Of daughters and marriage

Its been exactly a month since Ammu, my daughter, got married - time has been flying by at the rate of knots and I'm still coming to terms with Ammu being married and actually managing home and hearth in Mumbai. Last January she was engaged and at the time the September wedding seemed so far away. Before I knew it it was upon me and now its over, done and dusted! Time seems to come at me like the rushing wind comes at you when you accelerate on a powerful bike - it hits you in the face and before you know it, its past you!

Before Ammu's big day I would imagine how I would feel as I gave her hand away, I would imagine what I would say to Arun as I couched her hand in his and held their two hands together. I asked myself if it was going to be an emotionally draining moment when she got into that car and went away to Arun's ancestral home. To all those questions I seemed to answer myself with equanimity and tell myself 'its really no big deal', 'its just going to be another day in her life, why should these thoughts bother me'! Around me cousins asked me how I would feel when Ammu is married off and I would tell them the very same thing I felt within me. But I would also wonder why so many people want to know how I, as Ammu's father, would feel when she left home.

Then the day dawned, there were all these friends of Ammu crawling all over the house getting themselves ready for the occasion. Ammu herself was packed off with her soulmate Anam to the beauty parlour to get ready for her big occasion. She looked happy and quite confused at all the paraphernalia she needed to carry to the parlour - the jewelry, the hair clips and other accoutrement, her wedding saree, blouse, bangles, flowers for her hair and so many little things! Anam managed all that like she had done this kind of organising all her life! She infact is a young Muslim girl from Lucknow so there was no way she could have known about all the stuff that a Nair bride would require but she played her role with panache. Three hours and some minutes later the car entered the compound of Sudha's mother's home, people all around were in various states of getting ready, they all stopped in their tracks as the car made its way in. The front passenger door opened and Ammu emerged from the car looking oh so beautiful, all dressed in bridal finery and I took one look at her and my mouth went dry and I suddenly felt a tug on that heartstring, the eyes welled up but I could not be seen shedding a tear, so I held back. I was kind of numbed by the vision of my little girl emerging from a pupae ready to fly away as a beautiful butterfly. It reminded me of a tatoo she surreptitiously got done some years ago on her right upper back - it featured this young girl fitted with butterfly wings and taking off. In a jiffy it was time for me to drive Ammu off to the mandapam in our car, soon Arun was ushered on stage by Ashwin and a bevy of young things bearing the traditional 'thaalam'. Ammu was then also ushered in onto the stage and the next thing I know I was giving her hand away to Arun. My mouth was still bone dry, I had been chewing on gum hoping to get the salivary glands to secrete but they too were numbed by the occasion it would seem and all that I could utter to the newly weds at the time was 'all the best to you both'!

Farewell Molu!

On choice

Hark back to those days, not so long ago, when we had just the choice of the Ambassador car or the Premier Padmini if you were shopping for a car. Today, the Indian consumer is spoilt for choice - there are more car brands and models than one can count and on TV there are a thousand channels to choose from! Is this supposed to be a good thing or a bad thing? Most of us have grown up hoping for more to choose from because we were always up against a limited range to choose from. When we traveled overseas we always were a bit flummoxed at the 200 varieties of bread in the London supermarket. I know I always wondered how people made up their minds when such a huge choice existed! As a kid in London I would simply ignore the whole range of breads and go simply for the Mother's Pride loaf of bread because I thought it would boggle the mind if I had to actually evaluate all those options before deciding on the bread of my choice!

So we come to the same question - is large choice a good thing or a bad thing? It seems one intrepid sardarni from the US decided to check this out - Sheena Sethi Iyengar a clinically unsighted psychology Professor set up these two tables at the entrance to a major supermarket and on one table she had 6 different jams to choose from and on the other she had 30 different jams to choose from. Of the 600 people who were exposed to the two tables she discovered that more people purchased from the table with fewer choices but more people visited the table with more choices!! Taking this one step further she evaluated people's level of satisfaction when exposed to choice and discovered that people exposed to more choice tended to be less satisfied with their purchase than the ones' who were exposed to less choice! So can we conclude that 'more choice is not necessarily' such a good idea? Well, this amazing lady has written a book on this subject and I'm about to launch into reading it - hopefully we'll find out about if more choice is good or bad when I'm through with the book. Until then I'd like some of you who read this blog to tell me what you think about the issue of choice!

I'm off to catch a train for Tuticorin in a moment - am headed off to Pearl city to attend my school friend Thamilarasu's daughter's wedding. There is going to be a large number of old buddies from school and I'm getting that excited feeling about meeting them.

Hectic times

Its been a while again since I put something down in my blog - guess the approaching wedding of my daughter isn't really helping my writing! The blogger's block is palpable and in my face most of the time because I seem to want to do so many things at the same time and in the confusion that results, writing my blog takes a back seat.

The last two weeks have been hectic to say the least - what with all the travels for one wedding or the other and the kids coming home - its lovely to have both the brats home but I'm not so sure the wife thinks that way about having them both home at the same time! They are two very different kids and pandering to their individual likes and dislikes is a tall order! When they come home they actually expect the mother to be doing exactly what they like!! My mother-in-law is here too - to spend a few weeks with her grand-daughter before she takes on a husband in September! The plan is for Ammu to learn some of her grand-mother's cooking while the old lady is home but I am not sure much of that learning is actually happening!

