Journey to the Roots!

Today is Vishu, and yet again – for the third consecutive year I am missing home…errr…missing Vishu.

I miss those days before 2001, when I savored each and every Vishu at our ancestral home at Cherai.

I miss the wake up call from Amma at 5 am, when she used to close my eyes with her hands and lead me to the beautiful vishu kani, (the lucky sight with coconut, grains, vegetables, money, gold, lot of lighted golden lamps and silk in the pooja room), and open my eyes to relish the beautiful sight and pray. At my side would be Amma, wearing a beautiful Kerala kasavu saree with her face glowing with all the reflections in the yellow shades - being a kid, I used to think that she was the goddess herself (Well, she is, I admit! :) ).

I miss the moments when I used to be seated on the kitchen step and observe Amma and Chitta prepare Vishu Kanji with Pananchakkara, under the vigilant management of Amoomma (Grandmom).

I miss the time when I used to open the hidden enclosure (called ‘ara’) behind the Pooja room, to take the tiny statuettes of our ‘Karanavanmaar’ (Ancestors), bathe them in fresh water and apply ‘bhasmam’ and ‘chandanam’ on them.

I miss the time when I used to feel so pompous when I used to carry the Karanavanmaar to the Kalasham Room, light the lamp there and serve the vishu kanji and sadya to them. And of course the thrill of watching the envy of my little cousin sisters through the side of my eye when I did all these, since this chore should be carried out only by male members of the family.

I miss the time when me and my cousins used to go for distributing the vishu kanji (basic motive is to extract some kaineetam) to the scattered roots of the family which are spread across the vicinity due to constraints of time and money, as it happens in an old Nair family.

I miss the sumptuous sadya that we used to devour with so much thrill, and those moments when we looked like animals who haven’t seen food for months.

I miss those times when I used to run behind Achan’s bike when he used to reach Cherai after having lunch with his parents, and the mischievious smile he used to have when he hides the hundred rupee note behind the ten rupee note while passing the kaineetam to a ‘very-disappointed’ me.

I miss the times when I used to stroll around the big parambu (land) near the house holding the hand of Achan in the night, and the wonderful discussions that we used to have about almost anything under the sky while sitting on the steps of the pond in Vadakke parambu (North Plot) and watching the evening heavens with shooting stars.

I miss those luminous days….

Now, I am staring at the computer while creating some useless report which is going to be looked at once, and then thrown into garbage. After this I will create some schedules and update the project plan. So and so it goes…. So much for this Vishu!

But hey – If I was sitting back at home without any job, would I even care about Vishu? I would have been deliriously crazy, praying to give me a job - at least in a small networking firm as far as Thumbaktoo, even as an apprentice. So is there any room for after-thoughts or regrets? No - An absolutely blind No. Still, my mind is so juvenile – it’s still wandering like mad, it’s still searching for the roots, just like Malayatoor had written!

These fluctuations, these aberrations, these minor foibles – they beleaguer me more than anything. These are the times when I feel too small, too vulnerable, too insignificant…..and too human. I want to wriggle out of this sticky plethora of consciousness and get back to a unique world. But…..I remain conscious. So do many more of us….We all will remember the trails we hiked through!

Let our madness continue; let us dwell in these obscurities –

Meanwhile, Happy Vishu to all! Enjoy the new dawn of the new year!

An offer Coolie could not refuse!

This is the story of Mr. Hernandez Coolie.

He works for one of the fêted bubble gum companies.

He was born there, he was brought up there, he lives there, he feeds there and he sleeps there. (And he thinks he will die there).

He has been working indefatigably for a long period with the company, in an unbelievable co-existence of reciprocal consent and reverence. He was loved by all and he enjoyed his freedom of not enjoying more freedom. Charachterwise, he was a philosopher and he always made it a point to employ his philosophical ideologies in his life.

