A grand Onam to you all Mallus out there

It is Onam today - the Malayali's harvest festival.

Like with other parts of Kerala, our town was also in a festive mood for days leading up to Onam, with apparel/jewellery stores doing brisk business & people out on the streets making purchases to celebrate the grand day.

I was able to show Aman the traditional puli-kali (tiger dance) and we also spotted a Mahabali on the road, dressed in the traditional attire going around visiting his people, as the legend of Mahabali goes.

Yesterday night was spent with a group of friends, most of them working outside Kerala and now in town for Onam. We had a fun time singing the traditional Onam songs, with one friend working in Oman singing the song via cellphone straight from Oman, which we enjoyed via speaker-phone.

Today morning started with atha-poo kalam (flower decoration) - Aman helped his Mom do the decoration at home. Here's Aman posing before his creation, wearing his new Onam dress.


Me and Aman then went out to visit friends, wishing them Onam and taking in the grand poo-kalams made at various homes. Here's Aman posing as Mahabali and blessing his subjects at a friend's home.


Wish you all a great Onam with allround happiness and prosperity.

Packaging news according to the target segment.

A couple of weeks ago, there was a news article in the Times of India (ToI) about a suitcase found abandoned at the Nagapattinam bus-stand. In this day & age of terrorist attacks, this naturally evoked fear / suspicion & the cops were called, who upon opening the suitcase found the body of a 5-year old boy.

A day later, ToI reported that the kid was identified to be a boy missing from Chennai, whose parents were one Jayakumar & Ananthalakshmi, who from the names sounded to me like a Tamilian couple. There was also a snap of the kid - so cute. Found it really tough to believe how someone can have the heart to kill kids.

Cops unravel the mystery and find that the boy was killed by his father's paramour, who was miffed that he was not marrying her as promised and had also asked her to undergo two abortions resulting from their affair. It was her way of taking revenge on him. Hmm.

The Deccan Chronicle (DC) also had similar content as the ToI that I read at office. Both being more of tabloids than newspapers, all the necessary ingredients were present to add spice to the whole story. The woman was known to the father before marriage, they had an affair, he got married to someone else, had 2 kids, then meets her after a long time, gets her a job in his company, she gains the confidence of the whole family, they continue their clandestine affair etc etc.

Yesterday while doing some weekend cleaning, I chance upon a copy of the Malayalam daily "Malayala Manorama" (MM) lying at home, bought my by in-laws who were in town the week this incident happened. The front-page screams the following headline,
"Malayali balan-e konnu pettiyil-aakki, sthree arrest-il"
which translates to "Malayali kid murdered and stuffed in a suitcase; woman arrested".

Huh! Inspite of following the news fin 2 different English newspapers, I never saw DC/ToI mention any Malayali connection. It seems the kid's parents are from Kerala. Anyway, for DC & ToI, both English newspapers, the readership is pretty diverse and it does not really matter to them as to which state the boy/parents belong to. But MM caters specifically to the Malayali readership and guess this extra info matters to their readership, which shows in the way they packaged the same news so differently from their English counterparts.

P.S. : A couple of days after this incident happened, on my way home, I was listening to this radio-show by Bosskey, which is about playing a line-up of movie songs with some comic one-liners interspersed. Normally I like his comedy, but that day he chose to make humour out of this murder, which was not in good taste IMO.

Pray and let pray ... For a better world.

Another boring weekend at Chennai. Saturday went by without much ado. Since it was a long time since I expended any effort on this activity, I went through the whole sweeping /mopping routine. As always, it felt good to walk around the apartment after the effort.
A little more sweating ensured that the laundry basket was back to empty.

Getting through Sunday was tougher though. No football games on TV - just boring movies and programmes. Decided to do some cooking as I was getting bored of hotel food. Turned out to be a nice decision, given that lunch was mouthwatering chicken curry and rice, with just 30 minutes of effort.

And then it struck me that I could go to church. What ? It was a long time since I went to church. Infact the last time I saw the insides of a church was the Syrian-Christian church in Alappuzha a few months ago - and that was on celluloid, in the Gauthan Menon movie "Vinnai Thaandi Varuvaaya".

Anyway, since Sunday is the best day of the week to enjoy a drive in Chennai, I get the covers off the car and drive out to St. Theresa's church, Gemini, Nungambakkam, which happens to be my (and my wife's) favourite place of worship at Chennai. Their 6:30PM English mass is for lazy-heads like me who sleep late on Sunday mornings and thus miss the morning mass.