One of the tasks I am vested with when the mother-in-law comes to Chennai is to take her every morning to the temple in Shastrinagar, Adyar at about 0700hrs - a task I do not fancy because it means I have to hang around outside the temple till she has finished appeasing her God! It always amazes me that the old lady believes that this God of hers actually listens to her and will do his damndest to make sure all her petitions are addressed appropriately! This year however, I notice that the mother-in-law made no such efforts to head to the temple every morning - I dared not ask her why lest I remind her of her usual chores! It turns out that because of a death in her family back in Kerala there is a period of time that must lapse (its called Pela in Malayalam) before she can visit her God again! So this year I am spared the chore of getting my dear Mother-in-law to the abode of her God every morning! Shall we say 'thank God for small mercies'?? Or would that be a mean thing to say given that somebody had to die to spare me the chore? Whichever way I see it I am grateful for the small mercy!

Then there have been all those Georgian visitors to Chennai from overseas - first it was Dr Sam Thomas from Cleveland, Ohio and Glenn Sargon from Perth, Australia. These guys provided us with the excuse to get together again in Chennai after a fairly long hiatus! Boy, was it good to get together again with the old school buddies! Sheila and Doc Jimmy provided the venue for one of the get togethers and Anita and Arun Fredrick opened their home to us all for the second of the get togethers while the third was held on the terrace of the Chater home. The gatherings were well attended and a great time was had by all. The kids joined in and seemed to have themselves a good time too. Below are some pics taken at the get togethers.

Bellboys all - PC, Glenn, Sattar and myself
Ashwin answering a zillion questions on life in an Indian Navy submarine!

Are we as a nation awake or what?

The last few days have seen a torrent of news items on honour killings across the country and I'm trying to make sense of this nonsense called honour killing. It seems that panchayats (local governments in villages across India) are allowed to rule on the issue and can actually penalise persons who choose to marry out of their community. As if that is not enough, there is this notion of 'gotra' and if somebody chooses to marry a person from the same gotra the panchayats can nullify the marriage and punish those who dared to enter into holy matrimony thus! So what is this 'gotra' - I asked around and believe it or not very few even have a foggy idea of what it is! One of the most cited explanations is that every one of us is descended from one or the other Rishi (Hindu hermit) and each of these descendents along the paternal line will be said to have been born under that gotra - for example, all the descendents of Rishi Bharadvaja belong to Bharadvaja gotra. Now, it is forbidden to marry a person from the same gotra - I really wonder who is keeping track of the gotras that people belong to and does any one really care? Well, it seems there are plenty who are keeping track and even more folks who care and will even kill those who dare!!

I haven't the faintest idea which gotra I belong to but then again I am not brahmin and technically speaking the gotra system applies to the brahmins is what I must deduce because you trace yourself to the rishis who were all brahmins.

With so many brothers killing sisters and their husbands for marrying within the same gotra or outside the community the politicians have gotten into the act and some have said panchayats must be given the legal authority to punish people who flout the gotra or community rules! I think it stinks just as badly as the insistence of some politicians to do the Census of India on a caste basis! For heaven's sake don't these jokers realise we are living in the 21st century and not in vedic times? Does education and basic intelligence not impact upon such issues? Seems like education in India is for the classrooms and must be left back there when we exit the classroom and enter the big bad world! That perhaps explains why we in this country do not think anything about spitting in the corners inside buildings or in places where people tread, that perhaps explains why people across the country think nothing of taking a crap in full public view on the roadside!

Seems like none of the politicians or advocates of honour killing have read that soul stirring piece by the poet laureate of India - Tagore:

.....Where the clear stream of reason has not lost its way into the dreary desert sand of dead habit;
Where the mind is led forward by Thee to ever-widening thought and action -
Into that heaven of freedom, my father, let my country awake.

It is clear we, as a nation, have not yet woken up!!

What is it that goes into a marriage invitation?

The time has come for us to go about getting that invitation ready for Ammu's wedding. So last weekend the task was to be undertaken by Sudha, Ammu and myself. I commented to Ammu that I do not even recall having seen what the invitation looked like for my own marriage and here we have her wanting to have a say in everything from the paper used, the color combination and even the wording!

The one thing we three were agreed upon was that it would be a simple, not-too-wordy invitation card. After a visit to a couple of card shops we zeroed in on the paper and general size and layout of the card and handed them the agreed upon wording which was to make references to the parents and grand parents of the bride and just the parents of the groom. These details were conveyed via telephone to the two grand mothers (my mother and Sudha's mother) before we set out for the card shop. By the time we got back home from the card shop my Mom was calling desperately to say that we had to have the addresses of the grand parents printed on the card or people may not be able to tell who the bride is! Sudha and Ammu would have none of this because they argued that the invitation would go mostly by hand or if it did go by post it would be followed by a telephone call so people would easily be able to tell who is getting married.

On Monday the proof arrived by email and it soon became clear to me that just mentioning that the groom was 'son of Nirmala and Lt. Gen G M Nair SM, VSM' would not do - people would want to know where they are from, which means that the details of their ancestral home will need to be mentioned! As I was thinking of this my mother calls to mouth exactly what was going through my mind - call it deja vu or whatever you may! She had a hearty laugh as she spoke of my cousin saying that if we did not give details of the bridegroom's parents 'people may think that Arun's folks have no address'!!

All this basically harks back to the ancient traditions of Kerala where a person is not just himself or herself, he/she is essentially also made up by his ancestry and therefore his/her ancestral home must be part of him/her. Thus, people are always referred to as 'Gopi son of Devaki of Thottakat House in Muttambalam' that description circumscribes the person in his entireity because it tells you who he is, who he is born of and the reference to the ancestral home provides a historical perspectives of the doings of that ancient ancestral home and its scions and therefore a character sketch of the kind of person he could be.

