Life in a Metro

The cell phone beside my pillow goes beep..beep..beep. It’s 6:40 am and I roll myself out of bed and glance at the bathroom door. My roommate was still enjoying her one hour bath. She steps out at 6:55, ten minutes late of her allotted time slot. I am out in 15 mins and another of my sleepy roommates slouch in to claim her turn. I am ready for office by 7:30 and go downstairs where breakfast stands ready in tall steel utensils. It’s the pongal day and I groan as I open the lid of a vessel containing the gooey white dish. In no mood for heroism, I conveniently skip breakfast and settle for tea alone. Soon I am headed towards the bus stop where I am joined by several serious looking people. It is not hard to spot an IT employee in Chennai. They invariably look nonchalant, with tags around their necks, Tupperware lunch bags in their hands and earphones plugged in all the time. A huge bus transports it’s “precious cargo” to the far flung offices in the suburbs of Chennai. Nine hours roll by, punctuated with breaks and trips to the washroom. At the end of the day I find myself in another bus which takes me back to the hostel where my primary duties are taking a bath, doing the laundry, eating and ringing up my folks.

I still remember alighting at Chennai central last September. The huge crowd swept my parents and me towards the main exit and out of the grand building of the railway station that features in almost all Malayalam movies based in Chennai. An A1 bus took us to Thiruvanmiyur where we could see the neon lights of Tidel Park which marked the beginning of the Old Mahabalipuram Road a.k.a the IT corridor.

After three days of induction we were transported to Siruseri in the outskirts of the city for the soft skill training. A week later we found ourselves reporting at ASV Suntech Park where we spent almost 2 months in training. The independent stage of life revolved round ASV and the hostel in Adayar.

Being away from home for the first time in life I was bound to be homesick. I was lucky to find myself amidst people from my home state in hostel. When our tastebuds revolted against the insipid hostel food we find refuge in the Malayali restaurants like Kumarakom, Tharavad or Nallukettu where the avial, buttermilk, sambhar, and thenga chammanthi and the Kerala special red rice tasted like ambrosia.

Hearing the familiar sound of one’s mother tongue in a strange land is something anyone would enjoy. Such is my joy when I come across one of the many on-exile-for-IT’s sake Malayali on the bus, at office, at the supermarket or at church. This is exactly why my favorite place in Chennai happens to be the SanThome Cathedral Basilica in Mylapore.

The 10:30 Mass every Sunday creates a small Kerala in Chennai. Young men and women from my home state gather for worship and social interaction. Infact the buses headed to SanThome at that hour would invariably have guys and girls chattering rapidly in all the dialects right from the Kannur to Thiruvananthapuram. One can find shopping bags with names of places like Adimali and Kuravilangad printed in Malayalam which certifies that you are in the company of a Malayali. The FM radios in Chennai fail to cater to homesick Malayalis so the Malayalam Mass at Santhome Church is a musical treat. Apart from these reasons the church is just the place where one can be at peace and reflect on the otherwise mundane life.

Twelve months as an earning individual and the above said is pretty much my routine. Except for the pleasurable refilling of my savings account at the end of every month, life has lost its vitality. During our training lessons we learned the basics of writing technically and missed out several important details in our assignments. Our eccentric trainer, after ripping our heads off, consoled us with “Don’t worry, people, you all are here because you love writing”. True, I thought, I sure love writing. It is something that comes to me without an effort. Little did I realize that learning to write technically would block the kind of writing I used to do. One year into the job, my Bower looks like a deserted shack. I have been using it as a window to watch my gifted friends in the blogosphere and then wallow in self pity of being left behind.

This post is a deliberate attempt to overcome the writer’s block that has fettered me for the past one year. Hope to break the chains and be back in full swing.

Spreading my wings...

I wander'd lonely as a cloud
That floats on high o'er vales and hills,
When all at once I saw a crowd,
A host, of golden daffodils;*

This was more or less how it was when I chanced upon blog world.
A host of brilliant writers.My brother was into blogging right from the first year in college and I used to read his blog alone.It was only 4 years later that I took up the art.What surprised me the most was that the majority I found were of non-literature or arts background.It was challenge enough for a student of Literature to wake up and squeeze out the creative juices.