I am there by 6:15PM, find a good parking slot and stroll around the campus, taking in the changes since last I was here some years ago. And that's when I see a new shrine for the Virgin Mary, to the left of the church. It has a rock-theme with quite some greenery in the background.


The moment I saw it, what came to my mind was the similar shrines seen in most Kerala temples. Apart from the main temple, you would have smaller shrines for various gods / godesses and this shrine looked like a straight lift from any temple. Check out this similar shrine I photographed at the Kandiyur temple near my home - same rock-based theme, with greenery behind it.


Not sure if the creators of the Virgin Mary shrine took inspiration from any temple, but there sure was quite some similarity. So, we have two religions, as similar as chalk and cheese, yet having something in common.

If only people looked at religion/prayers as a way to communicate with the power above and not something to fight over, quite some serious problems facing the world today would immediately vanish.

P.S.: As I wrote this post, I was reminded of the lovely & thought-provoking single 'Krishna nee begane' from the hit album 'Colonial Cousins', sung jointly by Hariharan & Lewis :

So come back as Jesus, Come back and save the world.
Bless all the future of every boy and girl.
Come back as Rama, Forgive us for what we've done.
Come back as Allah, Come back as anyone.
Krishna nee begane baro. Krishna nee begane baro.

Surely a Mars and Venus difference in perception.

We were at the PVR-multiplex on a Sunday night a week ago, to watch the Tamil movie 'Singam', which happens to be Surya uncle's (as Aman calls him) latest movie. While it is good to have such a swanky multiplex in walking distance from home, a visit sets you back by close to 500 bucks. So, unless it is a really good movie, I ain't wasting money watching movies there.

We managed to get tickets only for the 9:45PM show and are in our seats by 9:40PM. After some advertisements (mostly for gold jewellery), they play the promo-video of the Semmozhi Thamizh Manadu (Classical Tamil conference). A nicely done video, it features many big names in the music, letters and movie industry. But since everyone has to be accomodated & keep the video short and interesting, most personalities get only a few seconds on screen.

We are watching the video and the stars (A.R.Rehman, Hariharan, Susheela, Yuvan Shanker Raja etc etc) and I can't help admiring the awesome blend of lyrics & music, which gel perfectly with the way the personalities play their part.

And then a female appears on screen singing. Actually, we hear her singing even before we see her. The voice is more shreak-ish (in a nice way), with the facial expressions matching the voice.
In less than a second, my mind has looked up the stored sound-tracks in my brain and identified the voice to be similar to the magical one in the "Adiye kolludhe" song from the movie "Vaaranam Aayiram", sung by Shruthi Haasan, and emoted oh-so-magically by the cute-yet-sensuous Sameera Reddy.

I had just about identified Shruthi Haasan as the singer before the promo moves on to some other personality, when my wife goes, "She has got herself a nose job and now looks gorgeous".

What ???

That girl was there on the screen for just a few seconds, during which time one had to listen to the audio, look at the moving images on the screen, recogize the personality and still there was time enough for my wife to notice the nose-job. Such a sea of difference in perception between the male and female of the species. No wonder the book "Men are from Mars, Women are from Venus" is such a big hit.

P.S.: Movie was typical Tamil-masala, but fast-paced. Surya gave his best as usual & Anushka was cute.

The twins are out of the game. But in come new twins to cheer about.

While showing promise initially, both Serbia and Slovenia got knocked out of the FIFA cup. Did leave me a bit disappointed that neither could make it even to the next round.

But news of another set of new twins was more than enough to erase this disappointment. A close friend and his wife were blessed with twins - a baby boy and a baby girl. What a way to have a complete family in one go. Congrats, new parents.

And being a die-hard optimist, I am now rooting for Slovakia - another underdog. They play Holland today and it is going to be tough. But then who said the once-in-4-years soccer world-cup was easy ?

Wow !!! What an upset. Serbia did it.

This World Cup is surely full of surprises. First Spain lose to the Swiss. And guess what, Serbia beat the mighty Germans just now. Yippeee !!!

Slovenia is to play the US today. Best of Luck, guys. Go for it.

Best of Luck, Serbia.

As I type this, Serbia is playing Germany. Formidable foes to play against, indeed. But hey, if Switzerland can defeat Spain, anything can happen.

I am at work and hence can't watch the match, but would be tuning in to the FIFA website periodically to catch the action.