When Sudha and Ammu choose not to have those details appended to the grand-parents of the bride and the parents of the groom they will be breaking a mould that is many hundred years old. Iconoclasts these two young ladies are turning out to be!

What does one make of this?

This morning Sudha and I tried to work out how one car could be available to both of us when we needed it but try as we might it wasn't working out for us. So it was decided that I would take one of those infamous three wheeler taxis of Chennai, the auto-rickshaw to work. We actually have one of those auto-rickshaw stands in front of our house so it should have been easy for me to get one of those three wheelers but it turned out that the direction I was headed was not the direction that the two auto drivers in front of the house were prepared to go! So I trudged it to the next street where there is another one of those auto-stands and here these guys were asking for a hundred and eighty bucks for a trip that should not have cost anything more than a hundred bucks! So off I went in the direction of the bus stand thinking I'll do the trip to work by bus. As I walk along the road an auto slows down and when I tell him where I wanted to go he demanded two hundred bucks for the trip! The next auto guy who slows down surprisingly wanted only one hundred bucks so I hop in and tell him I'll gladly give him a hundred and twenty Rupees just for his charging me the correct price! He is surprised and looks at me through his rear view mirror just to make sure I was not mocking him so I told him I was just glad he did not try to rip me off and he said 'there is little place left in the world for honesty in this day and age Sir'.

The auto trundles along and as we reach Kalakshetra colony the auto-driver's mobile phone rings so he pulls over to the side and begins to talk to the caller inquiring how his wife was. He was agitated by the caller telling him his wife was having a breach baby and would need a Caesarian section and that the hospital needed him to put up another Rupees Seven Thousand before they could consider sending his wife in to the operation theater. He pleaded with the caller saying he had Rs Two thousand after having plied his auto all night just to raise some money for the hospital costs. He urged them to go ahead with the operation and promised to bring the money when he got to the hospital. He was weeping openly as he said that and he hung up on the caller. He got back into the auto and turned to me and said 'mine was a love marriage Sir, never ever have a love marriage - you will have no family support if you go against the will of your families'. He went on to say that he begged the auto owner for some money but he refused him money and instead preferred to put money into a temple hundi! He was crest fallen that friends too would not come forth at a time of need and said he was feeling suicidal. He wanted me to get off his auto so he could go and return the auto to the owner and head to the hospital with the two thousand rupees he had in hand. He even said I did not have to pay for the trip thus far.

I asked the man to calm down and said he should drive on to my office and I would give him the money he needed for the child birth. The man could not believe his ears - he turned around and touched my feet and said 'God must have sent you to get in my auto'. I was quite embarrassed by his utterances and asked him to concentrate on his driving but he went on talking, mostly to himself, of how his God took care of him. I did not have the heart to tell the man I am an atheist and did not believe in his God! I stopped at an ATM and drew some money for the man and handed it over to him at the end of the journey. I chose not to watch his facial expression when the money came into his hands - I just turned away and walked towards my office. I did not dare turn around and see what was happening with the man.

At 1330 today I got a call on my mobile from the auto driver to tell me his wife had been delivered of a baby girl and that the mother and baby were well. I wish the auto-man and his little family all the very best. I really am not sure what to make of this episode, I just hope that this whole episode was not an elaborate con and that the money was well spent.

I'm impressed

Indeed, I'm impressed with the way my niece's wedding went off in the deep south of Kerala, India. Last week Sudha, Ammu and I traveled to Trivandrum to attend Veena's wedding - Sudha and Ammu headed there a couple of days before I did so as to be able to help in the final stretch of the preparations for Veena's wedding.

Veena's mother Usha (my first cousin) had a houseful of folks from her husband's side as well as from her own Mom's side - every one of those folks had traveled from afar to be there to put their shoulder to the wheel. The youngster males were ever ready to drive to the airport or railway station to pick up arriving guests, while others set about cleaning the house, the women helped put together the food for all those in the house. It was work, work, work for everybody and come mid-night people slept wherever there was some space to rest their tired bodies and were up early the next day bright-eyed and bushy-tailed to do whatever it took to make the wedding a fun event for all to enjoy. The day before the big day was special because more people had come in from all over the world and the house was choc-a-bloc! There was this American guy Enrique Batayas, all of 27, who was there with his German girl friend Manon who he met in Australia. The two of them got swept into the marriage preparations and were simply amazed at how the family all pull together - it was the Yankee who commented how awesome it was to see four generations of people all get together for the wedding! Back in the US he says its just 'me, my Mom and maybe my dog'!!

The wedding itself happens so fast that there is not really too much to see and because it is not over seen by a priest there is always plenty of confusion on the stage with multiple elders reeling out contradictory instructions!! Enrique put it beautifully when asked what he thought of the wedding per se - he said 'it was confusion confounded once the bride and groom got on the stage and then the paparazzi moved in and there was little to see'!! How true - most of us actually only got to see the butts of photographers and videographers!!

In the end it was a lovely simple wedding like most Nair weddings and Brijesh and Veena looked the perfect pair. I wish them all the very best in life.

Its been blogger's block for me and I hate myself for not writing my blog more regularly. Lots has been happening since I last blogged and most of it is rather negative if I may say so.

