Time seems to fly by faster these days!

Its past mid-January in the year 20-10 - it almost seems like we were ringing in the new year just yesterday and here we are already two weeks into the second decade of the 2nd millennium! I guess when you get to the top of the hill its pretty fast going when you are heading down hill! Life never seemed to rocket by so soon before I was 50!!

Its also the impending engagement and marriage of the daughter that seems to make time want to rush by, I feel. In another 13 days Ammu will be engaged and a few months on and she'll be married! Somehow I don't feel old enough to be a father-in-law - this fact dawned upon me only yesterday when I spoke with a distant cousin in Mumbai who was rather surprised when I said I was calling to invite her father for Ammu's engagement! She seemed to think that it was too early days yet for me to be changing status from father to father-in-law! But then again, that's what is on the cards so whether I like it or not or whether I'm old enough or not I am going to be father-in-law soon enough!

Funnily, it was just the other day that Sudha and I were talking about parent's age when kids get married and she came up with the fact that her mother was a grand mother before she was 50 and here she was turning 50 and her kid will just be getting married! The saving grace was that as we look around us there are plenty of parents who are well past 50 and the children are no where near marriage!

Carpe diem

The last week too went by in a flash it would seem. There was much happening all around and that must be whats causing me to feel like the world is going by at a crazy speed. Ashwin completed his Centre for Marine Engineering Training Phase II program at Lonavla and on the 1st of Jan 2010 he was promoted to the rank of Lieutenant in the Indian Navy.

Almost immediately they had their Stripe wetting ceremony - a Naval tradition that goes back to the time of Lord Nelson when officers of the British Navy sometimes got promoted at sea and got their new stripes on board - these stripes tend to look rather fresh and shiny when laid against their older stripes so other senior officers wet the new promotee's stripes with beer or alcohol to dullen them to match the old stripes! Ofcourse, the ceremony then moves into high gear with a lot of alcohol flowing and people getting rather drunk.

Then next I hear that Ashwin has been asked to be the Staff Officer for the visit of an Admiral to INS Shivaji so he had to head off to Mumbai airport and pick up the top Navy brass and ferry him (sitting properly on his left) to his base.
Thereafter he had to be around the Admiral till he left base. That left Ashwin with almost no time to pack and make his move to Mumbai to meet with his sister and brother-in-law-to-be before he left for Vizag where he would join the Submarine training school.

Come Sunday afternoon and we get a call from Ashwin saying he has reached INS Satavahana in Vizag - he is almost intimidated by the size of everything around - his room is located atop a hill while everything else is at the base of the hill which means he is going to have to go up and down that hill a fair number of times every day. This morning they start their training - it all starts with Escape Training School where the trainees enter a 100' tower filled with water, from the base of the tower and train to reach the top of the tower in as little time as possible! Its all very physical and one can see he is going to have to be 200% fit in order to be able to complete the next one year successfully! Can only wish him good luck and tell him Carpe diem!

C'est la vie

Its one month to the day since our daughter first met her to-be-husband in a coffee shop somewhere in Bandra, Mumbai - it has been an amazing one month because the girl has been moving at lightning speed from cloud one to cloud nine and may even go higher if there was any such thing. The few days she spent at home recently were a revelation because the kid who preferred to spend most of her holidays hanging out with her Chennai based friends suddenly turned all domestic and preferred to stay home. Don't get me wrong, she wasn't staying home to spend time with her folks - she was staying home because it was most convenient for her to stay in touch with her beau wherever he was, via SMS and mobile phone calls! She must have sent anywhere between 20-30 text messages per hour for about 10 hours in the day!! Then there were all those calls from her beau's cousins and close relatives - they had so much to say to her and she to them! I was flabbergasted to see how coolly she connected with these folks who she had never set eyes on! Then she goes to Kerala and meets a whole load of those relos and according to Sudha it was like she has known them all her life! Soon it was time for her to make that trip back to Mumbai and within a few days she is cribbing that none of her own relos seem to want to make contact with her whereas all her beau's folks are so excited about her coming into their family! Even her mother-in-law- to-be is in regular touch with her and she's loving it! And guess what she hardly needs to talk to her Dad anymore!! Otherwise it was atleast three missed-calls per day to yours truly to talk about everything and nothing and suddenly the calls don't come any more! Oh, yes she called today to ask me about what opiod substances could be as one of her patients was supposedly addicted to that stuff. So now the Dad continues to be her walking-talking encyclopedia and nothing more!! And she isn't even engaged as yet!!! Last night her mother commented that her relationship with her daughter has never been better - they're on phone constantly which was never the case up until recently!! Am I seeing a sea change in this girl I raised? Is it all that estrogen thats flowing in her system? Or is it simply the way of the flesh, c'est la vie is it??