Go for it, Serbia. If you think you can, you just might.

Every kid is an Einstein, if you ask its Mom.

There is a saying in Malayalam - Kakka-kku than kunju pon-kunju, which translates to "To a crow, it's little one is the golden one". Applies to humans too, because we almost always see parents talking in glowing terms about how much of a genius their kids are.

Especially the current generation of parents who believe that this is very important for the kid's development. The previous generation were kinda stingy when it came to giving their kids credit where due. Atleast my parents were. Maybe the thought process was that too much of praise can make the kid believe that he is very good and inhibit further achievement. I would like to take the middle line - give appreciation / encouragement where due, but not go overboard and thereby stifle further growth.

My wife is no exception when it comes to Aman and to a certain extent I can see why. Aman started talking early at just about a little more than 1 year, talks legibly for his age, picks up words/rhymes/meanings/situations pretty fast, etc. Maybe there are many kids out there that do all this & more, but since her comparo is limited to the other kids in the family / school / neighborhood, she feels he is up there.

As far as I am concerned, I was more impressed by the fact that he could correctly identify various cars on the street even when he was just 1.5 years old. :-) He could correctly identify an M800, Alto, Ambassador, Santro, Swift, Jeep etc. Ofcourse, the moment it came to sedans, all cars were the "Baleno" according to him.

But last weekend, he truly impressed me with a couple of creations he made on his own using building-blocks. On Saturday morning, I was going through the newspaper, with Aman playing nearby, when he nudges me to have a look at his "home" as he called it. What impressed me was
the amazing symmetry in the creation.


And then again on Sunday night we are about to hit the bed, when he shows another of his creations - a little more complicated than the previous one, but again perfectly symmetrical in design.


Called out to my wife (who was in the kitchen) and both of us were truly impressed. Maybe it's possible that many kids his age will do this without much ado, but to us it looked marvellous - proving the crow-adage so true. :-)

FIFA mania - whom to root for ?

The Football World Cup is on and the madness will continue for the next month and more. Since football is one of my favourite sports along with Badminton and Hockey, I thought it would be a good idea to get a Satellite TV connection after many years of not having any cable/satellite connection. Also would help my wife & son while away time during the day.

So, last Saturday, get myself a SunDirect satellite connection. Among the many available options, I preferred this because they cover most of the Tamil & Malayalam channels which we normally watch. And it has DD-Sports which beams FIFA matches.

But then, another dilemna arose ? Which team to root for ? Usually people root for their home teams, but since India is not among the 32 nations that qualified for the World Cup, whom to root for ?

I look up the list and see Serbia and Slovenia among the 32. Wow !!! Two really small countries and yet good enough to qualify. And to top it both countries are customers for one of the projects that I am currently working on. So, I decide that I will root for the football teams of Serbia and Slovenia.

The Serbian Football Association logo :



The Slovenian Football Association logo :


Yeah, I know they are underdogs, compared to the big cats in the fray, but hey, what is the whole fun if everyone is rooting for the sure-fire winners, ? And as luck would have it, both of them played their first match yesterday evening, India time.

The results were a mixed bag since Slovenia won against Algeria, while Serbia lost to Ghana. Actually Slovenia is doing pretty good in their group rankings. In Group-C to which they belong, they are leading with 3 points, while USA and UK have 1 points each (they drew against each other) and Algeria is with 0 points (having lost to Slovenia).

Serbia / Slovenia, go for the cup. Best of Luck.

A train-engine to add spice to a kid's B'day. No big deal - it's a cake walk for them...

Every time my wife & kid come down to Chennai, we go on an eating-out spree. There's a list of places we don't miss visiting atleast once (if not more) - Pizza Hut, Pizza Corner, ChicKing, Kumarakom, McDonalds & last but not the least "Cake Walk". Yeah, I know that the list reads like a junk-food directory and an easy way to cholestrol hell. :-)

Anyway, last Saturday we dropped in at CakeWalk (Egmore) to stock up on their yummy range of pastries. They have a huge range available & as we are making our pick, this locomotive cake is put on display straight from the oven. It attracts the attention of everyone in the bakery. Anish (whoever it is) must be really happy cutting this unique B'day cake.


By the time, we had coffee and chicken rolls, the cake was gone.

Of stale meat and no complaints.

Yesterday's newspaper had an article about the carnivores in Vandalur zoo rejecting the meat served to them because it was stale. I don't blame them - who wants to eat stale food anyway ?

