Author: nourishncherish

Anthropologists are forever finding evidence on some tablet or inside some godforsaken cave, telling us all about life in the era. I mean when we see caves full of paintings showing tigers being strung with a sleek bow and arrow, we know that the cavemen weren’t launching supersonic jets, followed by rockets to the moon and just dumbing themselves down in the paintings. They really were slaying tigers with sophisticated weapons of their time such as bows and arrows. Then, as time went on, people discovered the funny thing that starts with an ‘h’, that essentially is between drawing and script writing, and used that to depict what was going on. Mythology grew from a combination of bad paintings and imaginative minds. There was some record-keeping albeit one left more to imagination than to facts, but something.

The clay tablets yielded slowly to the tree bark, and the cryptic grew more descriptive. The three barks became parchment rolls and then the Chinese saved the day by coming up with paper. So far so good – you see paper, you can figure out what is written there. You see a tree bark with a sign engraved
Z *big heart sign* X, and can figure out that Z loves or loved X, and was daft enough to proclaim love on a tree bark, after probably getting his or her hand chiseled a couple of times with the rough stone used to engrave their undying love. But, we still know what happened, so long as the bark survives, we know that Z and X were in love at some point.

The printing press and full blown books were a blessing. Suddenly, everything you needed to know about any nook and corner of the world was available in some book somewhere. Then, you did not even need books to get information, all you needed was access to the net. E-reading became cool. Now as we move on towards paperless functioning, a most disturbing thought just struck me, and I do not wish to be taken frivolously here. I am as serious as a rabbit running from a fox on a wintry night can be.

What if future historians are like me? It could very well happen that one gene triumphs in the coming generations and that gene is my technology retarded gene, couldn’t it? It is not that I can’t operate technology – I just can’t keep pace. By the time, I figure out how to use the remote to change the setting on one contraption, the remote changes, or worse the contraption is gone. Let me think of some gramophone records that my father prided himself on – in fact, I reluctantly got him to get rid of the foghorn after decades, knowing that we could never listen to another gramophone record again, and the space is better used in conserving the tape recorder for the next 2 decades, before it too meets the same fate.

So, some songs that were only there in the gramophone records no longer exists, same for some songs on tape too. You get the picture. Now, with the internet, and the blogosphere, most news and creative writing as moved to the e-medium. What if future generations are unable to retrieve these great gems of the era- voltages may change, servers change, the electronic medium destroys just as soon as it creates.

Well, I suppose the graffiti on the world heritage sites would still tell us who loves who, but what if future archaeologists only get the Harry Potter books, and believe life was that – they have no method of knowing it was a fantasy world.

I haven’t even started on the Modern Art phenomenon yet. If those were the paintings left for interpretation, I can barely imagine what it would come out as.
Pray tell me what you can make out of this?http://www.milesmodernart.com/wp-content/uploads/2008/04/modern-art-41108-24×48-w.jpg

I can almost hear you sigh that if these are the kind of gems of writing the future is missing, they are better off without it. But I stand by my notion that 50 years from now, when there is no paper, record retrieval will be all the more difficult, and a blip in Earth’s history – 500 years later, that era might well be a dark one

PS: Ahhhh..hieroglyphics that is the “h-word”
PS1: How curious it is that I typed this blog out, and then couldn’t connect to the net to publish it, and had to snuggle up to the husband to help me?

See what I mean and what I fear for?

I noticed a number of times when I have been granted ownership of the vast landmass of America, including its culture, population, interests and quirks.

I find any objective questioning and/or reasoning can grant me ownership.

All I have to do is hang on to my mother’s hand and question why on earth she is preparing Payasam for the n-th time, and she would say her voice dripping with incredulity – “In YOUR America, you may do it differently, but we make payasam when the son-in-law visits. “

“Yes….but this is technically part of the same visit, we just went out yesterday! Besides, do remember that I am very much an Indian citizen. Should I show you my passport?”

“I cannot serve food without sweets when the sons-in-law are here!” she would voice in a tone of finality, and go about gathering the ingredients anyway.

“There’s another thing! Why do you have to serve? People can perfectly serve themselves!” I say to no one in particular. But since I now own all of America, why should I worry about who serves anybody else food?