2009 is history

2009 is now history and many of you must have seen it off in style - I know that some friends in Sydney actually got themselves vantage sites to sit and watch the best fireworks in the world as they transitioned from 2009 to 2010 - yet others froze their butts off in good olde England and some of our friends in the southern states of the US of A actually had a wet new years eve!! Sudha and I went to a packed Madras Race Club to ring in the new year - the dance floor was jam packed, all 2500 sq. ft of it! Interestingly there were a fair number of friends in attendance that night - Ducky, Aparna and their beautiful daughter were there, as were Ivan, Bertha, Jovan and his fiance Kim along with some of his childhood friends who had come in from Australia. We also caught up with Dennis Houghton for a short while and then ofcourse there was Sattar, Jenny and the Begum who arrived only at 10pm that night from Australia - we had picked her up from the airport and brought her straight to the MRC.

The next night it was Sattar and Jen's turn to pick up Doc Madhu who arrived from Brisbane at the same time as the Begum had the previous day - as soon as they got home with Doc, the Begum, Sudha and I dropped by at Sattars' to welcome the good Doc! We didnt finish till well past midnight and at 0400hrs that morning I had to head out to the station to pick up my daughter from the station! Was I sleep deficit or what?!!! Thankfully Saturdays are holidays for me these days so I put it to good use and caught up on all the sleep over the next two days! Saturday night Jen cooked up the most amazing Paan Thay Kauk Swey, that most favourite of Burmese foods!

Hectic weekend it has been - heres hoping the year began for all of my friends with as much or more flourish than ours and wishing them all the very best for 2010.

The die is cast

Its been a hectic ten days with things hotting up on the daughter's marriage front. On the evening of 22nd Dec Ammu was to fly in to Chennai from Mumbai for her Christmas vacations. The General and his wife chose to fly in on the same day from Yol (almost 10 hours of travel!) - their flight was delayed by about 45 minutes and Ammu's by over an hour and a half! This meant that that they would have to wait for almost two hours at the airport if they wanted to get a glimpse of the prospective daughter-in-law! Surprisingly, the General and his wife decided they would wait till Ammu got in! This gave Sudha and me some time to chat up with the General and his wife and get to know some more about them. They seem very simple folk who are just happy to get themselves a daughter-in-law who will keep their son happy. Ofcourse, the Army had dispatched a Subedar Major to receive the General in a fancy car flying the General's flag - those folks had to wait too till Ammu got in.

After Ammu's flight landed her luggage seemed to take for ever! When she finally got out of the airport she had big hugs for me and her mother and big hugs for the mother-in-law to be and father-in-law to be too! Times are a changing arent' they?

Arun, the prospective groom would come in only the next morning (23rd Dec) and it was arranged that the Subedar major would come and fetch him from the airport and then by noon that day they would all head for our home. A little past the appointed hour I get this call on the mobile saying they are outside our building but have been told (by the General's brother on phone) that it is Rahu kaalam until 1330hrs and that they should not set foot into our home during Rahu kaalam! Much as I contest the concept of good time and bad time I guess I just had to fall in line now. I quickly decided that Ammu, Sudha and I would take them all to a Coffee lounge to kill time until the Rahu kaalam is over - the by line of the Coffee Day chain was beginning to sound profound now - 'A lot can happen over a coffee'!!

After a round of various coffees we were ready to head home and maybe tuck into a few beers which were nice and chill and waiting to be consumed! But as I broach the subject with the General he tells me he normally stays off alcohol while on leave! His logic being that this is the only time he can abstain from alcohol without other officers thinking he is being prudish! With lunch done we got to the business end of the proceedings and decided that we will have the marriage and engagement in Kerala for the convenience of the extended family on both the bride's and groom's side. The engagement was to be scheduled for late January while the marriage would be in September. Ofcourse, it was going to be tough for Ashwin to spend more than two days in Kochi for the wedding considering he will be in the dive-ticket phase of his submarine training.

Soon the General's brother and family arrived from Pondicherry and spent a while at home before taking the General and family on board his Innova to ferry them to Pondicherry. We were invited to visit Pondicherry the next day and Ammu was more than keen to go because that would give her another opportunity to spend time with Arun. The next day dawned and we headed off to Pondy by road - a beautiful leisurely drive along the scenic East Coast Road. Had some great food there and then headed back to base late evening.

All is nearly in place and it is now time to set the ball rolling for the engagement which is scheduled for 31st Jan 2010.

Its a heady feeling....

