against that leg, the animal is not sure what to do - if he raises the leg, the rod
would fall down, which is a violation of the other mahout's command.

But the mahout on top does not know about the rod placed against the animal's leg and
so repeats his command. Finally the animal decides that it is better to obey the most
recent command and raises its leg enabling the mahout to climb down. The rod falls to
the ground, but this is excused since it happened while following another command.

It is surprising how a dimunitive man is able to so easily control such a big animal, which
by nature roams free in the wild. Ofcourse, all this discipline is thrown to the wind when
elephants go amok. And usually the first casualty is the poor mahout.

A little manual labour never killed anyone. Even software engineers.

It was around 9:30AM on one of the days of my 6-day vacation last week & I have been
at my laptop for the last 2 hours getting some work done. I am shutting down the laptop
when my Mom tells me that the 'thandaan' (Mallu term for coconut-picker) has come to
pick coconuts from the coco-palms on our 3 properties and that I need to go and help my
Dad gather the coconuts.

I have done this chore every 3 months or so during the 2 years I spent studying in Kerala
in the '80s. But it has been a long time. Anyway, I ask my wife if she would be interested
to join and she decides to bring along Aman too. We walk to our river-side land where the thandaan would be picking coconuts first. By the time we reach there, he is done plucking coconuts from half the palms there and is doing the remaining palms.

Coconuts are lying all around & my Dad is trying to get them all at one place. We join in
while Aman looks around. We have gathered all the coconuts that fell on land in one big
heap, but there are some lying in the water. These are from the few palms that stand
on the river's edge, like the one in the pic below which is bent over the river.


I used a bamboo pole to pull the coconuts that are floating in the river close to the bank.
Since the edge is slippery-clay, I balance precariously on the edge & pull in the coconuts
one-by-one using a sharp sickle to dig into the husk of the coconut. By the time I get all
the coconuts out, my shorts are stained with clay - when I almost fell into the water due
to my feet slipping on clay.

Next the coconuts are counted and need to be carted home. There is usually a guy who
helps my Dad with odd jobs around the home & whose job it is to get the coconuts home.
But he has gone for some wedding and will not be available today. Since we can't leave
the coconuts there till next day, I think of other options.

We have some 10 jute bags into which I ask my Dad & wife to put 10-12 coconuts each,
which I guess is what I can carry without too much exertion. My Dad's bike is parked
some 50 metres away and if we bring the bags till the bike, I can get them home 3 bags
per trip. I can do all the bags in one go if I get our car, but the road is too narrow and
there isn't enough space to reverse the car.

As they pack and tie the bags, I carry the bags till the bike and then it takes me 4 trips
to get all the bags home. By this time the thandaan has moved to our other property,
which adjoins acres of fields (not tilled for a long time though) and has already started
picking coconuts there.

Since Aman is kinda bored of all this activity, we drop him home and me and my wife
go to collect and bring home the coconuts. Not only is the number of coconuts less on
this property, since the trees yield much less than the river-side land, but a neighbour
wants to buy some coconuts for her cooking. So, it takes me only 2 bike-rides to get
all the coconuts home.

She picks 15 coconuts @ Rs6 a piece, and hands me a hundred-rupee note. Since I don't
have my wallet with me to return her the balance of Rs.10, I ask her to take another 2
coconuts. Coconut-flesh is an integral part of almost all Keralite dishes & a typical home
would easily use-up atleast 1 coconut a day for cooking. This is apart from the coconut
oil in which most cooking is done.

By the time we reach home with the coconuts, the thandaan has already started picking
coconuts from the palms on the land where our house stands. The total yield from the 3
plots was around 300 coconuts, which would be Rs.1800 in money value, when sold to
someone who buys them to extract oil from them.

After some 2 hours of hard work, I am tired and what better way to rejuvenate than to
drink some tender coconut water. As I go to freshen up with a cold-water bath, I ask my
wife jokingly if she thinks it is fair to make a keyboard/mouse using software-engineer
do such manual labour.

As usual she has the last word when she says, "Wasn't it your mother who asked you to
do this chore ? So why ask me ?". :-)

Touch me not. Else I droop.

15-Aug-09 :
Another Independence day. Aman was feeling bored & cranky and to get him out of my
wife's way, we decide to walk to the nearest hardware shop to get some coir rope. I had
fixed a long GI pipe to two trees for my wife to grow her Orchids on & I needed the rope
to coil around the pipe so that the Orchids can let out their roots on the rope.