Now,consistent encouragement and appreciation are the essential babyfood for any blog-ling(if I may call new bloggers so).I was lucky to be fed in plenty by none other than the likes of Silverine and Mathew.These two geniuses also happen to be wonderful people.Blogging has also given me virtual friends; total strangers who connect with the simple things I write.Deepti who recently touched and surprised me with a sweet gesture is one unforgettable name.The other names on my blogroll are people who enthrall me with their versatile writing and make blogging a very entertaining and informative hobby.Since this is not a milestone post I do not engage in a detailed gratitude acknowledgment.Heartfelt thanks to all who have visited and encouraged The Bower.

Now as I stand at the threshold of a change in my life status from a dreamy student-hood to the fast paced corporate life, I am at a loss for words.Don't seem to be able to fix the tone of the post.Is it a valediction or just a "be right back"? Life's taking a drastic change, from the cozy walls of home to an independent life in a big metro.In fact, thanks to blogworld I already have a patchworked picture of what to expect out there.I have found people from all walks of life;students,professionals,homemakers and old timers blogging away with exemplary spirit.Really hope I'd be able to make a come back once I get settled down with the work life.There are umpteen number of blogs that are proof that nothing can kill the writer in you.So I leave with a consolation from the Bard himself :

So long as men can breathe, or eyes can see,
So long lives this, and this gives life to thee. **

Adieu! for the moment, dear friends,will miss this space,hope to be back among you soon...!

*Daffodils, William Wordsworth.
**Sonnet XVIII -Shall I Compare Thee to a Summer's Day, William Shakespeare.

To health, the sweet way...

Tiny white plastic bottles with multi-coloured caps, labelled and filled to the brim with balls of sugar.Once upon a time our medicine cabinet used to be full of such bottles.A sneeze,a cough or a slight temperature change, and we'd be bundled off to the clinic of a famous Homeo doctor in town.A handsome old man with the sweetest disposition treated us of most of our childhood ailments.The two clinics he ran,one at Jawahar Nagar and another at Pazhavangadi were our regular haunts and the long wait in the lobby,an adventure to two very active kids.

To Neil and me, he was the epitome of the art of homeopathy.We mistook the picture of Samuel Hahnemann hanging on the wall to be that of the old doctor himself.His home in Jawahar Nagar was perhaps one of the pioneer modern homes in Trivandrum with a landscaped lawn, a pond with lotuses ,a grand aquarium and a beautiful view from the window of the consultation room.Perhaps it was because we were his regular patients,the softspoken doctor gave a patient ear to any complaints we had.Even if it was just one of us that had an illness ,the other would also be considered for any discomfort of health.That I once told him in a grave voice "Doctor,my finger hurts when I break pencil nibs" remains the most cliched and embarrassing anecdotes of our visits there.After the consultation we'd wait to get the medicines at the dispensary and were friendly with the staff there too.They let us go inside the counter and watch with wide eyed wonder as they opened a huge bottle of sugar balls.Neil and I ventured to ask where we could find a similar bottle.The heady smell of the medicine,the trays of empty plastic bottles,the colourful collection of caps,the label strips, all caught our fancy.Sure enough the healthy one was given a bottle of plain sugar balls as a compliment.

Now the problem when you have sugar balls for a medicine is that the prescribed 3 pills twice a day is hardly satisfying.So half the bottle is over before noon(one more won't hurt,being the thought behind the stealth).Once it got over too soon that I had to refill it with sugar from the kitchen lest Mum noticed!Thankfully we never suffered from an overdose.
Apart from the sweet pills we also used to get tasteless fine powder in neatly folded packets.Now those powders went down only with a spoonful of sugar.
Homeopathy was always the remedy for minor illness and preventive medicines.Come summer and there would be fresh bottles of the sweet preventive medicine in the cabinet.

