Nourish-n-Cherish

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.

Diwali is a time to be happy with friends and family. I am delighted to say that I had a fantastic Diwali. We spent the week-end in the refreshing company of friends who have come to mean family, and children whose innocence and love is like having a pick-me-up tonic (when the day starts at least!).

I am glad to inform my readers that I did not make any sweets or for that matter any savoury. In fact, we had a lovely lunch with rasam and koottu (And no – no payasam either). It is not that I do not like sweets or “karam” – I like them. I just cannot see the rationale behind sweating for days on end standing in front of the stove, with aching legs to boot.

So far, everybody without an exception has wished me a Happy Diwali, and asked me what I made. The pressure to “make” something for Diwali is beginning to show on my tired brow. I did what my family likes best on Diwali – I had our friends over, and we had a fantastic dinner. We had my daughter’s friends over and enjoyed the company of the kids, dancing and playing with them. It just did not involve sweets.

But I learnt an important lesson this Diwali – “I did not make any sweets at home” is not a satisfactory answer. After every call, I hung up with the implied disappointment voiced over my lack of “motherliness/domesticity” for not producing a sweet factory. It is the right thing to do, even if one particularly does not enjoy it. It is the right thing to do even if it means undoing your loved ones efforts at the gym over the past few weeks.

I am glad to say this though: I made us all some memories that would bring a smile any day.
Here is wishing you all a very Happy Diwali!

The economic climate has been bad. Inflation is up and things are not looking good on the sensex fronts. When such trends play out for longer intervals in time, everybody feels the pressure.

Droning on about Economic ratios and sensex points means nothing to drive the point home. We (my sister and I) have explained the economic upheaval using the effects it has had on the life of my 12 year old nephew living in Dubai. Granted, he is not one of the impoverished, malnourished lads – but he has problems too.

Case 1 :Canteen money for breakfast

Once in a while, when he is a good boy and the moon rises in the morning, he gets ‘canteen money’. This means he gets Dhs 5 to buy his breakfast from his school canteen instead of home food. He is usually very excited on these days. Till last year, he said, this would give him

2 mini pizzas – Dhs 2 @ 1 each

1 cutlet – Dhs 1

I juice- Dhs 1

Savings – Dhs 1

Then the juice became Dhs 1.50 , the cutlet became Dhs 1.50 and the savings were gone. He was upset but he could live with that. Recently, when he got the fiver, he started to wail .”Oh please increase my allowance. I can’t eat with Dhs 5. The mini pizzas are Dhs 1.50 each and the school has reduced the cheese on it.” Apparently, he has to either let go of the juice or the cutlet! He had Physical Education in the morning-so he would be “hungry and thirsty”!

Such opportunities present themselves merely to satisfy the sermonic yearnings every parent harbours. The parent can talk on about their pasts, and how handling money is a privilege that one must thank the Almighty for. Reminiscing is also allowed – one could talk about the number of “Priya” sweets a 10 paise fetched earlier, and talk fondly of the coin, now missing from circulation.

Once the preaching/pretending-to-listen ceremony was wrapped up with, a decision was reached to increase his canteen money to a princely sum of Dhs 7.

Case 2 : Birthday presents

Said nephew wanted to buy his best friend a birthday present – a Parker Pen. He window shopped, shortlisted the pen , noted the price- Dhs 20. That is 2 months worth of pocket money. So he saved up for 2 months , put his Dhs 20 in the wallet and asked to be escorted to the shop. And voila, the pen was now Dhs 24!! The poor guy was flabbergasted and said ‘Amma – I can’t buy the pen. The price went up and his birthday is next week. What to do? “.

Which God grants two admirable opportunities in a week to a parent?! The sermon was modified, delivered and wrapped up with the ceremonial extraction of promises for ongoing good behaviour.

He was given Dhs 4 for the pen.

We had a parent teacher conference this morning. I learnt a bit more about their day than the information I pieced together based on her stories.

Reading between the lines, the class spends half their time moving between various places in the campus. The most often visited spot being the restroom. Apparently, they form a line to go from the class to the restroom and back. There are restroom breaks before and after the following activities:
1) Play time (twice a day)
2) Nap time (once a day)
3) Snack time (twice a day)

I try not to work out the number of minutes wasted in getting all brats lined up to go over the entire exercise, but cannot help admiring the teachers.

