Sunday, September 30, 2007

Amma Mane!!!

Well Amma Mane in Kannada is a very sweet sounding word. Literally it means one's mother's home, it has a wider connotation to represent the parent's home for a married daughter. A place the much married daughter cannot frequently go to, but is a luxury when she can afford to go. For women who stay close to their parents the word might not sound significant, but for those who stay far, it means so much. The chances of living with the parents is almost over once the daughter is married off. There are of course exceptions. but they stay exception. In these days of global carrier, one hardly gets to visit parents and live the childhood all over again. I realised the luxury of Amma Mane very late. Recently i managed to stay with my parents for two weeks. I had not done it for the past two years. The day i went with the plan of staying for two weeks, two weeks looked so distant.There were moments when i thought 'my god, this is no longer my home, how am i gonna stay here for so long?' the apprehension disappeared in two days. By the end of my stay i was all tears. I did not want to leave. If only i could stay for a little long.
It is curious that once we get used to our indenpendent life, sharing space with parents appear daunting. for a second i forgot that my parents were my everything before i grew up to be an adult. So much their part, but still so apart!
I lived every moment of my stay with my parents. It was a slow crawling towards my bygone childhood. Sharing personal trivias with parents, my father recollecting how i used to cry each time i fell as a kid, my mother narrating the way i used to drink my big glass of milk right in one go. The idiosyncrasies associated with me as a kid as well as with my sister.It makes very nice fodder to chew on. ...Ans chewing the cud was never more beautiful than this. We grow up faster than we realise. Many a times, we find it difficult to share space with our siblings as well as parents. May be living with parents is not feasible after a particular point of time. But spending some time with them is definitely great. no doubts about it at all.

Parents are assoicated with comfort, like chicken soup for the soul, parents are harbingers of comfortable times, the warmth, the way they make us feel special is something very very precious. And i noticed that i was able to sleep till 7.30 AM at my parents place, which i cannot do anywhere else, more so not in my house establishment!Its all about comfort i guess...

Next comes the food. I guess everyone feels that their mothers are the best cooks in the world. I m no exception. just that i feel my mother is the second best after the grand mother. granny- my mother's mother was the best ever cook i have known. But now she is far too old and she has long rennounced her laddle! If only she could cook. I have noted down her recipies but i cant reproduce the taste. My mother is also a great cook. For my comfort food means the food that comes out of my mother's kitchen. This is one case where familiarity breeds affection not contempt. a familar taste is so very comforting and something i long to go back to. even as i write thinking of the aromas of my mother's kitchen make my mouth watery!
Everyones needs to take sometime off to live with parents, even if it means cumbursome adjustments, it is worth all the adjustments. Fortunately for me, i did not have to make any adjustment, i just had to slip into my own childhood. Once that was done, it was my own parents pampering their neo-nine year old kid!

Thursday, September 6, 2007

Dasara Elephants

Dasara festival ws one festival that i really used to wait for as a kid... in the southern part of karnataka, dasara is celebrated with so much grandure! and the city of mysore is invariably associated with the vijayadashami festival.. the caprisioned elephants and the golden howda and the maharaja and the palace and the jamboo savari!!!i was born in the city and we lived very close to the palace.. just two streets off the palace actually the area is called shankarmutta..for us dasara was all about elephants..a month before the jamboo savari elephants from nagarahole and bandipoor was brought to mysore..and they were all stationed at the mysorepalace. but they had to be washed daily and for that the elephants were to be taken to karangikere.. a lake closedby..the elephants were walked on the tankbud 'yeri' as we used to call it to the lake... and this was a morning ritual...our schools used to be closed for the dasara holidays one full month unlike a 10 day break these days. and every morning we (me and my friends a considerable gang) we user to wait at the edge of the yeri.. at times we used to pilfer a banana or a piece of jaggery to feed the elephants... and lo behold the elephants used to walk rythemically with the bells around their necks.. it generally used to be in the decending order... the huge drona the first the remaining female follwing drona or may be it was balarama.. who was then a kid.. there were others too shoba bahadur arjuna and shanti.. guess i dont get the names of the others...and calves were the last of them... they were soo playfull.. the mahavuts had a greast time with the claves.. they were so much like babies... too curious and at times venturing out to the very peripheri of the yeri... and what an excitement!! what great fun we used to have looking at these gentle gaints... i wonder if they have the same practicfe these days toothings have changed.. i did be really surprised if i get to knw that karangikere is still a functioning lake.. and has been spared by land sharks... and the yeri must be soo busy these days that elephants might not be able to even tread let alone leisurly pace through...and the mighty Drona is so more there.. he was electricuted in 1998...oh! it has been so many years since we last saw him with the howda... i miss him every time i see the jamboo savari....balarama the current bearer or the howda is fine but i feel he is shorter than Drona.. and he is supposed to be a little short tempered and unruly at times too... Drona was so docile and he ws soo used to crowd that he seemed to be at ease both in the rainforests and the mysore city jamboo savari...and mind u... not all elephants are eligible to carry the howda.. it is an elephantine task in itself.... the caparisioned elephant will have to carry the 750 kilo howda for a stretch of 4 kilometers from palace to bannimantap.... so the choosen elephant will have to be sturdy and it has to have a certain body figure too.. a broad back .i miss dear drona ... after him there was this unlucky elephant called arjuna... through he was as good as drona, he was rendered ineligible for the jamboo savari after he accidentally killed his mahavut. i pity him.. he is now confined to the forests.. but then it is good for him right .. far away from the madding crowd .. leading the life of a recluse... how i wish to go back to the dasara elephants....to drona balarama and bahadoor... to shanti and all of them...i with them all a long life... unfortunately i cant wish drona a long life but definitely peace to his soul.. i m sure he is listening