I have come across very interesting people in this profession.The most memorable one was Ammamma's doctor who claimed to be treating her with imported German medicine.Mummy has this habit of reading all advertisement boards on the roadside and she found this lady doctor in a unfashionable house, brimming with confidence.The consultation took as long as three hours during which Ammamma and the doctor shared pleasantries,sob-stories and gossip and if they had time,the stomach trouble, while Mummy dozed in the other chair! The lady burned a huge hole in Ammamma's purse and sent home enough bottles which helped me practice abstinence.

One of the common things I've noticed about most Homeo practitioners(especially ladies who run clinics at home) are their unassuming consulting rooms(living or dining room or the balcony),messy tables(the stethoscope and pens resurface after a frantic hunt),and an unimpressive dressing sense.I once consulted a nighty-clad doctor looking every inch sickly herself and another time a cat jumped on to the table while I sat with a thermometer clamped between my teeth.Nevertheless their prescriptions worked just right.Sometime back a doctor surprised me when she cured my chest congestion by giving me an oral shot of the medicine.It was immediate relief.

Homeopathy is one branch of medicine which has always faced ruthless criticism from their counterparts.The homeopaths valiantly defend their profession where "like cures like".The argument continues.But for me, it is a 'sweet' memory and a very sweet reason to fall ill. ;-)

The Temple-haunters

"Suddenly the heavens opened up for him, and he saw the Spirit of God descending like a dove and coming to rest on him."(Matt 3:16)
I saw it happen,at the Basilica last Sunday!
The Holy Mass at 9:30 had started 15 mins late and the priest was racing along trying to make up for the lost time.Even the choir with their keyboard,guitars and tabalas hardly kept pace with him.And then it happened.
A grey pigeon landed gracefully on top of the Crucifix at the altar.

The Sanctuary at the Basilica is quite ornate with the entire heavenly fleet painted on it's vaulted ceiling.(When the homilies get boring the ceiling provides an ideal past time.Papa once told us that faces appear there when people die.As kids,Neil and I used to look for Appapan there.)The Eastern wall features the Crucifix in the center with the Nativity scene and the Risen Christ on either sides.The pillars in between have a spacious landing which is the roost for a couple of pigeons.From the ground level it doesn't seem to be particularly comfortable but the pigeon-tails are always seen whisking away in industrious haste.They keep flying in and out at whim,never once disturbing the sacred procedures going on below.A family of sparrows inhabit yet another wedge in the Sanctuary.They too twitter in and out with their birdie chores,deftly avoiding the blades of the numerous fans that dot the ceiling.They build a nest,lay eggs,hatch them and feed the little ones and see them take wings in the austere air of the church.

There is a quaint monastery church in Trivandrum which has a dovecote beside it and the inmates of the seminary feed the birds.It was in the same place where I've seen the birds perch on every saints head.
The old Portuguese-built church at Palayam with it's tall turrets is home to a murder of crows.These fellows don't care much for grace and timing.Sometimes they fly low,straight at you,missing your hair by inches.(Probably because you weren't saintly enough).They also occasionally "bless" the pews with their droppings.
Our parish church was one of those modern buildings which didn't attract similar roosts due to lack of dark nooks and corners.

Another favorite perch of birds are statues of great leaders.Sparrows on the outstretched arms of Christ atop churches, pigeons on the shoulders of a sad faced Gandhis,and a lonely crow on the raised arm of Subhash Chandra Bose.There was once a newspaper snap of the statue of Akkamma Cherian(freedom-fighter),near the Raj Bhavan in Trivandrum, with feather on her Gandhi cap!

I was visiting a friend's flat on the fifth floor when she pushed aside the curtains to reveal a plastic basket tied onto the window rails.In it were a couple of long leaves.It was brought in by a pair of tiny little birds trying to build a nest on the curtain rod.However hard they tried it would never stay and my friend had this bright idea of helping them out by providing a basket.Her 4 year old was seen guiding the birds, appealing to them with "killee ivide vekku..."However they didn't seem interested in the "rented" home.The pair took turns to bring in blades of grass,and by the time I said goodbye,there was a heap of grass on floor by the window.My friend was muttering that the silly birds had dirtied her floor.Mr and Mrs 'Bird' were not giving up yet.
On my next visit, the birds had finally succeeded in building a huge nest which looked like a bearskin hat.And my excited friend informed that there were already eggs in it.