In July 2004 I went about setting up an e-group for my buddies from school so that we could all be on the same page and actively stay in touch as often as possible. This actually followed from my having done a similar thing for my University buddies some two years earlier - by July 2004 I had some 60 people connected from among those who went to my old University in the Himalayas, on the University e-group. The growth in membership in my University group was rather poor considering that we had thousands of students in the University when I was there. Nevertheless the University e-group functioned like a well oiled group and it was seen by one and all on the group as a great way of staying in touch. That is why I went about initiating a similar e-group for the old school and it shocked all of us that the school e-group could grow so large so fast - by Dec we had over 250 people on the school e-group and in a year it had hit 500+ and in another year we were at 750 and today it is over 1100 people strong! People from all over the globe, from every continent and plenty of mailings and lots of action every where. I was so proud of the growth of the school e-group that at a meeting at my old University I chided my university buddies for not growing the University group into something larger! How wrong could I have been??

Suddenly the scenario is no longer as rosy as it seemed on the school e-group because some people realized that this is a very easy way of sending out political messages and before you know it the system is so severely vitiated that no longer is it fun to read the messages going about on the school e-group. There are always folks (mostly those with very little stake in the positive functioning of the e-group) who are going to use it for nefarious purposes and its nearly impossible to rein them in without using strong arm tactics.

I'm now convinced that e-groups that are larger than a certain critical mass will always be impossible to manage because of elements that will use the system for their own purposes. So, in hind sight, the old university e-group is just perfect for its size, we have never had a negative email there and it has always been used for positive purposes unlike the school e-group! I'm beginning to think I've created a Frankenstein here in the form of the school e-group! To conclude, I guess I must say 'one lives and learns'!!!

Propitiating evil

Not so long ago I came across this blog by Jug Suraiya who happens to be a columnist of repute for the Times of India - he goes on to talk about the issue of Gods needing to be propitiated in every religion of the world. He wonders what kind of creator this God has to be if He must constantly be told of His virtues by his subjects in order for Him to feel good and favour those who propitiate him! He also goes on to say that if it is alright for mortals to 'bribe' God then it is perfectly ok for people to bribe people to get their work done faster or remove obstacles in their way!

Now, I could not agree with the blogger any more - this is something I have maintained as my thesis against the construct of God - any God who is bribe-able is an evil God and you don't go about propitiating evil! Now, it becomes clear why so many of these religious folks are capable of such evil.

Then there is the peculiar situation where only man is required to appease his God - all the other millions of life forms that 'He' is supposed to have created do not need to waste time with propitiating their God! They get by fine without the construct of God!! By that token humans too will get by just fine without the need for God and therefore religion. But then how will those thousands of people who do the work of priests and their assistants make a living? In the end its about God being 'of the priest, by the priest and for the priest'!

And then the priest goes out and makes that statement that 'my God is better than your God' and before you know it there are religious wars and communal flare ups! Can't we simply do without religion and live peacefully thereafter? Guess, I am not the first to think of it that way - Lennon with his 'Imagine' thought about it much before I did - I sure wish more people would 'Imagine' like Lennon did. Am taking the liberty of reproducing his lyrics just so the reader might ruminate on its beauty!

Imagine there's no Heaven It's easy if you try No hell below us Above us only sky Imagine all the people Living for today Imagine there's no countries It isn't hard to do Nothing to kill or die for And no religion too Imagine all the people Living life in peace You may say that I'm a dreamer But I'm not the only one I hope someday you'll join us And the world will be as one Imagine no possessions I wonder if you can No need for greed or hunger A brotherhood of man Imagine all the people Sharing all the world You may say that I'm a dreamer But I'm not the only one I hope someday you'll join us And the world will live as one

A most enjoyable trip up into the hills

It was yet another enjoyable trip up to Ketti valley for the Executive Committee meeting of the Old Georgian Association that was held at my friend Colin O'Connor's new home overlooking the old school - the view of the old school from almost every room in Colin's house is spectacular and is something I would give an arm and a leg for!



We had 30 OGs and their spouses in attendance and the deliberations took place on the top terrace (there are two of them!) of Colin's beautiful home. I am sure there will be plenty of pictures of the Executive Committee meeting online soon enough. The cold surprised me who always thought I knew the weather in Ketti better than I knew the weather in Chennai! It was biting cold that evening and I even overheard somebody say he had trouble taking a pee because he couldn't find his member! The bon homie between old school buddies was to die for - we had a great time getting together and lots of very useful discussions were had on the sidelines too because there were quite a few Board members in attendance.

Congratulations to Colin and Geeta for selecting such a lovely place for a retirement abode - can only say I will always envy you for the great views you have of my favorite valley. Attached are a few pictures of the flora of Ketti Valley which is another thing that draws me to this beautiful valley. By the way, quite a few folks have asked me what the common name of those ubiquitous yellow paper flowers found all over the upper Nilgiris is - it is Bracteantha bracteata - it obviously presents in more than just the yellow form, its available in white, pink, bronze and even cream colours - a picture of the white specimen may be found below.

Witness to some of Nature's bounty!

Yesterday I had the good fortune to watch an interesting little aside in Nature.
Two parrots, presumably a male and female, were exploring a largish opening in a Raintree here in Chennai - the two had either laid their eggs in the tree-hole or were planning to. They suddenly discovered the presence of a red crested woodpecker nearby and decided it had no business to be anywhere near their abode in the tree so one of the parrots attacked the beautifully colored woodpecker who immediately took flight and went further up into the Raintree. Then it began to descend along the main tree trunk, very quietly, very stealthily by kind of rappelling down (only there was no rope!) the tree trunk much like a mountaineer would descend down a vertical face - it had splayed its legs to lower its centre of gravity and the parrots were blissfully unaware of the woodpeckers approach! They were up in the tree, looking out for a flying object while the woodpecker was at the door of their nest!! Ofcourse, they went for the woodpecker when they finally discovered that he was planning to enter their tree hole! Check out the sequence of pics below! It was fascinating to behold!