Boredom!

Boredom! It is a common phrase that is to be heard everywhere! Friends, colleagues, neighbors... I wonder what it to be bored all the time is! looks like people these days have a lot of time... time enough to be bored... my friend does not know what to do on week ends! He is bored the two days he is off work!! And on Mondays it is the 'Monday blues'... it is so boring to go to work on Monday! Working is boring and days away from work too are boring! I wonder what else it is to be living life...
I have never seem my father say he is bored... and i have never seen my grandfather say he is bored... in fact my grandfather is a person who has lived long enough to see major changes in life right from electricity to the computers.. He and people of his generation lived in a different world... they had no television to watch, they had no Internet... chips for them meant some thing that they could eat...web was something the spider spun in the corners, site was a place where they intended to build houses!! Now meanings and definition have changed...lifestyles have changed. My grandfather and his friends spent time doing a lot of things... lot of activities... crosswords, puzzles, reading news papers and books...they also played a lot when they were young.. Football, cricket tennis and what not... chinni dandu etc in fact my grandfather who is retired from work for almost two decades is never bored... and of course now his new addiction is the TV soaps along with his puzzles, crosswords and news papers...
My father is from a far younger generation vis a vis my grandpa (which is obvious) he is still into his work... he works for one of these public sector banks and makes money enough to fend for his family.. He has not seen the big bucks software engineers and MBAs these days see... and he is so very contented with his work, with his earnings and his way of life. I have never seen him crib on Monday mornings. He has not even heard of the word Monday blues.
But now I see people of my generation suffering for assorted diseases... monday blues, perpetual boredom, burnout and what not.. These are syndromes people of older generation never knew of. I am just wondering if these are the creation of modern industry, way of work and marginalization of human effort the and marginalization of human role. Earlier people really worked .they used their brains and muscles... now most of the time we see the physical exercise part is almost nil...and computers do most of the work for us.. All that is to be done is follow a chat of programme... thats it... i wonder what is the factor that is leading to such a drastic change in the mind set of our workforce. no one appears to be contented with what they have. Frequent job changes mostly guided by pay packages, the herd mentality of choosing something that has been proved a safe choice by others. What are we doing? And where is it leading us to? What will be life and working is down the lane... say in the next 20 years!! It is very difficult to even guess

Monday, September 3, 2007

Why is my blog titled "laughter is the best medicine"

Well...my record of humor is pretty bad.. at one point of time i had to tell my gang that the joke i was narrating was over and that they NEED to LAUGH!! They used to tell me that the joke i narrated was not funny..but some of them used to find me funny..they used find the fact that i was able to enjoy such jokes funny!!! well well.. they were all Reader's Digest jokes.. may be i was never good enough to narrate the jokes well enough. After all what matters in humor is the way things are put across.. I realised narrating and stand up comedy was never gonna be my forte..then i thought why not write. Thats how i started perhaps. But my humor is very sensitive to the summer heat ... you cant expect it to spring out !!! Its far too hot outside for my humor to come out. So its staying cozily in the coll confines of my grey matter! (if i happen to have some) So the tittle is gonna be here but not the laughter.. lets see if it is willing to come out in winter..