"This guest of summer,
The temple-haunting martlet, does approve,
By his loved mansionry, that the heaven's breath
Smells wooingly here: no jutty, frieze,
Buttress, nor coign of vantage, but this bird
Hath made his pendant bed and procreant cradle:
Where they most breed and haunt, I have observed,
The air is delicate. "

(Macbeth, William Shakespeare)

That the Bard uses these lovely lines as an instance of dramatic irony is a different story.But I guess that's how dwellings should be,in harmony with Nature.

Quoting away...

It was our viva voce yesterday and they asked me to quote the apostrophe to Helen from Doctor Faustus.I come back to find Silverine asking me to quote some more.:-)

Colourless green ideas sleep furiously -Noam Chomsky's famous example which illustrates grammaticality and acceptablity.Words make sense when they mean but they turn magical when they have a heart.Jotting down quotes is something near impossible because scores of lines that can touch, chance your way everyday.Our HoD used to say,"Good literature is wasted when it is printed in newspapers."

Jot down 5 of your favorite quotes from the various books you’ve read. If you don’t have the books with you now, googling (Wikiquotes and the like) can be used to find them. Tag five people and acknowledge the person who tagged you.

1.
Jack : " I am sick to death of cleverness. Everybody is clever nowadays. You can't go anywhere without meeting clever people. The thing has become an absolute public nuisance. I wish to goodness we still had a few fools left.
Algernon : We have.
Jack : I should extremely like to meet them. What do they talk about?
Algernon: The fools? Oh, about the clever people, of course.
Jack : What fools! "

The Importance of Being Earnest ,Oscar Wilde.


2."Faith in God is an opening up,a letting go,a deep trust,a free act of love-but sometimes,it was so hard to love."

Life of Pi,Yann Martel

3."The tears of the world are a constant quantity. For each one who begins to weep, somewhere else another stops. The same is true of the laugh."

Waiting for Godot, Samuel Beckett

4. "The hardest arithematic to master is that which enables us to count our blessings."

- Eric Hoffer

5. "And there are those who give and know not pain in giving, nor do they seek joy,nor give with mindfulness of virtue:They give as in yonder valley the myrtle breathes its fragrance into space.Through the hands of such as these God speaks, and from behind their eyes He smiles upon the earth."

- Khalil Gibran

I tag

Deepti
George
Merin

A Streak of Gold

Olympics in the air and India shines golden for the first time.
A perfect time to think about the sports I ever dared to engage in.Now if you thought I was a budding P.T Usha or an Anju Bobby George,well ,I'm not responsible.

Though I made it into the world three minutes before my brother,it didn't exactly make me faster for life.My Ammamma used to recount how we mastered clambering up the stairs at our ancestral home a few weeks after we flipped over and started crawling.Neil zoomed up to the seventh step on all his fours while I languished on step one with a slow but determined pace.
The next target was the mango tree in our frontyard of our home in Trivandrum.It was the kind which was "climb-able"and provided an alternative entry to the terrace apart from the stairs behind the house.Neil devised systematic method to climb up and I naturally copied it.We had capital times on that mango tree though it was home to an army of red ants.

Neil's school provided him with all the official sports like cricket,football and basketball.It was during our summer vacations at Kothamanagalam that our girl cousins and I got to see his sporting talents.All of us, girls were good sports(if I may use the term)and shared the natural interest for cricket.We had matches with two member teams,rubber balls and madal bats and somehow Neil's team always won.We also played a crude sport which involved a wicker chair and a beach ball.One stands about 20 meters apart from it and aims to put the ball into the chair.My team lost many a time in that one too.