For those that don't know, Vandalur zoo in Chennai is one of the best zoos in India. Unlike other zoos where you have the animals in cages, here they are housed in open areas. Ofcourse they have moats and high fences to keep them restricted to their area.

If you are in Chennai and want to have a day's worth of quality time, don't look further than the Vandalur zoo. It is an amazing experience as I have experienced a few times. Ofcourse, make sure you have a full day at your disposal, because this place is spread over many acres and to have a dekko at all the animals/birds/reptiles, it takes you close to a day.

Coming back to the stale food problem, it seems the zoo authorities have contracted out the supply of meat to some contractor who occasionally tries to pass on stale meat to be given to the animals in the zoo. As per norms, there should be someone in the zoo, who should monitor the quality of the food procured. But, looks like this simple technicality gets overlooked every now and then. Actually, always gets overlooked.

So, the poor animals (lions, tigers, Siberian white tigers etc) are thrown stale meat, which they understandably reject. The newspaper goes to the top honcho at the zoo who is supposed to manage the zoo overall and bring this to his notice.

His response is "I have not heard of such a problem in the zoo. And have not got any complaints in this regard."

What does he expect to happen ? Ofcourse no human involved in the procurement process would complain. The only parties to complain would be the tigers and the lions. Does he expect the lions and tigers to write out their grievance on A4 sheet paper, sign it and present it to him ?

A trip to Scotland in lieu of the cancelled Serbian trip

Had to cancel my Serbian trip - business justification, or actually the lack of it, to use a jargon.

Anyway, we did do the vacation at Scotland. Actually "Scotland of the East" ie. "Vagamon hills", which is in Idukki district of Kerala. Since I don't have the patience to do dual travelogues, why don't you guys (ie. any of you that are really interested) click on the following link and check out the travelogue on team-bhp ?

Happy reading.

It's not enough to have a visa and tickets to travel. Pass the eyeball test first or get back home.

Like most people, I was under the assumption that if you had a valid visa and flight tickets, you could fly to any country. Unless, you happened to be on the Interpol red-corner list or related to Al-Qaeda or some such terrorist outfit.

Infact, there are lucky souls, who just due to their nationality (EU, US etc) need not even have a visa to fly to many countries. Ofcourse this logic does not work with all countries, as a manager in an organisation I used to work in some 10 years ago learnt to his discomfort.

The said manager had to come to our Chennai office for a short business trip from his home base of Belgium. He books a ticket to Chennai and lands at Brussels airport on the day of travel, only to be told that he needs a visa to be able to travel to India. The guy is shocked, but left with no other option than to get back home. If my memory serves me right, I think he just abandoned travel plans and got the work done via email/video-conferencing.

But even if you have a valid visa & tickets, there is no guarantee that you can fly out, as I learnt late-evening yesterday. It is 9PM and I am still at work. A close friend from my college days is flying in from the US on a business-cum-personal trip and I have to pick him up from the airport and drop him at Park Sheraton where he would be staying.

The scheduled arrival time of the Lufthansa flight is 23:45 and adding atleast 30mins for him to finish immigration, customs etc and get his bags, it would be past midnight. So, if I leave from my office to the airport around 11PM, it should be OK. I send him an email telling that I would be at the airport, which I expect him to read when he switches on his phone after landing at Chennai.

I am in the midst of some work, when I see a popup indicating an email from him, which is surprising because he is supposed to be flying at this time and you are not supposed to use phones on the flight. I read the email, which simply says, "I am going to travel only today at 3.30PM so please pick me up tomorrow." I think I made a mistake reading his itinerary, but no - it clearly states an arrival time of 11:45PM on 24-May-2010. So what happened ?

It seems he went to the airport and through security check etc and is at the gate waiting for the plane. And that is when he fails a new test by the US Aviation authority as per which the captain / pilot does an eyeball-check of all the passengers and if he points out someone (in this case my friend, due to the brown skin?) with whom he is not comfortable travelling, that person cannot travel. As simple as that.

Can you believe this ? You are there waiting to fly out on business/pleasure, when the captain comes over, looks at you, does not like the color of your skin or your goatee or your outfit and guess what, you are driving back home to travel another day. And the funny thing is, my friend is an American citizen (of Indian origin), a Business Class traveller & works for a premier bank.
Understandably he was pissed off and his comment was, "My American passport does not get me the respect that I used to get with my Indian passport."