His Don’s were always concerned about him, because they just loved him too much. They never wanted him to be sitting jaded and idle. They said they respected the abhorrence of Mr. Coolie towards free time. They asked: “Hey Coolie, You are anyway working till late, why don’t you take up this work as well. It will just take 2-3 hours more.”

Thus Mr. Coolie kept on working for blowing the big bubble even bigger.

Although there were times when he grew sentient about superior ‘mouth-freshening chewing gum’ firms outside, he never moved out. There were moments when he told his Dons that he has decided to move ahead, but the loving elders always used to say that he is one of the best people they had, and that they would provide some bizarre protein supplements for his ‘growth’. Every other occasion where he almost had a foot stamped outside, he realized the truth that these well wishers are never going to let him go easily – not without creating lots of problems. The supplements never came and he imparted in his psyche a ‘selective amnesia’ to the thought of moving to ‘mouth freshening chewing gum’ companies – It’s his destiny to ‘learn’ and ‘grow’ by being an ethical bubble blower – Anyway, he was loved so greatly and cared so vastly by his Dons, so why look for greener pastures? Many a times, many a things, he forced himself to believe – Being a philosopher helped him a lot.

It was on such a week that the organization triggered a survey named TIMEPASS which is the supposed to be the abbreviation for ‘Campaign Against Replanting Trees Which Are Already Replanted’ (abbreviation?? – aah..Whatever - Dons can’t be wrong!) survey. Various departments organized diverse backstabbing techniques in getting more people participate, since the department who gets maximum number of participants will have their department name pasted in the company boundary wall and the Dons in the department would win a free Dairy Milk chocolate.

Mr. Coolie ignored the campaign since he really did not mind replanting trees that are already replanted. He was a man who had a clear judgment about philosophical things (as I already mentioned!). The campaign TIMEPASS was supposed to end by Friday.

Meanwhile, the Dons had recently read some books about team motivation –They even had some sessions by experts about providing motivation to the team and leading by example. They were brooding for a chance to apply their leadership ideas and tactics - TIMEPASS is their golden chance and they see the guinea pigs grazing in front of them. Dons starts injecting motivation to their employees through a rapid operation portraying 'leadership by example' named ‘Operation Fool’s Gold’.

Monday morning: Mr. Coolie sees a mail from his Don Apostrophe, copied to his whole department. Don wanted the department name on the boundary wall.
“Our department is now 82nd in ratings. We need to pull ourselves up. Do your TIMEPASS.
I have done my TIMEPASS. What about you?”

Coolie thought "Wow!! Even Don Apostrophe did TIMEPASS. This is really motivational"

Wednesday Morning: Mr. Coolie sees a mail from the Don Semicolon (who is the Don of Don Apostrophe), copied to his whole department.
“Do your TIMEPASS.
I have done my TIMEPASS. What about you?”

Coolie thought "Wow!! Even Don Semicolon did TIMEPASS. This is really motivational"

Friday morning: Mr. Coolie sees a mail from ‘Don of Dons’ Don Full Stop (Don of Don Semicolon), copied to his whole department. Don Full Stop is a ruthless person who would do anything for a Dairy Milk.
“You cannot pay abstinence to TIMEPASS.
I have done my TIMEPASS. What about you?”

Mr. Coolie who had done lots of research and even discovered the close relation between replanting of trees and evolution of 45th leg of centipedes, was disappointed that he could not pen down his thoughts due to the workload he had been given by the Dons. (Coolie is not very clear on his thoughts, now – although he still remains philosophical!)

The disappointed Mr. Coolie did not think further when he replied to Don Full Stop with CC to all the people in the department:

“I didn’t do TIMEPASS.
I have work. What about you?”

That's it. Within a couple of weeks, the affectionate and compassionate Don Full Stop himself took the initiative in allowing Mr. Coolie to explore the world outside. Don Full Stop told Don Semi Colon “He might have been a great Coolie, but he deprived me of a dairy milk, and also let the whole department know about it. Don’t worry – We will get another Coolie from somewhere, there are so many on the prowl”.
Don Semi Colon told Mr. Coolie in 'Don Michael Corleone' style “I will give you an offer that you can’t refuse!”. Mr. Coolie did not refuse it and in the process achieved what he could not for the past 10 years!! He finally moved into a ‘mouth freshening chewing gum’ corporation.