Lt. Cdr. Rahul Nair

Sometimes one needs to sit down and try and understand the way of the world - it was not even a month ago that we had the pleasure of the company of Lachu (Lakshmi), Rahul and their extremely cute son Rohaan at Ammu's engagement in Kochi, they had come all the way from Goa. Rahul was a Lt. Commander in the Indian Navy and we were all very proud of the fact that he flew for the Sagar Pawan team - the Indian Navy's aerobatic team - only two navies in the world have their own aerobatic team and the Indian Navy was one of them. At noon today we got news that Rahul was no more, he and his skipper Commander SK Maurya had crashed while performing an aerobatic maneuver in Hyderabad for the Indian Aviation Expo - he was only 33.

Somehow, life just doesn't seem to be fair - how do you tell a three year old kid that his doting father is no more and that he will never see him again? Lachu, Sudha's niece, was married for just five years and lived an enviably happy and contented life - Ammu was a great fan of her Lachu chechi and Rahulchettan - when they were based in Mumbai Ammu would spend extended weekends at their home babysitting little Rohaan. It is amazing how close Ammu got to the three of them over a couple of years.

I wonder too what makes people choose these risky vocations - is it bravado or is it just one of those needs to prove that you are up to any challenge? I ask because I spent a while on a submarine a few days ago - when you get into one of those behemoths you cannot but be amazed at how cramped and confined the space inside is and how many valves, gauges, pipes and instruments have been crammed into that confined space. When you have to spend long days in one of those boats below the sea with almost half the normal oxygen levels and completely inadequate sleeping arrangements it really must appear that only crazy folks will opt for such a vocation! One can only hope that Ashwin and his ilk who opt for such a life below sea level enjoy what they do and at the end of the day feel they have lived up to the standards they set for themselves.

I hope Rahul too feels this way and wish that life, at least in the future, will be fairer to his lovely wife and child.

I'd like to leave the world abetter place than I found it.....

For some years now I have been thinking of moving to the Himalayas to work with some of the pahadi communities up in the Kumaon Himalayas - now you could ask why go all the way to the Kumaon? Well, my answer is that the people up in the Kumaon are rather simple, undemanding folks who have never got their fair share of development expenditure because they do not pressure their elected representatives or community leaders. I also think the communities in the Himalayas could do with some organising and some education that few, if any, are willing or inclined to provide them.

One NGO that seems to be doing yeoman service in this neglected part of India is the CHIRAG Trust (Central Himalayan Rural Action Group) setup by the Lalls in 1987. They literally went to the people, lived among them, learnt from them, loved them, started with what they knew and built on the foundation they had. Today this Trust works in as many as 200+ villages in Uttarakhand in multiple areas such as water shed management, forestry, agriculture, primary health, education, women's issues and knowledge development. This seems like something I'd enjoy doing and would seriously consider pursuing once I'm done with Corporate life and life in the city.

I'd very much like to work in the area of Permaculture which is really a term that encompasses sustainable agriculture and sustainable living. There is so much of our living and farming that needs to be thought through again in order to ensure that we return our homesteads to a sustainable state. Simple things like using energy efficient cooking systems that do not denude our surroundings, fully utilising what nature provides us for free and ensuring that our aquifers are constantly recharged by ensuring that run-off is minimised - I love the idea of 'swales' which the Australian permaculturist Bill Mollison has promoted worldwide - swales are nothing but trenches cut into the land along contours with a view towards trapping water that would otherwise have run off and allowing this trapped water to recharge the local aquifers. These swales have been shown to greatly enhance the ability of barren lands to support plant life and thereby return them to a productive state.

This way I would have done my bit towards aligning myself to the only credo I believe is worth living for - leaving the world and my surroundings a better place than I found it.

No guarantees in life

Lots has been happening all around me in the last ten days or so. First there was this call from my cousin in Trivandrum to tell me that her husband (a recently retired rocket scientist from the Indian Space Research Organisation) suddenly felt dizzy and passed out in their drawing room after returning from a long drive. He was taken to the hospital and it turns out that he had had a heart attack so an angiogram was ordered and that showed atleast three 90% blocks on the main Coronary artery of the heart. It was decided to go in for an open heart triple bypass operation which incidentally has just gotten over today. For now, all seems well. What perhaps must be a huge blessing for this cousin and her husband is that all costs of the operation are borne by the ISRO health plan to which they were subscribed. These are the small mercies of working in India's public sector.

Then one evening last week there was this call from a school friend of mine who was almost in tears at the other end of the phone as she broke the news to me that her younger sister, just 41 years old, was diagnosed with a Stage IV cancer (Non-Hodgkin Lymphoma). Suddenly, one's whole life flashes before one's eyes because it just doesn't seem plausible that someone so young, whom I had seen a couple of days earlier, is suddenly dealt this bolt from the blue. It dawns upon you that life can be very unfair and there are no guarantees whatsoever in life. The impermanence of life itself makes one wonder why we fight and compete so hard in life when it may be that you are not around tomorrow to enjoy the fruits of your fights. All of a sudden my friend's life and that of her sister's seems to have been turned upside down and the dreariness of life seems to mar what used to be the brightness of life for all these folks. When, cancer hits so close to home one is somehow unnerved by the closeness of it all - it could have been me is the constant refrain in my head. Well, I guess there are no guarantees in life.