Anyway, I tell him to email me from Frankfurt so that I can be sure that he actually did fly out of the States. :-) Else, I would be waiting like a fool outside the Chennai airport, paying exhorbitant parking fees & drinking more exhorbitantly priced coffee from Coffee Day, while he is back home after failing another eyeball test.

This incident sort of proves my pet theory right. That the US/UK/AU citizenship that you worked hard to get, does not mean a thing, until you can somehow change your skin color too. India does have its flaws, but no one is going to offload me of a plane for which I have paid the fare, just because the pilot does not like the color of my skin.

Giving does feel better. As long as the missus does not know about it.

Last Friday, I had stopped at a tea-shop on Cathedral Road, just opposite Stella Maris women's college for a cup of tea. Its one of the many tea-shops in Chennai, run by Mallus and apart from tea/milk/coffee, there is the standard range of eats - samosa, vadai, etc. As I wait for the tea, I pick up a vadai - yeah, I know that the taste is nothing much to write home about.

The guy brings my cup of tea & as I sip on it, I see an emaciated elderly woman (65 yrs or so) walk to the tea-shop with a kid in her arms. The kid also looks under-nourished. Its a boy who would be around 2 years old and I am instantly reminded of my son. Sort of like whenever I see old people on the streets, my mind instantly brings forward memories of my grandparents.

She fumbles around in the folds of her saree and brings out a couple of coins. She asks for a cup of milk and hands over a 5-rupee coin, which the tea-shop owner puts into his cash-box. She was expecting some change back, but the guy tells her that it costs 5 bucks.

She gets the milk and brings it to the lips of the kid, making me want to tell her that it might be too hot for the kid. But the kid just turns his face away. She tries a few more times to feed him, but he does not seem to want it and turns his face away everytime. She looks around and notices that I am watching - I move my gaze away. She moves a little away and somehow makes the kid drink half of it. She drinks the remaining milk and after returning the glass, she moves to the adjoining shop which stocks bakery products and junk food like chips.

She buys a packet of chips and hands it to the kid who takes it eagerly. She pays for it (Rs.6) & walks back in the direction from where she had come. I have this feeling that both of them are hungry & the milk or chips is not really going to help - they need solid food. I think of offering some money, but worried about her reaction because though it looks like she is short of money, I have no way of knowing for sure and could end up hurting her.

At the tea-shop itself, I had taken Rs.50 from my wallet & have it in my hand. But even as she is nearing where I am standing, I am unable to decide. Anyway I decide to take the risk and just as she passes by me, I handover the money to her and tell her to buy some food for her and the kid. She is surprised since this was unexpected, but takes the money and moves on.

I am also surprised, because till that precise moment, I was not sure of what I would do. Many a time I have thought on similar lines, but backed off at the last time (due to being unsure whether I would be hurting their sentiments) and was expecting this time also to be no different. I know that 50 bucks is no big deal & would maybe get her just a decent meal. But yeah...

Anyway, I am there feeling good that I finally managed to do what I could not over many previous instances. And giving is anyway much better than getting. Something I saw from
what William Gates and W. Buffet are doing. Both of them figure at the top of the richest men in the universe list, but are currently out to give out a significant portion of their earnings to those that need it. A good gesture, which makes me admire Bill, someone I always thought of as a capitalist American. But...

But what ? Though my wife is not the daily facebook-hotmail-gmail type, she does catch up with her email once in a few days and ofcourse she checks my blog too, since she knows that this is the only way to keep track of a loud-mouth like me. :-) And so she is bound to read this too. So what, you would think ?

Well, lots. Unlike men, women have elphantine memories. You slight them (knowingly or unknowingly) once and it just gets written into their Non Volatile Memory (NVM) - to be recalled at the slightest requirement and to come back to bite you. And so it is in my case. Well, it's a long story.

Some 10 years ago, when my wife was not employed, she used to be at Chennai, manning home as a homemaker. Which meant that not only did my flat look like a proper home, I also got a hearty breakfast and lunch to go everyday. She was just getting used to the Chennai way of life and was slowly picking up Tamil - she speaks pretty decent Tamil today.

Anyway, one day I return from work and she tells me about her day. Some woman had come with a sob story and she being the girl she is, melted immediately and gave the lady 20 bucks. I am mortified because I feel she was cheated for being the gullible girl she is and 20 bucks back then was a big deal. I immediately start a big lecture about how she does not know to differentiate fact from fiction and how she does not know the value of money. I could have stopped there and things would have been great.