When I am not visiting India, I can still feel rich anytime! All I have to do is call home. 70% of the time, It would be the occasion of some festival. We don’t begrudge any of the 3500 Gods/Goddesses their birthdays, or anniversaries or the general tendency to want to keep awake through the night. There is of course a special sweet dish to mark every occasion, and all I have to do is ask the reason for that particular savoury on “X Jayanthi” or “Y Krittikai” and immediately America becomes mine!

In MY America, I don’t have to do anything – except get to work early in the morning, slog through the day and jog back home for a back-to-back session with classes and children and the dishwashing and the cleaning and the cooking.

Green chillies always bear the brunt of a sore person’s temper at the food table and rightfully so in my opinion. There are certain cooks and cook’s assistants who cut all the vegetables and the chillies in exactly the same dimensions. While I like to see vegetables cut a certain way, there are certain types, especially chillies that I like to see stick out! It is also for this reason, that I don’t take endearingly to the chilli hidden in the omelet or the oothappam. That to me is guerilla warfare.

When I am having lunch, you can visualize a person who stuffs food in the opening where usually the mouth resides. One day if my nose were to shift downwards, I would be in a sorry state indeed. I gape at the computer screen, and immerse myself in the mundane-surfing routine that my lunch time allows me to do.

So, you can safely assume that I am not on a chilli-weeding routine while tackling my lunch. I might catch a peek of the dangerous thing if I were expecting it, but the hiding in batter/egg variety freaks me out. One minute, I am stuffing the faithful mouth, and the next I am shooting up from my seat with the green from the chilli and the red from the taste coursing through my veins and bursting forth in pink spurts on my face. My nose inexplicably starts watering and so does my mouth. When the nose and mouth do that, the eye feels the compelling need to keep them company and before you know it, you have liquid leaking from all the open pores in the face. I feel my ears turn beetroot, my tongue refusing to quiet down, my hand reaches for the tissue – one for the eyes and another for the nose, because obviously once can’t do for both.

I once read somewhere that drinking hot water quietens your tongue quickly. Nope – now you have the hot water and the burning to deal with! Sugar doesn’t help either. And no, I don’t think honey with warm water would help. What would? Time perhaps.

Chidambaram was cut off from the rains. The headlines for all of the previous week said nothing other than terrorist scares in airports and roads being washed off in the heavy rains. The venue of my brother’s wedding, Chidambaram, was marooned people said. It turns out that the roads leading to Chidambaram were little more than mud roads that were coated with tar. The rains washed the tar with them, and tiny bridges had disintegrated.

We found out around 2-3 days before the wedding that Chidambaram was accessible after all. Yet, the source of my brother’s apprehension had nothing to do with washed away roads, or the wedding itself.

He had been recently informed that his portraits were to be mounted in all prominent locations in Chidambaram. “WHAT? WHY?” my brother had demanded rather alarmingly, but he was brushed aside. This was to be grand wedding, and no embarrassment was to be spared! There were posters and billboards to spread his fame – replete with his degree, job title and office name. I can’t quite explain how much fun we had at his expense on this account.

He tried everything from growing a moustache in the last minute to pleading with his fiancee to take the billboards down. The moustache achieved little apart from making his nieces assume it was a fake moustache and making him look like a badger with cat’s whiskers.
And so, he was forced to shave and we arrived in Chidambaram bearing with us the man most wanted in the town by the looks of it. The billboards welcomed us all the way from the railway station. We helpfully pointed to the man in question everytime we stopped to ask somebody for directions while the groom squirmed in his pants!

The billboards were a little ghastly considering our family has never been anywhere close to fame. We revelled in the mundane and kept newspaper clippings in files accessible in the drawing room cabinets amidst a flurry of other papers, of the times when our names did appear in print. The less fortunate who blundered into the territory of how well the children of the house had done were treated to the frayed clippings along with a guided tour of the medals hanging in the showcase. But that was the extent of fame we had achieved. To see larger-than-life billboards with my brother’s photograph on it was a bit overwhelming. One thing I hadn’t noticed in earlier photographs was that the bride looked positively fat. Not that there was anything with being fat, just that I had had quite a hard time imagining her with the photographs and the various descriptions I’d received from everybody else – I was the only one in the family who had not seen her, and I was really eager to see her. When I did see her, there seemed a reel-real life disconnect on multiple levels. The photographs I had seen earlier looked nothing like the posters and the posters looked nothing like the bride in person.