The last few days have been a blur - my little girl has been spending time with a boy we have found for her and trying to make up her mind if this is indeed the person she wants to spend the rest of her life with. It hasn't been easy for her because of the excitement that her meetings with the boy have generated among my family members and Sudha's. People have been calling her late at night and asking her 'So have you made up your mind, whats the decision?'. It wasn't long before the poor girl began to wonder why she was feeling pressured to make up her mind! Last Sunday she called her Mum and burst out crying on the phone saying she doesn't want anybody calling her and pressurising her to make a decision!

It is only then I begin to empathise with a 22 year old trying to make sense of society and its insistence on how a Nair girl should be married off. Hats off to the kid for expressing herself in this manner because most girls before her would simply accept societal pressure and plump for the guy chosen for her. While that is the way I saw her outburst on the phone, her mother was not very pleased with her wanting to meet the boy a few more times before she would be anywhere near ready to say 'yes or 'no' - Sudha's contention being that society may misconstrue her daughter's need to meet several times before making up her mind - after all, most girls she knew of seemed to have to make up their minds about the man they will marry in the blink of an eye and that too immediately after the first and only meeting bewteen the two, often overseen by the elders! What is worse is that Ammu's guy seemed to give the green signal immediately after the first meeting with her while Ammu was not quite ready to wave the green flag!

To cut a long story short, after a few meetings in person, a couple of coffees and a lunch together, followed by several night-long online chat sessions with the boy she finally decided, 'yes' this will be the person she will marry. Ofcourse, this must be one of those strange Nair weddings because the parents of the bride-to-be haven't even seen the groom-to-be and we're talking about a wedding happening!! I guess it is a sign of the times - things are achanging about us and we had better embrace the change!

By this time next week we the parents of the bride-to-be would have met with the parents of the groom-to-be and worked out how we should proceed with the marriage plans. It is clear that there will have to be an engagement before the wedding because Ammu has her final semester to complete before she has her Masters in Clinical Psychology. Then there is the issue of Ashwin needing to find a way to get leave from his submarine training program to attend his sister's marriage - this would mean that the marriage will have to be fixed for an appropriate time taking this and other issues (conveniences of the groom's family) into consideration. Talking about my young lad I find he does'nt somehow relish the idea of somebody new coming into his sister's life - he prefers that his family stay just the four of us! Hopefully, his brother-in-law will win over him and make him understand that his sister needs a man in her life just as he will need a woman in his life - thats the way nature willed it to be!

Of Pens and more!!!

We are scheduled to head up to the old school in the hills of South India this weekend for the Grand Raffle Draw in the school. Well, the prizes for the big draw are a) First Prize - 40" LCD Television b) Second Prize - Apple iPhone c) Third Prize Asus Notebook Computer and d) 20 Consolation prizes.

The consolation prizes were to be a beautiful pen set that the children in school would love to have. It was my job to source and ferry items b, c and d up to Ketti! So I went about trying to find these here in Chennai and with some luck managed to get hold of these within the stipulated budget. Well, this story is about my search for the Consolation prizes - the pen sets! I would normally set out during my lunch break to find the goodies - checked out the Spencer Plaza, Landmark (the mega book store here), several small stationery dealers and more but I somehow didn't find something that fitted within the budget AND was good enough to excite the kids in school!

Yesterday, on my lunchtime mission to find lunch and those pen sets I ambled into a mall right behind my office and discovered a pokey little stationery shop. The owner a 40 something Marwari businessman asked what I wanted and I told him what I was looking for - it turns out that this gentleman has been selling pens for close to 30 years and he claimed he has stocks of almost every conceivable brand of pen in that small store! To test him I asked if he had refills for a brand of pen called Caran d'Ache - its a relatively unknown Swiss brand and he says 'Ofcourse, Sir, those are, in my opinion, the best pens in the world'! He hauls out about 10 models of those pens with a price tag starting at 7,000 bucks! Ofcourse, I flinched when he cited the price! And he goes on to tell me that if you own one of those pens and you lose it anywhere in Europe, you need only make a police complaint and send the copy of that police complaint to Caran d'Ache and they will replace the pen free of cost via courier! Then he says he has pens that he has personally sold at the most astounding price of Rs 800,000!! He went on to show me a pen with a miniature projector fitted in its top which allowed you to watch a full fledged DVD movie projected on a wall (screen size 7" across)! He then pulled out a pen that was smaller than the average pen but he said it has a refill that will not need replacement in the lifetime of an individual (calculated at 85 years!).

I was gobsmacked by now at this man's knowledge of his product and asked him why he chose pens as a business specialty!! So he says, 'Sir we Marwari's believe that the pen you have in your shirt pocket and the one you have in your pants are the two most important instruments in a man's life - how they perform and what they do can make or mar your life'!! How's that for a business rationale?!!

I learnt something about pens and life yesterday and that too in my own backyard!! One lives and learns I guess!!