But no, the loud mouth that I am, I went on about how she does not know the value of money, because she does not know how hard it is to earn money. That really hurt her. But since she is not the typical bite-back kind of wife, she just swallowed it, though she wrote it into her NVM. And since then, after she started earning, whenever a situation arose, she would take this weapon out at me.

So, I am sure that when she reads this post, she is surely going to remind me of how wrong I was to have reprimanded her about giving 20 bucks to a poor soul, when I have done precisely the same thing. Hmm.

Travel clouds are forming again...

Another trip to Belgrade (Serbia) is in the offing, tentatively starting 2nd week of June and for a little over 2 weeks. One side of me is overjoyed at the chance to travel after a long time and to a city I like. Plus ofcourse, who would not want to get away from the insanely hot Chennai summer for a few weeks ?

But another side feels down about being away from my son for 3-odd weeks. When I went to Serbia last October, he was only about 2 years old and had just started learning to articulate himself. But in the 6-odd months that have passed since, not only has his vocabulary increased a lot, but he now knows a lot more about things around him. He even has a list of things ready for me to get for him from Serbia and topping the list is a "BIG gun" - not sure what this is with boys and guns. Must be like girls and Barbies. And ofcourse the customary chocolates, toy-cars etc.

I hope the tough-to-pronounce volcano in Iceland subsides completely in the coming weeks and does not cause any flight cancellations / delays etc. And I hope I get to make maximum use of the 2 weekends I have in Belgrade to get to know the place much better than I could do last time.

"The Mumbai Indians ? That should be easy." The kid was so bang on target.

Though I dont watch cricket (inspite of having played lots of it during my school-days), today morning I really wanted to know who aced the finals of the IPL 20/20 finals. As I pick up a copy of the DeccanChronicle at the corner shop, the first think I look for is the IPL results. And Chennai Super Kings trounced Mumbai Indians to bring home the cup.

My curiosity was not due to it being the home-team. The main reason was the conversation I had one morning a few days ago. It was around 8AM when I am getting ready to leave for work and the door-bell rings. I hate being interrupted in the mornings and think to myself that it must be the apartment watchman, dropping in as usual for some trivial reason or the other.

Open the door to see the guy from the nearby shop with the refill can of drinking water. I am glad he came before I left for work, because I have run out of water. After he collects the empty can and cash from me, just before leaving, he turns around and says, "It was a superb match yesterday, wasn't it sir ?"

Given that the only game about which Indians are crazy, is cricket, I know that he must be referring to some IPL match. But, what do I reply ? I dont even know who played whom or who won. Not wanting to sound knowing and end up making a gaffe, I admit defeat, "Who played whom and who won?"

"Sir, you did not watch yesterday's semi-final ? Chennai trounced the DeccanChargers to make it to the final."

"Oh, OK. Well, I don't follow cricket much". // He looks at me as if I were an alien. :-)

Just to break the awkward silence, I ask him, "So who do we play in the IPL finals ?"

"The Mumbai Indians".

"And how do you think we would do against them, given that they are in great form ? I was glad I remembered atleast this bit from a conversation my colleagues were having on IPL matches.

"Ha, that should be a walk in the park. We will win the finals".

As he walks away, I am wondering how confident he is about his home-team winning. More importantly, how much pride he takes about the team and how he identifies with the team. And given that Chennai did trounce Mumbai, he was bang on target too.

Multiplying and then vanishing - hope the predators did not make it

Yesterday night, before hitting the bed, I have a look at the pigeon maternity ward outside my bedroom-window on the aircon top. I am surprised to see 2 eggs now. Ha, where did this other one come from suddenly ?


But no sign at all of the parents, which is surprising given that it is close to midnight.

Anyway, more surprises await me in the morning when I check out the nest. There are no eggs there !!! Dont know what transpired during the night. Did the birds move to another place with their eggs, if it is possible for them to do it ? Or did the predators finally make it, seeing no parents around ?

I was looking forward to seeing the tiny ones hatch, grow up and then fly away. But looks like I am not lucky enough.

No aircon even in peak summer. Not for the Earth, but for a Mom-to-be.