I just had to reconcile the matter before I could immerse myself in the wedding. I mounted a mini investigation into the matter pronto. It turns out that the photographers of Chidambaram were quite bright. They had with them the latest tools of digital imaging and were waiting for an opportunity to showcase their talents. A perfect opportunity presented itself with the wedding posters. My sister-in-law had given a photograph in a salwar kameez. The photographer decided that the subject should have been dressed in a saree. Instead of taking the simplest route, namely asking for a photograph in saree, he morphed the image – he transplanted the face over the image of a person dressed in a saree. The saree clad woman’s image he had taken was on the larger side and resulting image was what had greeted me
in the streets of Chidambaram – and that my folks is the advantage of having folks with digital imaging tools in a town like Chidambaram.

Now that the photograph mystery had been laid to rest, I devoted myself to the remaining aspects of the event management. One thing that I really liked was that there was a poster at the local bus station manned with an information desk – all our relatives could find directions to the wedding venue as soon as they descended from their buses. An elephant was to garland the groom on his arrival. I was half expecting a band – except that the only available band in town apparently refused to be up in the wee hours of the morning. The groom’s nieces & nephew spent the entire 11 hour journey from our hometown to Chidambaram fantasizing about the elephant and the horse-drawn buggy that was to be used for the procession. The nieces confused the proceedings for a circus in their fertile minds, because
they asked if a clown would be available on the premises. I assured them there would – and what’s more, the clown would be their favourite Uncle. My brother wasn’t happy!

On arrival, they felt letdown when they were informed that it usually takes a week to bring an elephant from one of the nearby temples and because of the rains, this part of the proceedings had to be dropped.

Let me be frank – South Indian weddings are higher on the ritual factor than the fun factor. In fact, the grumpier elders frowned on any sort of merry-making. There was a solemn ceremony at a nearby temple. Every available God was petitioned to bless the couple in long-winding sanskrit phrases and at the end of the whole event in the small temple, everyone looked ready to cry. We were determined however to lighten up the mood as much as possible. The moment the horse-drawn buggy was available, we went crazy at my brother’s expense. To date, I have never seen a person look so embarrassed. He ascended the chariot looking extremely uncomfortable and tugged at his nieces and nephew for comfort. There was a band playing music. The music was even discernible once you cut out the noise. There was a jeep ahead with flashlights helpfully focussed on my brother, as though he needed any more attention in his life at the moment. To make matters worse, the traffic that was easing along were all
peeping through windows to take a good look at the subject. There were fireworks in front, and we were hoping that the firecrackers wouldn’t frighten the horses. I voiced my concerns regarding this to my brother on his perch in the chariot, and his embarrassment quickly mingled with an acute sense of foreboding. To add to his misery, the nieces and nephews on the chariot were egging the horses to go faster. It would have made a dashing sight to see my brother galloping along swiftly through the dense streets of Chidambaram, making the cows move aside in a hurry and have the elephant race the horses.

But none of that happened, that would have made things finish too quickly. The horses walked on slowly and the motorised chariot at the back was set to move at the slowest speed possible.

Because of, or in spite of the band, I had an overwhelming desire to dance. The band had christened themselves James Band and performed aboard a tram. The band sometimes confused melody with volume, and we found ourselves yelling over all the din to talk to the person right next to you. However, the band did its best to bring about a festive atmosphere. I started to dance with my husband, and discovered something. All people, old and young, the serious and frolicky, the men and women everybody had an urge to dance. The moment my husband and I abandoned all reservations and started jigging on the streets, hordes of relatives joined in. Our reasoning was that, no matter how badly we danced we can’t attract more attention to ourselves than the old bird atop the chariot with spotlights focussed on him and half a dozen brats for company! My mother, who was always a stickler for self-control herself swayed the crowds with her dance number and my father felt compelled to join in, once his sweetheart started dancing.