As we walk to the nearby shop, I see something that I felt would be interesting for Aman -
a bunch of touch-me-not plants. I remember how excited I was when I first came across
the touch-me-not plant at Kerala and I was sure Aman would also be interested.

These plants are found all over the place, especially on the road-side and so we stop to
inspect them. I show him how the leaves are normally and how they collapse at a touch.
Aman had great fun touching the leaves and seeing them contract.

The leaves of the touch-me-not all wide-spread before we touch them :


The leaves after they contracted on our touch :


Passers-by must have been wondering what was so interesting for a father-son duo to
so intently observe on the side of the road. :-)

All good things have to come to an end. Sigh !!!

Yeah, today (it is 12:50AM now and technically Wednesday) happens to be the last
day of my vacation and I catch the evening train to Chennai. The last 5 days have
been fun - was nice to spend time with my son.

And yes, I have seen the movie Vaaranam Aayiram (VA) so many times in the last
5 days, that if anyone mentions the name of the movie, I might puke. My wife did
tell me how crazy my son was about this movie - but his craziness far exceeded my
wildest imagination. This kid wakes up in the morning and the first thing he says is,
"Amma, switch on the TV, I want to see the movie". Just incredible.

Apart from watching VA & baby-sitting my son, I helped my wife/Dad/Mom around
the house, and guess what I also managed to put in some hours daily for my project.
I have some chores lined up for today & hopefully should be able to get them done too.

Having spent more than half the week at Kerala, I will be spending this weekend at
Chennai. Usually a rare weekend spent at Chennai is pretty leisurely - waking late,
buying and reading all the 3 main English newspapers, some cooking and stuff. But,
this weekend, I have the medicine-man dropping by at Chennai.

This is a friend and colleague dropping in from the States on a 10-day vacation, of
which he will be spending a weekend at Chennai with me and our gang of friends.
He calls himself the medicine-man because he is coming down from the states with
a big load of medicines for Swine flu. Naah, he is no doctor or quack. He is carrying
with him the choicest of liquor for us & he says that alcohol would make mince-meat
of any virus. :-)

It's been a long time since I had a night-out with friends and I have no qualms giving
up a weekend for friends. It would be nice to spend time talking about old times & the
funny incidents we had during our assignments at Atlanta and Japan. And ofcourse try
out some exotic medicines that he has lugged down for us all the way from Atlanta and
the duty-free shops at Frankfurt. :-)

How to drive away a thousand elephants ?

10:30PM yesterday :
My wife calls me for our usual daily end-of-the-day telephone chat, during which we
share each other's day. I can hear the TV playing in the background, which is unusual.

Me : You staying up late watching TV ? I thought you would want to hit the bed after
a hectic day at work + some 6 hours of travel to Cochin and back.
She : It's your son. He is not sleeping and is insisting on watching TV.

Me : Why don't you switch off the TV and put out the lights ? He would then hit the bed.
She : I tried it a few times, but he starts bawling. And since he has caught a cold, I don't
want to make him cry. So..

Me : What is he watching ? NatGeo or Discovery ? // Those are his favourite channels.
She : No. He is watching Vaaranam Aayiram. For the 1000th time ....

Vaaranam Aayiram (VA) is a Tamil movie which has Surya, Sameera Reddy and Divya Spandana starring in it. The title literally means "Thousand elephants". Inspite of having
spent more than half my life in Chennai & taking pride in knowing Tamil like a Tamilian,
it was quite a blow to my ego when I realised that I did not know that "Vaaranam" was
Tamil for "elephant".

Some posters of the movie that I got from the net.

a) Surya teaching Sameera how to play the guitar in the movie.


b) Surya and Sameera.


c) Surya and Divya Spandana in the movie.


Anyway, since me & my wife like both Surya and also find movies directed by Gautham
Menon interesting, we bought a DVD of VA. We loved the movie, especially the father-son bonding, the subtle acting by Surya, the charm of Sameera Reddy & Divya Spandana. We
would have watched the movie some 5-6 times, and since Aman would be with us, I guess
he got hooked to the movie.

We have no idea what it is in the movie that he likes, but he needs to see it atleast once
daily. Actually it is more like 3-4 times a day - not the whole movie, but he makes us
play the songs from the Menu.