We got our first bicycle on our fourth birthday.Neil insisted on a BSA Champ while I settled for a pretty Russian doll.Ofcourse he didn't learn to cycle at that age nor on that cycle.However it catered to my purpose several years later.And I am proud to say that I learned it by myself(with a little help from the compound wall and the gate which sustained several scrapes and grazes).Shuttle cork caught us like a rage.We spent days playing tournament after tournament on the terrace.This sport also involved adventurous activities like dropping down to the sun-shade,trespassing the adjacent terrace and chasing the neighbour's dog to retrieve the cork.Sometimes we used to play past twilight with the emergency lamp on.

We were seven when Roller Skating became the talk of the town.The mornings early 90s saw a small group of people-young and old-on colorful skates, gliding around the Museum grounds.It was again Neil who signed up for it first.Papa and I would jog along while he "walked" with heavy skates with red wheels, falling down occasionally,only to get up with his characteristic smile, though his knees bled.A few days later,I decided to join in.We get a new pair of skates from the dusty old sports-shop at Pulimood and the next morning, I'm on wheels!

It was hard,the first few days.I scraped a lot of skin off my knees,and bit back the pain.But gradually the baby steps gave way to a smooth glide and soon I was zooming around with the others.There was a Skating rink at the Shangumugham beach and we spent a lot of our evenings there.We were enrolled in a local skaters association who called themselves the "All Kerala Skating Federation"(just like there is a Taj hotel at Thrikkariyoor ).What more,they conducted All Kerala Skating meets too.So one fine morning Neil and I geared up for our first ever 1 Km race.The race course was the by-pass at Chacka(back then it was under construction).There were four guys and me(for some unknown reason girls of my age kept away from the sport) at the starting point.

On your mark...get set...ready....go!

The guys lunged forward and were gone in a flash! Though taken aback for a moment, I dashed forward to join them.Soon I was out of breath.1 Km was a long way for my dainty legs.I could hardly see the retreating backs of my co-participants.Tears leaked out of my eyes.The toast we had in the morning had long been transformed into calories.My vision blurred,the few onlookers on either side sniggered,but Papa, who was jogging alongside,egged me on.I crossed the finishing line to find the boys already cooling their heels.

The next event was a State meet which was held at the Jimmy George Indoor Stadium.It was our birthday and we signed up for "Free Styles",Time Trails" and "Pair skating".Pair skating required partners to display those postures like "half-camel" ,"full-camel",spin and jump(if you can) in perfect sync.The lights are on us and the music begins.Neil and I glide smoothly over the floor.We do couple of "half-camels" and trace out "eights".There were moments when we fumbled in indecison.
However when the results were announced, we won the gold medal !
More than anything,I suspect ,we might just have looked natural together,and after all it was our day! I still remember skating forward to receive the medals We had them around our necks till it was time for bed.Just a tawdry piece of metal plated in gold with a navy blue ribbon,but that night it was pure gold!

It didn't take a genius to tell me that I was not the athletic kind.So I settle for the next best way to be a "sport"-Watch it on Tv :-)!

Viva Olympics! Congratulations to Abhinav Bindra!
and
Happy Independence day to all!

The Masquerade

The other day a friend of mine asked me to help him out with a speech for his 7 year old nephew.Now I am no Demosthenes or Aristotle to deliver authentic speeches on "Mother is a teacher".But I comply and sit down to rack my brain to squeeze out ten decent lines.It turned out to be like an MA essay,where one goes off in a tangent.The result is yet to be known.

I was discussing the incident with Mum when she fondly remembered that it was time for youth festivals in schools.It's a time when the schools buzz with creative activities of teachers,children and most importantly their ambitious parents.Singing (solo and group in all three languages),dances(folk,traditional and western),dramas, speeches(declamation,extempore),writing(essay, poetry and short story), drawing(painting,sketching)fancy dress and recitation;the usual items in every youth festival.Our school had a special competition called Flower arrangement with subdivisions like fresh flower,dried flower and vegetable carving.It was the fancy dress and flower arrangement competitions that caught my fancy as a 6 year old.