The only saving grace was that the entire camaraderie took place in a town where we were hitherto unknown. The preparations, the wedding atmosphere, the histrionics of the day before the wedding – something we will remember for a long time, and definitely not something we will let my brother forget in a tearing hurry!

The bride and groom were given the night to mull over the proceedings and prepare for the intense wedding ahead.

I attended my brother’s wedding, and had a very good time. I have already been dubbed a black sheep by the rest of the extended family. While numerous maamis pointed out with displeasure that I was not following tradition, my close family was just glad to see that I didn’t pack a pair of jeans in my wedding wardrobe, and were absolutely thrilled when I wore some bangles! It is all about setting expectations.

The day I did wear a saree, dozens of people took it upon themselves to impress upon me the graceful look a saree alone can give. One particular aunt declared while pinching my stomach lovingly – “See! How beautiful and graceful a saree is? It is the most decent of attires too!”

Our traditional wedding attire is a 9 yards saree. If ever there was a more confusing manner in which to drape oneself with 9 yards of stuffy silk, please let me know. I would like to see it. My sister and I wore the whole 9 yards for the wedding. Our cries that the girl is the only one who should be in a wedding attire were obviously ill-founded because we found the gasp emanating while voicing such a sentiment the loudest of all. This gasp knew no economic nor educational barriers. So we relented. We dressed like road rollers and steamed about the wedding hall. It took us all of twenty minutes to traverse twenty feet because after every 3-4 steps, some lady would take it upon herself to “rectify” the saree. They would tug at the pletes near the legs, pull near the hip and clasp the saree near the shoulder. Within minutes of the proceedings, my sister’s saree had reached such a sorry state of affairs, that the only option open to her was to whisk my eldest aunt who was an expert at 9-yard-saree-tying to redo the effort.

Now for a bit of family background – my sister is the elder one between us. So, she gets to do the honours whenever a sister of the groom was called for. Since the 9 yard textile mill ream draped around her showed every indication of rolling itself back into a ream again in public, she went to the dressing room with my aunt. My brother, meanwhile, was looking quite harrassed during the proceedings and silently sent pleas for some company on the stage. I went up to the stage partly to give him company, and partly to save my own saree from the self certified 9-yard-saree-rectifiers. I must have looked quite happy chatting on the stage. Everytime I scanned the crowd from the pedestal, folks would mouth – “Where is your sister?” I would mouth something undecipherable and cock my head towards the dressing room. Immediately, they would shoot off like a bunch of rabbits. This got a bit boring after the 102nd time, and I decided to go the dressing room myself till my sister actually finished dressing.

I went in to find my great aunt looking very harrassed and upset. She was pushing past 90, and bustling around tying a 9-yard saree must have been an effort by itself. My sister and aunt immediately accosted me, and asked me how come the main event of the wedding was reached soo soon. The sister of the groom was mainly required for the 2 minute event when the groom ties the “thali” around the bride. The groom ties one knot, and the sister of the groom ties the remaining two. This event was usually preceded by an hour and a half of mantras and followed by another 2 hours. I explained to them that there were nowhere close to the thali event and my aunt could take her time and relax. Now remember, I mentioned all those people scuttling off like rabbits? All these people had taken it upon themselves to summon the sister of the groom. “Sister of the groom wanted!” they would announce loudly, and peek in to make sure things were going along smoothly. This had made my 90+ aunt extremely nervous and she was quite stressed that the wedding was being stalled because of the saree!

Finally, after half the folks had seen my sister standing like a passenger taken aside for checking at an airport terminal, with a 90 year old lady running around her, she was dressed and we ascended the stage together.

My mother glowed with pride – she had achieved the pinnacle of her dreams. Her maverick daughter had conformed! Her son’s wedding was a success.

“How does one use the restroom in this?” I asked.

My grandmother was a vivacious character for her time and age. The mother of nine children, each with their own character like the Navagraha gods – it must have been a humongous task holding the family together. Add to the mix, my grand-father, and you have a gripping sitcom that could run for decades.