Tree Love, its not true love

If you have driven along the scenic East Coast Road from Chennai towards Mamallapuram (aka Mahabalipuram) you may have noticed a peculiar phenomenon of the Palmyrah tree growing through a Banyan tree - several instance of the monocot growing through this dicot can be seen all along the way to the temple town. It almost seems to suggest some form of symbiotic relationship between the two species. A kind of give-and-take relationship between the two completely different plant species.

For years I tried to understand the relationship between the two plants and even asked several botanists of repute about this phenomenon and nobody could quite give me an explanation.
It was only recently that I chanced upon the answer to this botanical riddle while watching a crow eat the fruit of the banyan tree on the campus of the Indian Institute of Technology, Madras. The crow sat on one of the leaves of a young palmyrah tree and tried to prise open with its beak a bright red, ripe banyan fruit - a part of the open fruit dropped from the crows beak and rolled down the sloping leaf, towards the palmyrah trunk and lodged in the ample axil of the palmyrah leaf. The axil of the palmyrah leaf is deep and can hold a substantial amount of water and other plant debris which, overtime, rots and provides a fertile seeding ground for the several seeds in the banyan fruit. The seeds germinate in the axil of the young palmyrah and the roots begin to grow out of the axil and downwards towards the soil while the palm grows towards the sun. Soon the banyan roots reach the ground and draw enough sustenance from the soil to allow the banyan to grow rapidly upwards and claim its share of the sun's energy.

Here is a case of a purely physical relationship between two plants where one plant actually gets its initial sustenance from another and eventually takes over and outgrows and even smothers the nurturer, in time! Who said life is fair?

31st Jan has come and gone!

Well, the day dawned sooner than expected and before we knew it Ammu's engagement is over and everybody has returned to their various bases! We started out with a head count of less than 100 people who would attend the engagement which is essentially meant to be a small family affair. On the day we found we had close to 300 people from so many places - there were people from Delhi, Lucknow, Goa, Mumbai, Bangalore, Tuticorin, Calicut, Chennai, Trivandrum and even Sydney, Australia! It was one of the nicest occasions I have been privy to because it was a truly happy time that every body had. A lot of the credit must go to Ammu's maternal Uncle and Aunt (Sunil and Ammu) who, in true matriarchal tradition, took it upon themselves to arrange everything for the function.

Ammu is now formally engaged to Arun Nair and she looked so happy to be engaged. I fervently hope she will always be as happy and will have many occasions to cherish in her married life. It was also a pleasure meeting with Arun's extended family who are such simple, pleasant people with no airs at all. I am sure Ammu will fit in to the family like a hand fits a glove.

It would be unfair to close this blog without some pictures of the happy occasion so here goes:

Writing for fun

One of the things I always wanted to do was write - I embarked upon a story based on my experience in boarding school and went part way through the story but I soon hit upon the typical writer's block. So I figured, maybe I should attempt writing a short story before I embark on a full book. Sometime, in early December I set out to write a short story also based around the old school - I soon discovered that it was fun, I went about writing it a few paragraphs at a time and over the last few weeks it has taken a certain form which I found I actually liked. I'm not too sure anybody would want to read my story so I'll put it in safe storage here on my blog and haul it out when I think its time to show it around! So here it is.

If you are one of the few who stumbled upon my blog and have taken the trouble to read the short story below - do be kind enough to tell me what you feel about the story by clicking on the comment link below.

Lily of the Valley

By Sailendra Bhaskar

It was the winter of 1970, the blustery winds bent the tops of the tall eucalyptus trees, the winds howled as they rushed through the valley bringing a strong drizzle which made it feel like a Siberian winter in the tropics. Marge, who was the Matron of Oakshott House hugged her water-proof Macintosh to herself as she made her way down from the dining hall to her two room residence on the south end of the cottage she was in charge of. The boarder children who she was the house mother of were all away for the Christmas holidays but her own two children were with her. Soon they too would arrive from Ooty on their father's scooter; she wondered how they would manage in the rain and made a mental note to start up the wood fire in the living room so that they could warm themselves when they get home.

Sean was seven and Salomi was four when their father Krishnan who worked as a Project Officer with the Indo-German Agricultural Development Project in the Ooty area when he met with this big made, but well proportioned blonde German woman named Chantal who worked for GTZ the German government agency that oversaw the IGADP. Chantal was older than Krishnan but the attraction grew between them when they needed to spend late hours together drafting the weekly reports they had to send back to Germany by telex. She took it upon herself to teach the tall, brown-eyed Badaga boy German and Krishnan on his part enjoyed the female company and loved the new language. Earlier, Krishnan made it a point to get back to the valley and his family atleast by dinner time every day but these days his working late meant that he had to stay back in the project office quite often. It was cold and dreary in the project office, there really was no place to sleep but a hold-all came in handy on such nights. Chantal would order her ayah to bring her dinner, roast chicken and Roesti (pronounced Roshti) made from Nilgiri potato, to the project office for Krishnan and her to share. On some nights there would be German chardonnay imported all the way from the Pfalz. On such nights Chantal would fall asleep at her desk, Krishnan would open up his hold-all which was always tucked away under his office table, lay his bed out and gently wake her and tell her she could sleep in his bed while he would curl up on the office sofa and sleep.

