Another year, another birthday. Not exactly.

Another year, another 1st April, another Birthday. Well, not exactly, due to how it turned out this year. For starters, an old friend/ex-colleague calls up from Japan to wish me. Given that he was affected by the tsunami/quake as he was just 60kms or so from the place where the maximum devastation was seen and the fact that things are not yet back to normal in Tokyo (radioactivity in food/water etc) where he is with family, wishing me should have been the last thing on his mind. Anyway, we had a long chat about various things & caught up with each other after a long gap.

And then in the early hours of 1st April, another friend/college-mate calls up to wish. I was fast asleep on the train to Kerala and took the call thinking it is already early morning, but it seems he waited for midnight just so that he can wish me the moment the calendar moved to 1st April. This guy is not really into email/Facebook etc, but has almost never forgets any birthdays - can't say this about myself instead of having reminders set on my laptop, phone etc etc.

I am received at the station by Sheena & Aman. Since my Dad had gone to Cochin to check on his cousin who had just had a bypass surgery, Sheena had taken on the task of picking me up. Aman shyly hands me the Birthday Card that he had made himself (with quite some guidance from Sheena), including the cover which was not only made from an A4 sheet but was also painted by him. Was overwhelmed seeing the effort he had taken.

The painted cover on the left and the front of the card :

The inside of the card - which Dad would not like to be called the best ?

As has been the norm for the last couple of years, I was expecting a book as gift from Sheena, usually a novel by one of the famous Malayalam authors. But this time around, she surprised me by gifting me a Louis Philippe 'Gods & Kings' formal white shirt. These are obscenely priced (by my standards atleast) and I would not buy one for myself.

But in her case, it seems there was another reason to go for this shirt, which goes to show how women might forgive but never forget. :-) Just after our marriage and on her maiden visit to Chennai, she had by mistake stuffed a wet towel into my bag, which resulted in a favourite white Park Avenue shirt of mine getting those dark damp spots, which never went off. I believe I gave her a mouthful then and looks like she was on the lookout for a similar shirt to replace my favourite. And when she saw this shirt with the same looks/texture, she had to get it, money be damned.

All in all, All Fools day turned out to be more interesting than I could imagine.

'Early to rise' is indeed awesome. Now if I could also get early to bed...

Last Saturday morning at 5AM, I am woken up from deep sleep by the irritating sound of the cellphone alarm. Since I had gone to bed only around midnight, my mind is still groggy taking time to focus my brain & as soon as I realise that it is a weekend, I wonder why the hell would I want to wake up at 5 on a weekend. My still-drowsy mind assumes that it must be a mistake & I hit snooze to get back to slumber-land.

Before I drift away to sleep, I remember (thankfully) that I had signed up with
some of my colleagues for beach-volleyball sessions on weekends at 6AM, which explains the alarm set at 5AM, since I need time to get ready & haul myself
to Thiruvanmiyur beach, which is 15-kms from my home. Since it won't be good to
opt out, I pull myself out of bed. Takes me some 20-mins to get ready & I am
on my way to the beach, with a 1/2 litre bottle of water - to quench my thirst
after the game.

All along the 15km drive, I can see people walking/jogging and the beach has quite some early-risers active. A couple of my colleagues are already there and we tie
the net and play some practice shots. Another group of guys (whom we don't know) have come over (they have the ball, but no net) and join us & we now have the required 6 players on each side. The game is fun and gets us some much-needed exercise.

A snap taken of my colleagues after the game. You can see fishermen pulling in the net from the sea, in the background.


Around 8AM, I wind up & drive back home. Near my home, I stop to buy a newspaper and also pick up 500ml of milk in the now-empty water-bottle (I avoid buying satchet milk to cut down on plastic). As I sit down at home with a steaming-hot cup of tea, I realise that it is not even 9AM and I have the whole day in front of me, which is very unlike my usual weekends when I would wake up only around 10AM or so.

I have a list of tasks cut out for the weekend and I know that if I wake up at 5AM the next day too for Sunday's volleyball session, it should be a breeze to get all of it done. Incidentally, I did make it to the beach on Sunday.