His favourite song from the movie is the one that starts off as "Machi Machi..". He sings
the first few lines in his baby-tongue and my MIL did not know what he was singing till
we translated it to her. He also likes the "Mundhinam paarthene" song and one fine day,
he told his Mom "Mundhinam paarthen Amme", which she found to be both hilarious
and complimentary.

Even after having seen the movie so many times, he watches it every time as if it was
the first time - a perfect picture of concentration. Its no surprise then that after seeing
the movie countless times, he now knows what scene is going to come next. So, you can
hear a running commentary from him, which goes like :

Amme, uncle is going to remove his shirt now. // In the movie, Surya removes his shirt.

Amme, Uncle is now going to lift Aunty. // This is when Surya lifts Sameera in his arms.

Amme, Uncle is going to cry now. //He will point to Surya on TV & ask him not to cry.

After seeing Surya play a guitar in the movie while wooing the girl, he wanted a guitar.
My wife got him a toy guitar yesterday which he slings around his neck like Surya does
and acts as if he is playing it.

We are not sure if this addiction to VA is OK or whether we should wean him away from
the 1000 Elephants. To me, it looks like a harmless interest that he will grow out of soon.

A looong vacation. If all goes well.

If all goes well (at work ie.), I am off on a looooong holiday starting tomorrow.
And I look forward to one so much because it seems like ages since the last one,
which was for Christmas 2008.

We had planned a trip to Vagamon (known as the Scotland of Asia) in Idukki district
of Kerala during this vacation. But since it was uncertain whether I would be able to
take off from work, I could not make hotel bookings. I could still drive down, but
unless you spend a day or two there, it's not much fun. And when going with family,
I prefer to have hotel accomodation already in place.

Anyway, I would be happy spending time at home with my son. The only sad part
being that this won't be an all-play-and-no-work vacation, because I will have to
put in a few hours of work daily from home, attend calls and stuff, due to one of my
projects being on a tight schedule.

But that is just a minor irritant and there still is lots of scope for having fun, going out
and generally having a great vacation. Can't wait to get home.

The Indian version of "Parkour"

Parkour as a sport found its way into the Indian psyche courtesy the Hindi movie actor
Akshay Kumar. He incorporated it not only in some of his movies, but also in an ad that
he did for a soft drink.

But compared to what the guy in the link below can do, Akshay's stuff seems kid's play.
Check out the Indian version of parkour here.

Blissfully unaware that the earth shook under my feet at Chennai. And the swine scare.

Today morning at 7AM, I am making myself a glass of fresh sweet-lime juice using the
newly-acquired Black & Decker citrus-juicer, when my phone rings. It's unusual for me
to get a call that early - did the telemarketers start their routine early in the morning ?

It's my Brother-In-Law (BIL) calling from Kollam, Kerala. It seems my sister heard
on the radio that there was a mild earthquake in Chennai and he had phoned to check
if everything was OK with me.

Well, till he called me, I never knew that there was an earthquake last night. My satellite
dish is out-of-alignment for a loooong time and the TV is used only to watch DVDs. And I
listen to the radio only in the car. So no wonder I never knew. I tell him that it must have
been a very mild earthquake and that I am OK.

I get to work & at the parking lot, I see my boss who says that he felt the tremors, which
lasted for like 15-20 seconds. I ask him the time of the quake and he says it was around 1:30AM. The timing suprises me because I was not asleep at that time. I had hit the bed
only at 12:30 AM and remember tossing & turning in bed for an hour orso. Which means,
I should have known when the earth shook. Surprising I missed it.

I remember the last time we had an earthquake in Chennai some years ago. It was
around 8:30PM and me and my wife were in the living room when we could feel the
tremors - we rush out of the flat like everyone else in the neighborhood.

Ofcourse now with the latest scare being "swine flu", Chennai-ites might not be really
bothered about a few tremors. Till yesterday, I dismissed 'swine flu' as something that
was hyped-up by the media. But with the death of a young kid yesterday in Chennai
(the youngest casualty in India), the seriousness is sinking in. And to top it, the kid's
family lives in the same apartment as a colleague of mine. Since all residents of the
complex are quarantined, he did not come in to office yesterday and today.

I just hope this swine-flu thing does not baloon into some kind of epidemic.