In an unrelated incident, a bubble started to burst elsewhere.

Hernandez Coolie lived happily ever after.

Heirs of Earth

I just saw a report with a great news. It seems Vaikom Mohammed Basheer’s celebrated chronicle ‘Bhoomiyude Avakaashikal’ (implies – Heirs of earth) is shortly going to be a motion picture, that too, right from the hands of my favorite movie director – TV Chandran. Now, imagine who is playing lead – Yes!! It’s Mohanlal himself. For a change, his co-stars in this movie would be spiders, ants etc. I am as thrilled as any avid Basheer fan, and I just savor these moments during which I envisage how the lead character will be thrown into the intellects of the audience, how the movie will portray the subtle moments and humor in the story etc etc etc...The thoughts go on.... In short, just by visualizing frames in mind, I feel I am back - alive and kicking!!

At any rate, it’s the best accolade that can be showered on one of the best writers to grace the soil of Kerala – Vaikom Mohammed Basheer!!

Ruthless

There are times when I need to be callous. Although I have come out of the supple crust at times and made some impact on higher ups right on their visage, I think I am not doing enough. I see gross injustice, I see people who put genuine efforts suffer and people who masquerade labors enjoy. We need to be professional and antagonistic, but not at the expense of lives of sincere people, not at the expense of a few enjoyable moments that might blaze in the future and never ever to swathe the screw ups that some losers do in the quest for more ‘tags’, ‘promotions’ and ‘so-called organizational growth’.

At times you need to start believing in ethics, which are supposed to be in existence. At times, you need to raise your voice in a way that it’s heard. At times, you need to pull yourself out from cleaning up and let the mess others create remain a mess in their face. At times, you need to hit them hard on the face and let them realize that this is not the way to be. At times, you need to Ruthless.

I am not frustrated, but I guess I need to do a Quentin Tarantino.

If it’s just us...seems like an awful waste of space.

Updating yet another experience:

It started with:

Young Ellie: CQ, this is W9GFO. CQ, this is W9GFO here. Come back?

It gave two quotes which will persist animated in my mind for quite a while, for sure…

One:
David Drumlin: I know you must think this is all very unfair. Maybe that's an understatement. What you don't know is I agree. I wish the world was a place where fair was the bottom line, where the kind of idealism you showed at the hearing was rewarded, not taken advantage of. Unfortunately, we don't live in that world.
Ellie Arroway: Funny, I've always believed that the world is what we make of it.

Two:
Unknown: You're an interesting species, an interesting mix. You're capable of such beautiful dreams and such horrible nightmares. You feel so lost, so cut off, so alone, only you're not. See, in all our searching, the only thing we've found that makes the emptiness bearable is each other.

It illustrated the resolve, doggedness and persistence of a convinced mind:

Executive: We must confess that your proposal seems less like science and more like science fiction.

Ellie Arroway: Science fiction. You're right, it's crazy. In fact, it's even worse than that, it's nuts. You wanna hear something really nutty? I heard of a couple guys who wanna build something called an airplane, you know you get people to go in, and fly around like birds, it's ridiculous, right? And what about breaking the sound barrier, or rockets to the moon? Atomic energy, or a mission to Mars? Science fiction, right? Look, all I'm asking is for you to just have the tiniest bit of vision. You know, to just sit back for one minute and look at the big picture. To take a chance on something that just might end up being the most profoundly impactful moment for humanity, for the history... of history.

It ended with (guiding all of us to a larger picture):

Ellie Arroway: [to a group of children] I'll tell you one thing about the universe, though. The universe is a pretty big place. It's bigger than anything anyone has ever dreamed of before. So if it's just us... seems like an awful waste of space. Right?