Sunday evening as I sit back and go over what I did during the weekend, the sense
of accomplishment was huge :

- Most of the laundry done (point to note is I don't use a washing machine).

- Cooked all 3 meals at home both days of the weekend + the morning/evening tea.

- All dishes done - which given my cooking on both days was quite some...

- Swept & mopped the whole home - 2 rooms + hall + kitchen + balcony.

- Walked 3-kms (30 mins) in the evenings. //To ensure I don't outgrow size 32-waist.

- Finished the bank work + shopping for Aman + picking up groceries for the week.

- Gave my friend's bike a quick checkup - oil, filter, battery, idling etc

- Plus some time for reading, watching TV etc.

Since I am currently alternating my weekends between Chennai and Kerala, I would
be missing beach-volleyball the coming weekend. To make up for that, I have bought
a shuttle-badminton net - plan to play with my friends in our yard at Kerala during the weekends I am there.

I was able to continue the waking-up-early practise yesterday and today morning
also and since we don't play on weekdays, I instead went for a walk in the morning, after having a glass of freshly made sweet-lime juice. After the walk, had some egg & toast, washed down with a cup of tea and was out of home by 8AM to work.

While it does feel good till around 3PM or so, after that I kinda feel tired/sleepy, which I guess is because I am not getting to bed early. Sleeping at midnight or later and then waking up early in the morning does not seem like a good practice,
as it deprives me of the basic quota of sleep required by the body. Need to try to hit the bed latest by 11PM.

Aman's graduation day snaps

My last visit to Kerala happened to co-incide with the year-end photo session at his school. While the school had arranged a professional camera-man to cover the event, I dropped in with my camera to have a personal copy of this major event in Aman's life, about which he was excited days before it was to happen. In hindsight, this turned out to be a good decision, because looks like Sheena did not like the print from the photographer. Anyway here goes.

All the kids of Kids Garden school with their 3 teachers, 2 of whom are related to me on my Dad's side. Aman is seated in the front-row at extreme right. Should have used the flash (though it was bright day-light) because it is kinda dark at where Aman is sitting.



A close-up of the area near where Aman is seated. We asked him why he is keeping such a grim face and his response was interesting, "We were told by the teachers to smile without opening our mouths and that is what I was doing". :-)


The kids in uniform are those that are studying L.K.G and U.K.G., while Aman and the other kids sans uniform are those in play-school. Some of the uniformed kids were having their individual snaps taken and I thought Aman would be interested in having one taken himself. But the way he has his face in this snap, looks like he did not really relish Daddy coming in & singling him out, causing 'embarassment' within his group of friends.


BTW, credit for attire goes to Sheena - who bought this dress specifically for Aman's school photo-session.

The first of many exams to come in life - cleared with flying colors

I was in the midst of a meeting yesterday when I get a call from home. Since it's always me who calls home (daily) and my parents call only when it is really urgent, I decide to take the call after excusing myself from the meeting.

Its my Mom and she says that Aman wants to talk to me, which comes as a great surprise to me given that after the initial craze for the telephone, he is now bored and it is really tough to get him to speak. When I feel like hearing his voice, I have to cook up a fib about how I am at the toy-shop & would like to know what he wants. This would bring him to the phone instantly.

I have noticed this with my niece Divya too - as a kid she would like to chat endlessly on the phone (many of my initial blog-posts here were tele-conversations that I had with her. Then she became bored. Now her brother Dany is in the I-love-telephone stage and irrespective of who calls, he wants to speak to them.

Anyway, Mom hands over the phone to Aman & this was our conversation - he was all excited while talking :

"Biju!" // He calls me by name mostly and very rarely as Biju-papa.
"Yes, Aman. What is it that you want to tell me ?"

"Biju, I got 50 out of 50 in my exams." // To me it sounded like 60 of 60.
"Really? Did you answer all the questions ?"

"Yes. I wrote from a to i as was asked to. And also correctly answered the orals".
"Wow!!! That is indeed great. What do you want me to get for you from Madras for your awesome performance ?"