Marge had the living room fire going in a jiffy, she didnt need to work too hard at it because Sean had carefully stashed away quite a bit of eucalyptus wood under the lean-to behind the box-room where it wouldn't get wet. Sean loved to use the wood-cutter's axe and split logs for the home fire when he had nothing else to do. Salomi would sit nearby below the luckote tree and watch her older brother expertly dismember those logs with an axe that was almost as tall as him. Marge, got close up to the fire to take in its warmth and hoped Krishnan would bring the children soon because it was already dark, dreary and wet but she also knew that if that woman boss of his was around it may be very late before Krishnan gets away from work. But this time Krishnan had the children for an excuse to get away early from Chantal, she thought.

Theirs had been a marriage made in school, Krishnan was her classmate in the boarding school that she was now employed in but he was not a boarder. He was a day scholar who lived down in the village of Shantoor where his parents were traditional Badaga farmers. Krishnan's father felt that his boy needed to get a better education than the kind offered by the village school and so he trudged up the hill to the big school where they housed and taught children of Anglo-Indian lineage in English. He had heard that the children there got to learn lots more than in the village school so he approached the tall, swarthy, black-suited Principal of the school and in his broken English requested for admission for his elder son, Krishnan. The Principal seemed taken in by the request of this Badaga potato farmer wearing the traditional white mundu and seelay, a long piece of thick special weave of cotton with distinctive borders in black and zari, and a white turban. Before long the Principal had acquiesced to this request of the native and thus it was that Krishnan got to attend this very English public school. It never ceased to amaze the young Badaga boy how big the school campus was, the beautiful steeple with its clock could be seen even from his home in Shantoor but what he loved most was the peel of the bell in the steeple which echoed all through the valley at all times in the day. It was that bell that signaled the end of a class period or lunch time or dinner time - everything. It was in Standard three, he must have been all of eight years old, when Krishnan was asked to sit next to Marge in class by the Class Teacher Mrs Paul. His classmates made fun of him because he was made to sit near a girl but Marge made up for all that by telling him he should ignore them. Krishnan and Marge soon became the best of friends, he would carry chocolates for her (and nobody else) when he came to school from home and she would save up her bun at break time and slip it into his desk - Krishnan was never keen to run down to the dining hall for break because he preferred to stay on the school flat and play 'alees' (marbles) with his mates.

The years went by and soon it was the final year in school, Marge and Krishnan were a long standing pair and everybody knew they were in it for the long run except Krishnan's parents who had heard about his dalliance with a pretty Anglo Indian girl. They made it clear to him that they don't want to hear anything about marriage to this Christian girl because that would be bad news for the family among the Badaga community. Marge's own family in Podanur, a railway colony not far from Coimbatore were less than pleased about the news they were getting from school that she was going steady with a tribal boy from the hills. How could she associate with a Hindu and that too a tribal, they asked? Her parents decided she would be sent to the Secretarial training college in Madras after school so maybe Marge would forget about the tribal boy when she gets to the big city. But lady luck had other things in mind because Krishnan's parents decided he would do his pre-university course in Christian College, Tambaram on the outskirts of the city of Madras.

Krishnan went on to graduate in Botany (the first graduate Badaga from his village) from the college in Tambaram but way before he had finished his graduation Marge had finished her one-year secretarial course and returned to the hills to seek employment in the old school as a secretary to the Headmaster. Krishnan's visits to his village increased manifold when Marge returned to the valley. His parents had been warning him of his continued association with Marge and even threatened to bodily harm her if he continued to meet and associate with her. Krishnan meanwhile had grown too fond of Marge to take those threats lightly, he warned his parents and relatives that if he heard of any such intimidation happening to his friend he would not take it lightly - relations at home became severely strained almost to the point of breaking. Then one day he heard from Marge that the village sarpanch had gone to meet the Principal of the school to tell him that the community didn't approve of the relationship between this Christian girl and their young lad. Krishnan was summoned by the Principal and told about this meeting with the sarpanch, his reaction was one of absolute anger. He requested the use of the Principal's telephone and made a few calls to Ooty and then asked Marge to come with him to his friend the Sub-registrar's office in Ooty where the two signed the marriage register and pronounced themselves man and wife. Marge got the Principal to give her leave of absence from work for a few weeks and headed to Madras where Krishnan worked with a Pharmaceutical company. It wasn't long before Marge was pregnant with Sean, that was when her parents relented and accepted her back into the family along with Krishnan. His parents however were still smarting from the afront of his marrying without the community's ok but they too were willing to let bygones be bygones when they heard that their daughter-in-law had produced a male child for their son.

It was a hand to mouth existence that Marge and Krishnan led, the pharmaceutical company job simply didn't pay enough and the rents were sky high as also the cost of living in the big city. But it was a happy life together with little Sean and her husband, soon he would be three and could be sent to a kindergarten and maybe Marge could get a job at the kindergarten and supplement their income. That wasn't to be because Marge soon discovered that she was expecting again and this time around she was fraught with violent bouts of morning sickness that made her woozy for most of the day. She could barely manage the chores around the home, she couldn't even iron Krishnan's clothes for him because if she looked down she'd begin to feel woozy. So invariably the clothes would be given to the the local pin-man to iron - he did a good job of ironing but it cost quite a bit. The ironed clothes came back individually placed in between old newspapers so while Sean played about in the yard in front of the house Marge would browse through the old newspaper bits and suddenly one day she saw the advertisement 'Wanted Project Officer for NGO in the Nilgiris' - she showed it to Krishnan when he got home and he seemed hardly interested but she prevailed on him to apply because the qualifications matched with Krishnan's and the salary was more than double what he was currently earning. Reluctantly, Krishnan wrote out his application and Marge waddled to the local post office and posted the application.