When the normally white beach turned red. And smelt so foul too.

Last Saturday, my parents finally joined us on our trip to the Thottapally beach. So did
my sis, BIL & niece Annmarie who had come down on their monthly visit home - the 2nd Saturday of the month is off for most organisations in Kerala & they spend that weekend
usually at our place.

My parents would rather be at home than drive down to the beach and I guess they are
eager to see what's so much fun about the sand and waves that makes the 3 of us drive
down weekly.

As we reach the Thottapally beach, a foul stench hits us hard - I think it must be some
dead animal rotting away nearby. My parents go, "I guess we were better off at home
than drive down to this foul-smelling place". Since it is a fishing hamlet, we guess that
it could be the smell of fish being dried.

Anyway, we have driven down 20kms and it would be futile to drive back. So, we park
the car and walk to the beach. In a few minutes, the stench does not feel that bad - I
guess our senses got used to it.

But then we are greeted with another spectacle - the beach is covered with vast patches
of red. Hey, the sand here is supposed to be powdery white. So what's with the red color ?


As we walk closer, we discover what has turned the beach red. Someone has spread out
prawn waste (mostly the head part which is not eaten) on the sand. Not only did this
give a red color to the beach, this was also responsible for the stench.


Fish-waste has great demand as fertiliser and thus prawn-waste was being dried to
be sold to those that make fertilisers.

We move away from the beach-area which was being used to dry prawn-waste and
spend some 45 minutes on the beach before heading home. While me, my wife and
BIL play some volleyball, the kids have fun building beach-castles.

If this fish-drying business is going to continue, looks like we will need to find a new
beach for our weekend visit.

When even Google is helpless.

If you know the name of a person, Google will track down for you, anything about them
that is available on the net. But what if the only detail you want about someone is their
name itself ?

In Feb 2008, I was returning from an official trip to Japan & there was a short transit
stop-over at Malaysia. I was roaming around the Kuala Lumpur International Airport
(KLIA) taking in the sights, doing some shopping and stuff when I come across this
Tamil TV actress in one of the duty-free shops. OK, Y.G.Mahendran and another TV
artiste were with her, but who is bothered about men anyway ? :-)

There was a deal on Johnnie Walker whisky where if you buy 2 bottles of Black Label
whisky, you get a strolley-bag free. And predictably, the whole shop was swarming with
Indians (including yours truly), who could not miss such a nice deal. And this lady was
also there - she was telling a fellow TV artiste travelling with her that the whisky is for
her husband.

So, I have seen her on TV and she looks as seductive in person, as she looked in the TV
serials/soaps. Infact she looked way too slimmer than she looked on TV - maybe she
worked-out to lose the flab. She is wearing a nice pink trousers matched with a frilly/lacy
top and in short is looking great.

Being the shutter-bug that I am, I find it hard to resist taking a couple of snaps of her.
Especially when the subject is a pretty woman. Since it would be rude/embarassing to
take snaps of her from up-close, I leave the shop and move to an area of the airport
some 25 metres away, from where I still have a straightline view. And when I have 15x
of optical zoom packed in my Sony H7, distance-to-subject is no issue at all.

Walking along at KLIA. The guy with her is Y.G.Mahendran.


At the liquor store, with her other colleague. Ah, which whisky do I buy ?


Too confusing this selection business.

Hmmm. Gotta pay for this.

You would have noticed that I could not get her face in any of the snaps. If I had got
atleast 1 facial snap, I could've shown it to any of my women colleagues who would
have told me her name. But without her face, they won't be able to tell who it is.

And unless it is Jennifer Lopez with her designer butt, guys would also find it tough
to know who it is when shown a side-profile or rear-view snaps. :-)

So what do I google for, to get her name ? I did try by googling for "tamil tv actress"
and such strings, but nothing about this particular actress came up. Finally I gave up

the search for her name.

And then in last Sunday's newspaper, I see a photo of her with her name - Devipriya.
It was like a Wow moment for me. Finally (after 1.5 years) I have a name to attach to
the snaps. Ofcourse when I google 'Devipriya', what's thrown up is loads of scandals
about her than anything complimentary.

And the images thrown up by google are no patch on the ones I took. Infact one of my
colleagues said, "In your snaps, she looks so awesome, but Google throws up pictures
of her which are so yucky".