After being surprisingly pleasant in Jan & Feb (for normal Chennai weather ie.), March saw Chennai getting back to how it is for most of the year - like the inside of an oven. Anyway, having spent more than 20 summers here, I should be now used to it. But each time, it feels like the first time - the searing heat beating down on you, eyes unable to be kept open while outside, the fatigue etc. The only saving grace being the round-the-clock Chennai sea breeze - what would we do without it ?

Sometime in April, I switched from ceiling fan to the air-conditioner and this will continue atleast till end-May. However, for the last few days, I had to switch back to the ceiling fan. Reason being a Mother-to-be who thought that my aircon-top is the best maternity ward in the whole of Chennai.

Couple of days ago, when I peeped out of my bedroom window, I see a couple of pigeons (Dad & Mom ?) and along with them a shiny white egg. Since my switching on the aircon might scare
them away & thus not let the hatching process to happen, I decided to sacrifice my comfort.

Pic : Mom looking warily at me, while Daddy flew off. Had to take the snap from behind the window netting to avoid scaring her away.


Pic : No proper nest. Just some twigs and hay scattered around.


Also, apart from hatching not happening, switching the aircon on would also mean the parent birds flying off & predators moving in for the kill. After all, one bird's egg could be another bird's breakfast. Check out the predators (circled in the snap below) waiting for a chance to have a go at the egg.


With my wife and kid coming down to Madras this Sunday for a week, I am not sure how long I will be able to do without the aircon. My wife does not really mind, but Aman likes the aircon comfort. Anyway, let me cross that bridge when I come to it.

It's always greener on the other side...

I am on the train to Chennai last Monday after spending 4-days at home for Good Friday and Easter. Actually it was supposed to be working from home on Monday, but nature decided otherwise and I had to apply for leave, since there was no power in the area due to many trees falling over power lines due to surprise heavy winds + rains. More on that in another blog-post.

After travelling weekly on trains for 2 years or more, I am sick of the commotion & crowd that is typical of the Sleeper class (cattle-class as Shashi Tharoor would put it), with just about anyone boarding these reserved coaches even though their ticket does not entitle them to. So, in the interest of some peace of mind, I have moved to the 3rd AC coaches - costs 2.5 times more, but worth it.

When I board the train, of the 8 berths in my coupe, only 4 are occupied, of which one is a girl travelling alone and the other 3 are a group travelling together, comprising a Mom & son + a female acquaintance of theirs. It's a TamBram group and I reckon they are either returning after a vacation in Kerala or after attending a wedding or some such function. Even without them speaking, it is easy to place them as TamBrahms. Especially the kid, who must be in his early teens and would fit the description that Chetan Bhagat gives of his BIL in the novel "2 States - the story of my marriage".

They are loaded with food (Tamarind rice, pickle, papad etc and ofcourse the inevitable curd-rice) and soon settle down to finish dinner. Like any normal Mom, this one too is making sure her son eats enough and more and the kid is actually pretty obliging. While the food is not really interesting to me (I have dinner packed by my wife - rice, coconut chutney, beef-fry and fish-fry), I cannot help overhearing their conversation.

In between mouthfuls of tamarind-rice, the Mom goes, "I really liked this place. Such a lot of rains. And coconuts are in abundance too."

"And lots of mangoes too", chimes the kid in between.

"Here, have some more puliyodharai (tamarind-rice)", says Mom as she places another helping on his plate.

"And almost nil pollution too, did you notice ?", says the other lady in the group.

"Oh yes, how could I forget that. You know, I said no to moving to Bangalore inspite of the climate there being great. But am having 2nd thoughts about moving to Kerala", says the Mom.

"You sure about that ? You mean you would like to settle in Kerala ?", asks the lady.

"Oh yes, without a doubt. If I had a house here, I would definitely move here".

Ofcourse, I can see that during their short-stay in Kerala, they just about had time to see the good part. Being summer, mangoes & jack-fruits are in abundance. And yes, we get lots of rains and pollution is also much lesser than Chennai and other metros. But there is yet another side to the place, which would be seen only if you are staying here for long and it might make the lady rethink her plans of settling down here.

Let's start with something that any Chennai-ite would take for granted - electricity. We are used to having power 24/365, with maybe a brief outage once in a blue-moon, which is also attended to immediately. Contrast this with the daily scheduled and unscheduled outages in Kerala lasting an hour or more daily. Not fun, eh ? Especially in summer when you have to battle both the heat and mosquitoes.