Before long they were back in the Nilgiris, Marge's morning sickness had all but disappeared once they got to the hills and Krishnan was enjoying his new job where he had to train Badaga farmers how to grow high yielding potato and other vegetables on the newly terraced Nilgiri hill slopes. Salomi was born without further difficulties and she thrived in the beautiful climate of the Ketti valley. Marge soon resumed working in the school office and would rush home at lunch time to breast feed little Salomi. Sean was in Kindergarten by now and enjoying his time in Smith House where the little ones lived and went to school in the same building. By the time Sean was five the matron of Oakshott cottage, Mrs Hawkins and her family migrated to Australia leaving the post vacant - Marge felt she would enjoy the job of Matron more than the mundane office job she had - besides it paid a little better and she would get a rent-free two bedroom tenement to stay in on campus. She approached the Principal with the idea, he did think twice because Marge was quite young to be managing the senior boys cottage but he liked her work ethic and felt that the family could do with the additional income and accommodation so the boys in Oakshott wound up getting a smart new matron.

The matron's job was quite demanding, she had to manage the accounting of clothes that the dhobis took to wash, she had to arrange the washed and ironed clothes in specific cubby holes in the larder when the dhobi came back with the clothes. Then there was the supervising of the boys' doing their house work and sweeping of the area around the cottage. On Wednesdays she had to ensure the boys all wrote letters home and on Fridays the boys got to withdraw small amounts of money to use in the school tuck shop or sometimes slightly larger sums of money to go out to Ooty on Ooty Saturdays. She made sure the dorm beds were made well and the dorm was maintained in an clean and orderly fashion.It was only when the boys went home for the holidays that things got quite boring because there was not much to do. During those days she fussed over her two children and made them special food. She even walked them down to Shantoor to spend time with their paternal grandparents who would dote on the kids. Their only crib being that the children couldn't understand their Badaga language.

Krishnan meanwhile immersed himself in his work and because he was Badaga he had no trouble at all getting his kinsfolk to adopt the modern agricultural techniques that the Germans were advocating. The weekly reports that he helped Chantal send out to Germany showed considerable progress and the German Agricultural Development Agency GTZ was most gratified by the progress being made in the far away hills of South India. They found the work done by Chantal in India excellent and wanted her to head a similar GTZ team in Ghana
where they were attempting to get the local tribespeople to adopt cultivation of Jatropha in their arid lands. The seeds of this perrenial shrub could be used to extract oils that could light up their nomadic villages and provide the tribes a sustainable livelihood. Chantal, however was most comfortable in her current job and was enjoying her personal and professional life in the Nilgiris and a change of job to Team Leader in Ghana didn't seem so inviting. Besides there was Krishnan, she had become so fond of him and his two children that she couldn't think of leaving them and going to Africa. She spoke with Krishnan about what the GTZ wanted from her and she saw his face go ashen. She reached out and pulled him to her and hugged him and told him she wouldn’t go anywhere without him and his children.

The rain on that evening was torrential, how was he to take the two little ones on his scooter all the way down to Ketti from Ooty he wondered. The telephones were not working and there was no power - the generator kicked in and could hardly be heard because it rained so hard. Chantal walked over to the telex machine and there was a four line message from Germany which had obviously arrived some time ago. She tore off the message from the machine and read it, all the while shaking her head from side to side and looking up at Krishnan. She had to leave immediately; she had been ordered to take up the job in Ghana and needed to go to Bonn before she headed out to Accra.

Marge, stoked the fire in the living room, the chimney coughed into life on that wet evening, the initial smoke in the room made her cough so she hastened to open the windows just a wee bit so the smoke would go out. She knew it was going to be difficult for Krishnan to bring the kids on his scooter in the pouring rain but she was sure he will come as soon as the rain subsides. She put the radio on and tuned it to Radio Ceylon and there was The Drifters with her all time favourite hit ‘Save the last dance for me’. She was reminded of the Anglo Indian dances back in her home town of Podanur, a faint smile came across her pretty face as she thought of how long it has been since she went to a dance because Krishnan had no interest in dancing. She promised herself that next holidays she will take the children and spend some time with her parents in the Railway Colony and will make it a point to go for the Christmas Ball. She wondered who she would dance with; it had been so long since she ventured on to the dance floor. It was dark and dreary outside and the rain was not letting up - it looked like she would have to spend the night alone because there was no way Krishnan and the children could make it in this torrent. She sat by the fire and fell asleep, the fire crackled as eucalyptus oil emanated from the hot wood and suddenly she awoke to the sound of the bursting of an oil bubble in the fireplace. She had been dreaming, a most weird dream in which she saw Sean and Salomi waving to her as they climbed the steps leading up to an airplane door and there was Krishnan bringing up the rear and waving her goodbye with the most beatific of smiles. He blew kisses to her as he disappeared into the Lufthansa aircraft.

The rain subsided early morning, Marge grabbed an umbrella just in case and headed to the school office from where she hoped to call Krishnan's office to find out what happened to her husband and her kids. The phone in the Indo-German project office wouldn't ring, she realised it must be out of order what with that godawful rain last night. She made her way back to her cottage and wondered how she could find out whats happening with her husband and children. It was noon when she heard the ringing of the postman's cycle bell outside, he had a telegram to deliver, she wondered who would send her a telegram - she used her index finger to tear open the telegram which read ' We had to go sweetheart, will see you when we can, Love Krish'.

January 2010