My Mum,a perfect sport in all the things we did,plunged herself heart and soul into getting me ready for the two.I turn up in the library where the event was to take place and realize that,the flower arrangement competition was not child's play.My tiny vase and a motley assortment of flowers(for which we hunted all over Chalai market the previous night and a few wild ones from the wall across the road) stood no chance among the exotic orchids,fragrant roses, gay anthuriums and colourful asters.Most of them had exquisite vases and pretty decorations like miniature fences, swings, wicker baskets and ribbons.Undeterred,I set about with the arrangement when the kid next to me whisked out a vase and an already set oasis from her big-shopper and smiled glibly at me!That evening Mum and I consoled ourselves with a declaration that we always believed in creativity.

The defeat at the flower-arrangement boosted our enthusiasm for the fancy dress competition.Mum had found this great book at Paico called Children's Fancy Dress & Parties which was exclusively on simple do-it-yourself fancy dress costumes(primarily meant for masquerade parties,quite unheard of in our country then).We browsed through a gallery of costumes ranging from Fairies to Red Indians and Robots to Clowns .There were a set called "Cheap costumes" which featured hula skirts and paper rabbit costumes.I was particularly impressed by the Fairy who looked quite pretty in a frilly sea-blue dress,gauze wings,a pearly tiara and a wand.I tried persuading Mum to settle for it but it turned out to be one of the most expensive costumes in the book.Somehow the stuff considered 'waste materials' in foreign homes are to be bought from stores here;those who watch 'Art Attack' on Disney channel will agree.Mum didn't want to let me down and settled for the Angel costume on page one.The book had a picture of an angel in golden robes,a blue and gold halo,a pair of golden wings and a harp.Not bad! I thought.

We soon set about making the costume.We hunted high and low for gold satin but in vain.So we settled for blue instead.We planned it with golden trimmings and star-shaped sequins.The harp,halo and wings works were undertaken by Mum herself,
armed with sheets of cardboard,a pair of scissors and gold foil.Soon the place smelt pleasantly of Fevicol and voilà !, they almost resembled the ones in the picture.The local tailors,however, accustomed to stitching only sari blouses and salwaar kameezes did a shoddy job with my costume.It looked like those dress robes in Harry Potter.Nevertheless I was excited about the competition the next day.

Mum helped me to dress in the green room, powdered my face with rose powder and stuck a few star-sequins on my forehead and there I was, a little blue angel! I could read satisfaction in her eyes.

We were soon asked to queue up according to the chest numbers.I joined the long line right behind my classmate who looked grumpy in a rabbit outfit with cloth ears hanging from his head , munching a carrot.The nun-in-charge mistook Neil sporting a camera,to be a participant and said sweetly, "And you are...ah! a Photographer,lovely! get into the line,dear!"

After a long wait in the queue of "doctors","teachers","Santas","fisher women","beggars" and "brides",it was finally my turn.I stepped lightly across the school portico (where the competition was held)stringing the harp and smiling the best I can,with a number of missing milk teeth.Our headmistress ,a very feminine nun,watched me with a puzzled look on her face until the compère announced "Chest no 23-The Angel".I spent about a minute putting up a cherubic performance("But trailing clouds of glory do we come/From God, who is our home:/Heaven lies about us in our infancy!")*.I was received warmly by my proud mother,off stage.We took a couple of snaps in very angelic poses and returned home immensely satisfied.

The results were announced the next day and needless to say my name was missing from the list."Maybe they didn't like an angel in disguise" said Papa,struggling to keep a straight face .Ofcourse we weren't disappointed;we still believed that participation was more important.However, it was a comment from a classmate that made the whole episode a hit.He spots me in class and exclaims"Hey ! weren't you the one who turned up as the bird!!!"


Dedicated to all those great parents who take efforts and delight in encouraging their child's dreams in the right spirit.

*
From:
Intimations of Immortality from Recollections of Early Childhood, William Wordsworth.