Coming to the other cool factor for the lady - rains - I too am a big fan of the rains, but as a visitor to Kerala, it is fun to enjoy the rains. But for a normal resident, this can be a real pain as they scramble about their daily routine - getting to work / school etc. The rains in Chennai will be light and maybe last a few minutes usually. But in Kerala, if it rains, it is a real downpour and can last for a long time. Getting to office/school drenched to the skin is not really a good start to the day.

And finally coming to her "If I had a home here..." part, that is a pretty big "if" as far as Kerala is concerned. It's a small state and land is limited, while population density is high and purchasing power is huge with Gulf money coming in like there is no end. Property price keeps increasing by the day and there is only so much of land on sale.

As usual, this is a case of the grass being greener on the other side. Am sure that the lady would rethink her plans of settling down in Kerala, if she knew these facts about how life is in Kerala. I am not even getting into the sudden strikes / hartals called by even fringe unknown political parties, which affect normal life.

Lady, I guess you are way better off in Chennai. If at all when the urge hits you, just catch the train to Kerala and spend a few days here and you should be OK.

Ain't it time we pegged some basic qualifications to being a people's rep ?

There is an email forward that keeps doing the rounds every now and then. It starts off with listing the qualifications of 542 people - of which many are accused for various offences ranging from corruption, rape, murder and other such activities. And finally the punch line - these are our representatives in Parliament.

There is yet another version of this is in circulation about the educational qualifications of the representatives elected by the electorate of the most literate state in India aka Kerala. Many have just primary education to their credit, some have gone till secondary school and a few have been to college.

If this were in some cow-belt state like UttarPradesh or Bihar, it won't be a big deal given the sorry state of education there. But here we are talking Kerala - a state where you can easily chance upon auto-rickshaw drivers having a college degree or two in their kitty. And where you have post-graduates applying in hordes for vacancies in Govt. sector that require the candidate to be only a Class Xth pass.

But then, for things to change, law has to be enacted. And who has to enact such an act ? The same representatives. And while you can accuse them of rape/murder/corruption, you can't accuse them of being idiots enough to enact a law that puts their job in jeopardy.

Leaving apart educational qualifications, is it too much for the electorate ie. you and me, to expect that the person we elect to a state or national body be atleast able to speak ? Especially when the main thing they are going to do in Assembly / Parliament is to speak and put across their opinion for the welfare of the people. What if your representative is toungue-tied due to not knowing the main languages spoken in the country ?

We are discussing Mr.M.K. Azhagiri, who was elected M.P. from Madurai parliamentary constituency and currently a Cabinet minister (Fertilizers). He can speak neither English nor Hindi and these are the only 2 languages spoken in the Indian Parliament. Ofcourse he would like to speak in Tamil, which is the only language he knows - his mother-tongue. But given that Parliament has members from various states, most of which have their own language, this practice would lead to Parliament going the Babel tower way, with no one being able to make sense of the other.

OK, he did not study English, so can't speak that. And since his father's party (DMK) was busy opposing Hindi, he did not learn that either. What are the options now ? He is too old to pick up either language unless he really tries hard. This leaves us in a situation where we have a high-ranking minister in Parliament who does not utter anything, whereas he is expected to hold forth on policies pertaining to his ministry and to reply to questions raised by fellow Parliamentarians during Question Hour.

To be fair to him, I am sure the guy did not really want to go to Delhi. But this was his old man's idea of giving him a Cabinet post and keeping him away from home turf so that he does not lock horns with younger brother M.K.Stalin who is all set to take over from Daddy dear as the Chief Minister of Tamilnadu.

Since there is no way his ego would let him work as a minister under his younger brother, not much chance of bringing Azhagiri back to Chennai. I am sure Daddy Karunanidhi is in a tight spot currently. But hey, where there is a will, there is a way. Since, Azhagiri is the strongman in the southern parts of Tamilnadu (TN) & Stalin reigns supreme in the North TN, why not bifurcate TN into 2 states ? After all, with Telengana & other such demands, state-bifurcation is in fashion currently.

This would result in two states (how do Stalinadu & Azhagunadu sound as possible names?) and both brothers can be Chief Ministers. This would help Daddy solve another problem - getting the Cabinet post vacated by Azhagiri for his daughter dearest Kanimozhi, who is currently sans any portfolio. So, sort of like killing many birds with one stone, ain't it ?

Till then we can continue to watch an embarassed minister in Parliament, unable to answer questions posed by his peers. I think we should borrow the US anthem of "God Bless America" and modify it slightly for our use as "God save India". Sigh !