"I want.. hmm. I want.." //He is not sure what he should ask for.
I ask him if a Thomas train with its own station and controls should be fine, since I remembered him asking for this since the time he saw an advt. for this on Pogo.

"Yes. Yes. Get me a Thomas train."

He has completed 1-year at play-school and will join a proper school from June-2011. Our intention in having him spend a few hours daily at play-school was for him to be able to spend time with other kids and enjoy himself. Inspite of our clearly telling the teachers that we don't want him to be actually 'taught', they taught him the alphabet, make him do homework and finally an annual exam too. Ofcourse, while I am not too worried about his exams, Sheena had been spending time with him over the last week, which shows in his acing the test.

While he is all excited about exams and scoring, as he grows up, he will find that this is going to be a way of life for another 16-18 years or so and thus not really fun. We should have a law which mandates that schooling for kids should start only after attaining atleast 5 years of age. In Kerala it is currently 3.5 years - too early in my opinion. Kids should be able to atleast enjoy the 1st 5 years of their life without worrying about lessons, exams etc.

Change brings joy to many and sorrow to some...

It is around 9AM last Thursday morning & the train from Chennai is approaching my station (Mavelikara). As is the usual practise, I had called home while at the previous station so that in the 20-mins or so that it takes for the train to reach my stop, my Dad and son could drive down to Mavelikara station to pick me up.

As the train nears my station, I look out of the right-side door to see if I can spot our car parked on the road parallel to the railway tracks. Our station Mavelikkara is as sleepy a station as you could imagine and from my childhood, it has looked the same - 2 tracks, 2 platforms, big FCI godowns on one side, couple of small buildings on the other side that house the ticketing / reservation office & waiting area. On the platform you have a small book-shop, the usual hpmc juice kiosk etc. The only thing that has changed is that some 20 years ago you had taxis parked outside, which have been replaced by auto-rickshaws today.

But today something seems different - different enough for me to think that it's some other station. For starters, the train is neither going to Platform 1 or 2 as is usually the case. Instead it is coming to a stop on Platform-3. Ha, that is new. Plus as seen from the approaching train, I feel like there are a multitude of tracks - to someone used to seeing 2 tracks, even 4 or 5 is a multitude. :-) And this change has happened over the 2 weeks that I had been here last.

Not just that, the approach road to the station, which has been in shambles for years is now properly laid with tar. The parking area for cars and scooters that used to be uneven ground, is also levelled & tarred. Wow !!! I almost felt like I am approaching some other station. I had heard something about Mavelikara station being developed as a "Model station" and this change must be related to that. I don't care whether it is a model station or not, but it does feels good when basic infrastructure is in place.

Another change happening on this stretch between Kayankulam and Ernakulam is dual tracks being laid. I know it sounds primitive to have just 1 track for a 100km stretch, but that has been the case till now. This means that if a train leaves from Kayankulam to Mavelikara, another train going in the opposite direction has to stay put at Mavelikara till the former arrives. This has to be done for all the 8-odd stations between Kayankulam and Ernakulam - you can imagine the time lost in this process and how it makes almost all trains run late. Currently most trains take close to 3 hours for a Mavelikara-Ernakulam run . Once dual tracks are laid it should be easily done in less than 2 hours.

Unlike other states where land is available in plenty, Kerala is very densely populated and thus acquiring land to lay another track takes a long time - due to litigation. Also, Kerala has many rivers and thus dual tracks mean building another bridge - another time-intensive effort. Anyway, work is progressing on the dual track effort and some sections are already dual track. The Kayankulam-Mavelikara section is the most recent one to be completed, which would gladden the hearts of regular travellers.

However, this recent change brought grief to a few families in just 2 days after the new track was thrown open. On the first day (or night actually), three young men were killed when they were hit by a train when they were crossing the tracks. Looks like they were not aware of the fact that the new track was now in use. As if this was not enough the next day 2 more deaths were reported on the same section - again hit by trains. It was painful to read in the newspaper about the grieving families - especially the wives and kids who lost their husbands/fathers.