Nevertheless... i had a huge collection of RD in my library.. (i happen to have a small collection of books.. all good ones) I had some real one ones too.. I had went through it so many a times but still found it readable. Then i started running out of space. So my mother started to sell me the idea of selling a few old ones to the Kabadi! and poor me i gave in and sold most of my collection.. but i did manage to cut the 'laughter is the best medicine' 'life is like that' 'humor in uniform' and 'all in the day's work' and complied them into separate but cute collections! that was it .. i had stopped my subscription..well my father's i should say. i still live off him! Then it was all text books... all the way. some where down the lane i lost my affinity to RD. Last month i had a chance to pick up one of the latest issues. Hey RD has changed.. they have introduced a lot many sections including something called virtual reality, something with teens in it and many more.. i luved it.
RD has a magic about it. I grew up munching RD all the way. Now i realise i m old enough to say that RD has changed since i read it last hehehehe.. I still love it . And would not mind going through Drama in real life...Heros....and of course all the other regular columns.
I feel i have accomplished something in life the day some one leaves a comment on my blog saying the my blog reminds them of RD!!!

Saturday, September 1, 2007

Romance....

Why is that Yash Chopra always managed to hit the bull's eye in Bollywood most of the time?? Because he sold good romance...More so...loving the idea of being in love.. My god! what a great feeling it was .. to be in love with love... the idea of a prince charming/princess, and a fairy tale followed by a happily ever after...i do not know much about the way men feel about the idea of being in love... but girls.. i know there is hardly anyone in my circle who at least at one point in time were bowled over by the idea!!! Yash Chopra brand of movies are popular with girls.. all time all ages..Though i am well past the age of falling in love with the ideas of being in love, i still like Yash Chopra brand of movies..just for the nostalgic value..it reminds me of days when i was younger and had so much to look forward to in life.
Well only after i was old enough that i realised the magic and importance of Yash Chopra movies.. ..Falling in love is a package deal.. not at all a rose garden but a bumpy mud road.. i could be smooth road, but could be really bumpy at times. However we would not realise till we get into a relationship and then when are about to say "oh! god what the hell did i do" it would be far too late .. reached a point of no return.. ..u simply cannot get back the innocence...the state when you never knew what it actually it is to fall in love and try to be in love ...Man that's the most difficult thing in the world.. wonder how people manage to be in love for ages..i wonder if there are such people after all. Whats beautiful is the idea of being in love.. as in YC's movies....the heroine is sitting on the window sill and there is a gentle breeze that blows through her hair and the silky hair descends right on her face partially covering her..her delicate fingers try to move the silky hair across...right then the hero catches a glimpse of her.. and that's it..Shakespeare says, "who ever loved that loved not at first sight" ...the hero falls in love with the girl...is it not a beautiful dream to sell..When i was a teenager.. my eyes were full of these dreams.. that one day some one will catch my glimpse ...and the with out my knowledge there will be someone who is pining away for me... The idea that i m special to some one made me feel better, special and .......... beautiful..even though the mirror said otherwise..
Then the wait for the special person.....could this be him.. him?? or may be him! the wait for the person was sooo good.. i gave me reasons to look at the beautiful night sky and the moon behind the thing veil of passing clouds...it gave me reasons to look into the silver raindrops on a day when rainbow lit up the sky....and each time my heart skipped a beat...The magic of being in love with love....So beautiful.. It also kept me writing poems after poems ...till i ran out of thoughts and stopped writing poetry...
Romance inspired so many artists that i bet if not for romance we would not have had half as many poems, novels, paintings, art in any form for that matter....

But then all good things come to an end.. and romance ends after the 3 hours ..soon after the theatre lights lit up! we realise oh! god did i forget to switch off the geyser?

Musings on a winter morning

There are days when i wake up on a crisp winter morning to find the sun extremely bright and i can feel the happiness in the air, i can small spring flowers and then hear something thats calls me for a party...then there are days when i wake up the sun seem to be unnecessarily hot or too cold and sad.. nothing seems to be ok, nothing looks ok.. the fruit on the table looks sad and droopy, the breakfast looks sad... the tap in the bathroom seems to be running low.....on those days.. i miss my bus by half a minute, i end up searching for a silly book in the library the whole day, then i come to a late cold lunch only to find an unidentified vegetable in the subzee!!
Things could be that way or this... sometimes i feel i m the most beautiful person in the world.. then i feel i m the ugliest! On days i feel i m loved by everyone around me.. i feel the y need me and they are happy when i am around.. Then there are days when i see that there is no one for me, i remain unloved and uncared for. No one wants to be with me.. and its a pain i cant explain..

To remain unloved and uncared for is probably the worst thing to happen..and to feel that way is a pity. I only wish we all could feel better ..all the time.. even if we did not know what it was to be gloomy.. if we all felt loved for and cared for and if we all loved each others well enough, things would have been much much better..there would have been no bombs and no killers..It would have just been a beautiful world..