As much as I would love to take credit for my snaps, I guess its mostly the subject and

the camera that are responsible for a good picture. And when the snap doesn't come up

well, blame the photographer. :-)

P.S. : On the flight to Chennai, she was sitting in the seat in front of me and while getting

off the plane, she grabbed my Johnie Walker strolley by mistake (they all look identical).

Here yesterday, gone today.

The following news item on the online news site "News Today" would have been just
another accident happening on our roads. The only familiar thing in the article would
have been that I studied at Kancheepuram for 4 years and that the place where the
accident took place (Vellai Gate) is very familiar to me.
___________________________________________________________
2 killed, man loses legs in bus crash
NT Bureau Mon, 03 Aug, 2009,02:42 PM.

Two persons were killed and a man’s legs were severed when the bus in which they
were travelling rammed into a container lorry near Kancheepuram yesterday.

The deceased were identified as Anjali (24) of Kerala & bus driver Chandrappa Reddy
and the injured was Rupesh (26), Anjali’s fiance. Police said that the bus driver who
was reportedly drowsy, lost control of the vehicle and rammed it into the container
lorry moving in front of the bus near Vellai Gate.

The bus driver and Anjali, who was seated behind driver’s seat, died on the spot
while her fiance whose legs were severed was admitted to a nearby hospital. The
bus was coming to Chennai from Karanataka when the accident took place, police
said. Ten others passengers were also said to have sustained minor injuries.
Police have registered a case and are investigating.
___________________________________________________________

But this news item took on a more personal nature for many of us at work, since
the girl (Anjali) who lost her life in the accident was working at our office (she was
a contractor - not a regular employee).

She had joined only recently and since she worked in a different team, there never
was any interaction with her. But I happened to notice her because her cubicle was
near the Photostat machine and also because she had typical Kerala-girl looks.

A young girl in her twenties, with a good job and engaged to be married soon, things
had to take such a tragic turn. I hope God gives her fiancee, family and friends the
courage to bear this loss.

R.I.P. Anjali.

An environmental-friendly, but quick way to patrol the beach.

While there is no denying the fact that Chennai is blessed with some awesome beaches,
most notably the 'Marina beach', quite some effort is involved in keeping the beach a
safe place for visitors.

Every other day you can read about those who came to have some fun in the sea, but
got washed away by the sea. Mostly these are school kids who come for a few hours of
fun, but which finally ends in a tragedy.

So, the Chennai police try their best to ensure that people do not venture into the sea.
Since the Marina has a long coastline, patrolling it on foot would take a long time. And
I guess the police establishment's budget would not permit fancy beach buggies. Which
must have made the cops think out-of-the-box to come up with a quick way to patrol
the beach, which is not only lighter on the pocket, but also environmentally-friendly.

The cops belonging to the 'Chennai City Mounted Police' patrolling the Marina beach
on horse-back. My son was pretty intrigued by the cops on horses.


We were there last Sunday evening for an hour and snapped the cops on horseback.
They were pretty effective in keeping people from venturing into the sea. Not only
were the horses quick on sand, it did not involve burning of fossil-fuels which means
no pollution. Only drawback I see is a few horse-patties on the powdery beach sand,
which is OK given that it's organic waste.

Mallu jokes and the lungi / mundu myth.

Like with other ethnic groups, there exists a huge compilation of Mallu-jokes that poke
fun of Malayalees as a group and I have always had a nice laugh reading them. It is good
to occasionally laugh at yourself.

Some of the jokes centre on the ethnic Mallu male's dressing - the lungi / mundu (known
as Veshti in Tamil) and which can be described as a kind of sarong tied around your waist.
While anyone can drape this around them, ensuring that it stays around you requires
practice.

The jokes are around how the Mallu male is only 50% productive at work because half
his time is spent (re)tying the lungi/mundu and ensuring that it stays in place. So, while
driving to the beach last weekend, when we came across a group of men playing a game
of volleyball wearing mostly lungis, it was tough to drive by.


A close-up of 2 of the players with the lungi around their waist.


We stopped and watched the game for sometime. While Aman & me enjoyed the game,
I was also checking if any of the players spent time on keeping the lungi properly tied.
But No, not even one player even bothered about the lungi. It was as if the lungi was
glued in place.

So much for the myth that Mallus are only 50% productive at work. :-)