Now, all this talk about restrooms and forming lines leads somewhere – like as I would to bore you with the bowel movements of 3-4 year olds, the line-forming itself has an interesting story that I hear everyday.

Apparently, there are two coveted positions within the class:
1) Line Leader
2) Gate Holder

Line Leaders:
The Line Leader is assigned the task of standing in front of the line, and gets to “lead” the children to the restroom or playground. The days my daughter is conferred the honour is an important day in her life, and she regales her experiences with zest. I found out that the line leader is the first to follow the teachers wherever they go. The line leaders are decided on round robin policy.

Gate Holders:
There is a gate separating the playground and the remaining classrooms. The gate holder is the person entrusted with standing with their backs against the open gate to make sure the gate does not swing on anybody else. This post too is determined using the round robin policy.

I like the way these positions make children feel valued and treat their responsibility earnestly. Soon, she would grow up, and there would be competition for any sort of leadership position. Before that happens, I want to cherish this sweet wisdom of round-robin policies to give everyone a chance to lead.

I appreciate security. I appreciate the notion that I can go about my business dealings in a secure, risk-free manner.

Nobody can access my Pre-tax savings. I have been accumulating reserves paycheck to paycheck. I sit like a mother hen and imagine it grow. Considering imagination is the only course of action open to me now, it is a pretty good occupation to indulge in. Nobody can access my Pre-tax savings, not even myself.

I have been slacking with reimbursements and claims. As I groggily started my day, I decided to attack all of the ‘Pending’ items on my to-do list. Transit claims, expense claims – the works.
I enter the site with determination. The site believes in security and so do I. It prompts me for a user id and password. Determination slowly turns to trepidation: This is where the trouble usually begins – each one asks for a different userid/password combination. I try to keep the passwords along the same lines, since there are atleast 8 different systems in the company I work in, dealing with different aspects of my life. The problem comes when each system requires me to change my passwords at varied intervals.

System 1 determines changing passwords once every 3 months is good enough, while system 3 wants it to be on a monthly basis. System 2, on the other hand, does not really care whether I change my password or not, as long as it is 32 characters long and has atleast 2 numerals irregularly spaced every 13 characters, and has atleast one special character to boot along with a rather simple requirement that the letters used cannot all be lower-case or upper-case. And it really only asks that you don’t start the password with a capital letter.

I finally hit upon something – I appeased all the password Gods and dutifully complied with all the rules. I saved the passwords cryptically in my drafts folder. And for somebody to get to my drafts, they had to plunge into the very depths of my brain, and and use advanced data mining techniques for connections and links to mundane details in my life, before they could find the password.

I had the system under control. Till it was determined that keeping one’s email for too long is risky business too, and implemented a 30 day rolling deletion policy on email. One fine day, my drafts which contained the goldmine of information was deleted, without a trace of retrieval!

So, here I am enjoying a perfect day mailing random system administrators about my imperfect memory, and requesting system resets. They comply and remind me: I must only remember not to use any of the last 8 passwords I have ever used on the site. Given that I don’t remember any of the passwords, is there a way to tell me which are the 8 I previously used, I ask innocently.

The year 2001: I stood in the tiny telephone booth – I felt like a performing musician. I had one hand acting like a earplug to zone out the background noise. Only it wasn’t the orchestra I was blocking out, it was the street noise. I must also mention that my “audience” comprised of one bored tea delivery boy waiting for the telephone booth owner to noisily slurp the last few drops of the steaming tea. I was palpably excited about making an overseas call to my fiance to wish him a Happy Birthday. I may have been a “very successful software engineer” in my parents eyes, but I was still a dutiful daughter to parents who shouted into the phone. I suppose in their minds, a louder tone somehow speeded up the conversation.

The call connected, and my heart raced, just a trifle slower than the meter. I wished my fiance a Happy Birthday, and asked him eagerly whether he wore the shirt and tie I had picked out for his birthday. I visualized a suavely dressed engineer with a smart creased shirt, and tie in sunny California. He semi-truthfully lied that he did. (He said he didn’t wear the tie, but crumpled the shirt enough for it to pass off as less than formal. ) Years later, I found out that the shirt I had lovingly picked out for him was in a colour he did not particularly admire, and I also found out that the only time he will sport a tie is at our wedding! My loving-husband-gift-giving story had started off with a bang.