As many of you might have known already, I made Contact. From the great director of Forrest Gump, Robert Zemeckis and from the Pultizer winning writer Carl Sagan, came this breathtaking movie - “Contact” - with Jodie Foster as Ellie. PP da, You got me bowled with this one.

Me: All, This is AK here. All, This is AK here. Don’t come back – Go see Contact.

Out of the world!

Implausible – That's what I felt when Mark Boucher lofted a full ball from Brett Lee over mid on for a boundary. It’s hardly half an hour since I saw the best one-day match of my life.

ODI Match number 2349 - South Africa v/s Australia at Wanderers. Australia score 434 in 50 overs to become the first team in the history of the game to surmount the 400 run barrier. As obvious as it was, the rest of the game was supposed to be merely academic. But then, destiny had unusual things in mind – the probability of something happening 1 out of 100000 came about today. A man named Herschelle Gibbs took the game to a new echelon – with an amazing 175 off 111 balls! Making sure that the hard work was not for a losing cause, was an indomitable being named Mark Boucher who was exiled from the team hardly 4 months back. No more frozen frames – Just get a DVD of the match and watch it.

For once, I am so happy for switching off the bike and skipping the plan of going to office on a Sunday evening, when I heard Tony Greig shout "What a six! What a six!" after Gibbs hit that six over extra cover. Myself, Kich and PP were holding our hearts in the hands during the match, and sure would have been all the people who were watching this spectacle. I don’t think we have been so dumbfound by any victory by India. It was entertainment of the utmost class. Hats Off to Gibbs, Boucher, Smith and Van Der Wath (in that order)!! Such a warm, sweet revenge for the 99 World Cup semifinal.

On retrospection...

It’s with an itinerant mind that I boarded the train to Bangalore from Alwaye railway station. There has been some questions raised on the authenticity of the work that I did in my previous project, and I had exhausted almost one whole day on telecon at my home to solve the issues. In the interim, I could not complete much of the personal work that I had to, at home, much to the dismay of my mother. Perplexed a propos whether having such a thankless job is worth my time and career, my deliberation route was preset. The whole process of boarding the coach, getting seated after keeping the luggage, and whatever I did in the train seemed to be a perfunctory procedure. Although I took out the novel ‘Thanalidam’ authored by Radhalakshmi Padmarajan that I had bought from the station, my mind was still roaming untamed about my choice of life. Maybe it’s the same ignorance that I had toward the book in my hand, which made me overlook the 50 odd year old person sitting right in front of me. All the while, maybe in my subconscious mind I was seeing this person who was the only other guy in my cube in the train. Anyway, now in hindsight, I do remember that this person looked like a simple Keralite, maybe an ordinary government employee, isolated from the present with something grave bothering his psyche. I must have seen him looking at me when I took out the book, and at times when I lifted my head, I could see that he was appallingly uptight with some despondency in his mind. At an instant or two, I wanted to wallop a tête-à-tête with him. I don’t know if it’s because of recalling the obligation for seclusion that I hunt for many a times, or my egotistic aim of clutching to something in the book without any disturbance, that I thought it would be better to leave the troubled man to himself. But why did I ‘fail’ to perceive that he was about to say something to me, when I got up to toss away the coffee cup? Is it just a reluctance to communicate with a fellow being who might be as old as my father, or is it just my mind trying to hold itself to the meaningless thought about same old life and career?

Anyway I am sure that this ignorance would turn out to be the final one that I give in my life. After expending some time trying to get through the first 2 pages of the novel, I decided to resign to my berth and roam around further in the mysterious terrains of my mind. It’s amazing that sometimes you love your journey to home and back, because those are the times you usually get your brain and mind for yourself. I think, maybe around midnight I slipped off to sleep, and all the while I was watching that my partner in despair was studying the unbounded darkness while he was sitting in the side seat that he got exchanged with someone who boarded from Palakkad. Even when I got down to wash my face just before I slept, he was gazing at me through the faded blue light in the compartment. Did I see a longing to let out something that has been gripping him for long, in his vulnerable eyes? Again the irrelevant deliberation about getting some sleep before I work on the design for the new project crept on me, and I conveniently ignored the elderly man. Quite amazingly, I slipped off to slumber within an hour and had been in the same state of sedate, peaceful unconsciousness for couple more hours.