My grand-parents lived in the village with their brood. It fell on my grand-mother’s shoulders to procure provisions, feed the family, feed anybody who comes begging and feed the constant barrage of visitors (my grandfather was known for his generosity, and many a mendicant has eaten my grandma’s cooking). Monthly once, she and her friends would undertake the journey to the city and buy provisions for the month ahead. Inventory management and reorder levels were second nature to these maami’s.

Meenakshi Maami, Visalam Maami (my grandmother) and some other maami. (My father regales these stories to us, and I forgot the name of the third maami.) It can’t be too difficult to guess – we South Indians like to think complexity stems from length and scoff at variety and modernity. So, you can pick Lakshmi maami or Jayam maami – both are equally probable. Let’s pick Jayam Maami for the purpose of this story.

These maamis had zest and fervour. But, they carefully concealed it behind 9 yards of saree each.

Which other mother of nine would hurriedly finish her monthly purchases in a blurry hour or so, and go charging towards the Sona-Mina-Tina theatre complex for a back-to-back 3 movie marathon movie-watching adventure?! (Note: No movie was considered worth the money if it was shorter than 3 hours and 15 minutes!)
“Ayyo, Visalam, puli vaanganum” (We must buy tamarind)

“Parava illai Jayam – ennutta irukku, naan tharaen. Padam aarambichuduvan” (Oh come on Jayam, I’ll give you some, the movie is going to start!)

Once in the theatre, they would watch a movie per theatre. An MGR movie in Sona followed by a Gemini movie in Mina and a Jaishankar movie in Tina.

The trio would then trump home with all the purchases where the kids would be waiting with their hearts a-flutter! You see, they would get to hear the stories from the three adventurous dames, who escaped into their fantasy world for all of a day! After lunch, the kids from Meenakshi Maami, Visalam Maami & Jayam Maami would gather around their mothers. I would like to imagine a setting like a village school sans desks and chairs. All the children looking up eagerly to hear the story.

Apparently, my grand-mother’s brood being the largest, she got the honour of primary narrative lead. In loose translation, it would go like this:
Visalam: blah..blah..MGR came and he was just rescuing Saroja Devi, when that nasty fellow came!

Meenakshi: Oh .. that fellow! One day, I would like to capture him – what a rowdy element he is!

*The kids knew the choice adjectives must all refer to the most preferred villain of Tamil Cinema at the time – M.N.Nambiar*

Visalam: And then, MGR ran with his sword just before that horrible fellow touched Saroja Devi and started fighting him. He pushed him to the floor and …

Jayam: Ayyo Visalam – he runs with the sword in the Gemini movie with K.R.Vijaya tied to the tree illayo? In this one, they fight over the upturned drums right?

Visalam, after a moment’s contemplation, may or may not agree with Jayam maami’s point, and proceed. Nambiar must have been the villain in all the three movies, and it must have been rather hard remembering the one in which he fought fist-to-fist, and the one where he put up a valiant sword-fight.

The resulting story essentially had all three movies tied haphazardly with various elements of drama and villainy suffused to form a murky liquid! Any director would have killed for the script – an entirely new movie would have arisen from the effort.

Yet, it was M.N.Nambiar who tied all these narrations together. The quintessential villain in over 1000 Tamil movies – he must have had a thousand curses directed at him every time he stepped onto the screen. It was hard imagining this man, who was the object of every maami’s source of apprehension in those movies, was the pious Aiyappa devotee that all the Maami’s approved off in real life.

A tribute to M.N.Nambiar – Tamilians would hardly have savoured the movie experience the same way without this personality!

** To be read in the context of Indian reverence of the Silk (Pattu) **

Cotton looked decidedly dull in his lumpy lack-lustre attire. He yearned for his moments of fame. In one of Cotton’s more thwarted moments, he had defined fame as being photo-worthy at South Indian weddings for himself.

Cotton had learned from the moment he had sprouted that his life was to be plain. Cotton tried to take on vibrant colours and shocking patterns while weaving. Time passed- things changed and fashion trends favoured Cotton – cotton was fashionable! However, the more people wanted to wear Cotton in the hot plains of India, the more Cotton’s obsession grew – he wanted to be accepted as wedding attire in South Indian Tamilian weddings.