Year 2002: I did not yet have a car of my own. So, I hitch-hiked with my cousin and furtively bought a gift and kept it hidden for several weeks before springing it to him. I watched the gift gather dust on the leftmost corner of our closet well above the average human-bring’s reach. I hadn’t yet wisened up to “returning” something meant as a gift. But Time will take care of that.

Year 2003: This time, I decided to use my father’s most trite advice. (The way to a man’s heart is through his stomach.) Just a gift wouldn’t do, a hand-made cake is what is needed I decided. So, I made a cake, and called our close friends and cut the cake. I was smart this time, and got him to return the gift I bought.

Year 2004: I managed to successfully glean any attention away from his birthday by being wholly pregnant and having my baby shower/seemandham etc the next day. He will be cutting a cake along with me for the baby shower wouldn’t he?

Year 2005: By now, nobody has any expectations to either impress each other with gifts or home-made cakes or store bought cakes for that matter.

Year 2006: Health conscious was the word. No sweets we decided, and we had the birthday cake replaced with a brownie. (My daughter really wanted to eat brownies)

Year 2007: Here is a post linking his ‘birthday celebration’. In short, we did everything but celebrate HIS birthday and landed up spending the afternoon with my daughter’s classroom having decided to celebrate her birthday in class instead. Ah…sweet practicality! AS for the gift, it another story!

Year 2008: We mutually agreed that I would take him along and buy him something he likes. Mr. Practicality came swinging by, and while I took my little one to a class, he went and bought something on his own around the time of his birthday. I suppose the Gajjar Halwa from last week-end doesn’t really count.

I don’t like the idea of this post. If I were to graph it out, I’d probably be snorting in his general direction somewhere down the line. Ah well…. Hubby, you will always know the sounds emanate with love!

Happy Birthday Dear Husband!

Yesterday we attended a Tamil Light Music concert by S.P.Balasubramanian and his troupe. Lead singers were SPB, Chitra, Sailaja and an emerging talent, Srikrishnan. I had multiple sound tracks going on within the auditorium. My daughter said she too knows how to sing, and sang – “I am a Kangaroo, and I don’t live in the zoo…” to a backdrop of K.S.Chitra’s national award winning rendition of “Paadariyen, Padippariyean”. Luckily, I got my daughter’s musical genius to stop manifesting itself too much. She stopped singing early enough to avoid an unceremonious armed bodyguard escort out of the auditorium of her disgraced parents cheered on by piqued fans. I hushed her into silence by promising her a complete concert dedicated to no musician but herself the moment we get home!

Chitra stole the show, in my opinion with her genius. Her unassuming self was so evident, and yet she swayed the whole audience with every single one of her performances. At some pitches, I felt my ears vibrating with joy, and she smiled through them all – she did not even seem to be straining herself. There was one person who loved her career – one could see it in her passion to sing. Her “Ovoru pookalumae solgiradhae” song which won her another national award, evokes an array of emotions in me every time, and this time too, I was left yearning for an encore of the number.

A new talent emerging in the South, Srikrishnan also performed last night. If ever there was an award for an image/voice disconnect, I would recommend Srikrishnan. Somewhere in the baggy suit that walked onto the stage was a nervous thin lad. He kept falling at people’s feet asking for their blessings, and bending over forwards in deep bows. I sometimes felt a suspension thread from the ceiling was needed to pull him backwards just to remind him of the equilibrium involved in standing upright. And then, he sang.

He had a fantastic voice, and delivered difficult songs with great ease. His Tamil diction was pardonable, even likeable because of his voice. The only song where I could not bear it was “Kaalangalil aval vasantham”.

When Chitra and Srikrishnan sang a medley starting off with Chitra calling for “Lord Krishna”, her musical cries reached an all-time high and the auditorium watched awed. Krishna, Krishna Krishna – she called with devotion and piety dripping from her voice. It was sort of ironical to watch the puny Srikrishnan standing trembling beside her.

SPB as usual stunned the audience with his persona, his voice, his humour and his involvement of the crowd. His sister performed too, and though my friends did not seem to like her, I thought she was quite good too.

My husband likened it the concert to a good cup of coffee – you are left thirsting for just a little bit more, and the taste lingers on as you yearn. Though I am not much of a coffee lover myself, I agreed.