It was the loud conversations below me that woke me up. I saw a small group of people, the TTR and a doctor with a stethoscope, leaning over the silhouette of a man who was on the train floor. I immediately jumped down to see what was happening. I saw the face of my silent friend, now gratis from all the despair, lying with a peaceful smile and closed eyes. The doctor who happened to be traveling in the same compartment as ours, told the TTR with a grim look “He is no more. Looks as if he had a major heart attack.”. I felt that the globe was whirling around me. I don’t know why I had my heart beating so quick as if its going to stop abruptly, that too for a person that I had barely noticed. The very thought that the sorrow and despair of that man could have been erased to an extent if I got him to talk and allowed him to vent out whatever was disturbing him, made my mind freeze. I still don’t know who this being is, or what sting he suffered from – but I got to realize that there are some things in life that you would want to change, however small they seem to be, while you think on retrospection. Sorry dear friend, I might have had a chance to save you, but I was too busy thinking about inconsequential concerns – I was too intimidated by my ego to even notice you. Now I know you, now I remember the moments in which I noticed you and communicated with you in silence, but all of this – only when I think in hindsight. If only I could turn back time, if only I could make a small correction, a small amendment in my mind – If only I could talk to you again, this time not in silence!

War against (T)Error?

UN Security Council completed the voting which would decide the action against Iran for the ‘acts favoring nuclear enrichments’. Surprisingly, India has decided to stand with US and support the allegations that the Uranium enrichment that’s being done by Iran is in the prospects of endangering human kind. Is India’s stand wrong? I can’t arbitrate that it is wrong, since any kind of nuclear research has chances of endangering life and the red flag needs to be pulled at the right time. But my question is “Why just Iran?” Why the so called ‘War against Terrorism’ is concentrated in towards the Middle East? US just finished cutting the blood supply of a nation named Iraq. Recently US ambassador appealed against the joint decision made by India and China to buy an oil field in Syria for $573 Million. Reason: Syria is short listed as a probable territory from where terror campaign can arise, and if such hefty amount of capital is going to be floated in the country, they might start acts of terrorism. Maybe it’s because of the force named China standing by us, - our Foreign ministry made a brawny reply asking US not to teach us how to control our own economy and foreign policies. Getting back to main topic, US had already short listed Syria as ‘terrorist’ probable realm. Remaining powers of Middle East, Saudi and Kuwait are ruled by Sheikhs whose identity cards would show the portrait of the US president. :)

What is this leading to? It’s quite palpable that the hottest commodity for next century would be natural gas. The largest producers of the same have already taken the lead roles in the movie directed by US. But the intelligent wolves are well aware that the sum of natural gas deposits of other Middle East nations would make a substantial quantity in the global market. After having a bout of selective amnesia which makes them fail to remember about Afghan and Pak, the focus is diverted to uranium enrichment program in Iran which is the 4th largest natural gas producer, oil field sales in Syria which comes in top 10 natural gas producers. Now the whole world can turn a blind eye on the nuclear researches happening at the ancestral homes of US, France, UK and other biggies.

I am sure that it’s not very hard to make out these facts. But then, why are other biggies like India and China not retaliating to it? I don’t think that nations like China, Germany and Russia are just imprudent enough to ignore it, which means they might be scheduling some games in the backstage. Would our Bharat also be planning some strategy behind these enemy lines? Is it already signed a clandestine team up with China on this?

Anyway the way things are going does not point to a peaceful 21st century – whatever strategies these biggies are planning, it does not seem to be in the best interests of the earth and its inhabitants. All we can hope is for level-headedness to prevail, Earlier the better.