Cotton cursed Silk and swore at it, to no avail.

He tried various angles of argument:

“I come from crop”

“I look brilliant”

“I make you as comfortable as it is possible to be when you are sitting in front of a huge fire in the 90 degree heat!” he wailed. But, he was dragged out – left to lament and comfort himself in the 90 degree heat.

Wool, meanwhile was definitely more revered in the colder regions, but could not match up to Silk either. “Very useful”, everybody conceded, even the freshly fleeced sheep shiveringly acknowledged that wool was a fine material. T’was the age of the dawning cinema – Tinsel town had started shooting all the garish songs in the colder reaches of the mountainside. Suddenly, film crews floated to the coldest regions to shoot for songs featuring men and women dancing around trees. Wool looked on with yearning – his moment was fame was just there, he thought. The Bollywood film stars flocked to the cold wrapped in the best woollen with a hot cuppa tea in their hands. Every single strand in the sweaters of Hema Malini and Sharmila Tagore preened themselves when the camera cried – “One two & three!”.

What should happen?! Oh the cruelty – the disdain of being discarded just before prancing in front of the camera in silk was too much for the woollen to bear.

“I am not going to keep you warm when you come running back and put me on again”, thought the sweaters grumpily. A representation is what is needed wool decided. The Wool Positive Publicity Committee was set up and spent years trying to get people to see the sense behind seeing film stars dancing in front of mounds of snow with nothing but a thin silk saree. Things changed – soon, actresses did start appearing with warmer clothes, but they cut straight through wool, and went to trendy leather jackets.

And so, you can still hear wool whimpering about unfair treatment when you pass by. Wool’s hidden desire was to attain fame through the camera. But its wishes were sadly ignored. Another grumpy fabric.

Silk meanwhile apparently had everything going for him. He had roads built for his comfort and transport. Royalty flocked to him. Not a single function – big or small went by without silk it seemed. Yet, silk was the unhappiest of all. All he yearned for, ever, was to be left alone.
There were those who had few silk clothes and brandished them for every function. The old silks would lie wanting nothing more to be left alone – right next to the crisp enthusiastic cotton or the woollen waiting for a glimpse of the outer world. But no, the humans would unfailingly parade the same silks around everytime. It mattered not that every memory of themselves would be in one of the same silks – it was silk and that was all. One could practically see the silk fibre yawning in the photographs.

So, it was that Silk remained unhappy too.

One day, the three unhappy fabrics opened up and talked in the almirah – a mix may change the mindset they said.

And that is the story behind the Cotton Silks & Cotton wool and the Silk wools! Every fabric had a little bit of their urge satisfied. People ventured to appear in Photographs with fabric other than silk for once.

It was a well fought race – both players had positives and negatives that were objectively weighed by the voter turn-out and the decision was clear. In the hot presidential election between John McCain Vs Obama, John Mc Cain won!

I don’t know what the headlines are telling you these days – but this is the verdict.

Pink post-it notes belonged to Obama and yellow post-it notes belonged to McCain. The electoral base were the 3-4 year olds in my daughter’s classroom (where else?!) They were being taught the process of voting and it served as an exercise in counting too. I asked my daughter who she voted for – she launched into a recap of the decisions behind her friends’ choice of colours. They had evidently not taught them about ballot secrecy!

My daughter’s friend chose pink because she was wearing a pink jacket. Most of the boys shied away from pink because they thought it was a girl’s colour (Poor Obama – he might have been prepared to take on the tax laws and the health care system, but he didn’t know that was coming!)

Finally, they all got to count and decide the winner. Fourteen had chosen yellow and ten had chosen pink. So, it was decided that John Mc Cain won the presidential race.

Looking forward to a good tenure under Obama’s leadership,

Yours truly.

I feel saddened by the death of Michael Crichton. Is it the selfish thought that I would not see another well-researched book intertwined with his fine imagination again? (well, after the one scheduled for release in May 09). It may well be the case.

Nevertheless, here is my tribute to a fertile mind – thank you for all those hours you transported me to another world – a high-paced, adventure filled world in which I would never belong , but one to which I can escape in the confines of my mind.