Category: Notes

One more year and one more birthday has come. Today marks my 32nd year of existence on this earth. 32 is big. It’s almost half a life time. I should be glad and thankful for having lived and survived through these years. World over people die from birth, from malnutrition, poverty, snake bite, in riots, wars and invasions, natural calamities, road accidents, to AIDS and cancer. But here I am.

Am I happy for myself? Yes, I am. I am happy when I look back to the trail. It could not get any better and I wouldn’t change any of the events that happened in my life (except that I wish if I could revert some of them like the death of my brother and a good friend). The journey has been exciting so far and I hope it will continue to be so. And satisfied? No. Not completely. I think being completely satisfied could kill your spirit.

Then there are changes. When I was young, I thought 30 is the stage that one would turn old and now that I am past 30, I think 80 is what you should call old (I don’t know what 80 would make me think about being old). In my teenage, I used to laugh at older men with pot bellies and now I look at my growing tummy and say ‘well, it’s okay’. When an older colleague told me that he ate only two chappathis for meals and completely avoided red meat, I pitied him. I was 29 back then and he told me that I would soon understand what he meant and asked me to do regular medical checkups once I turned 30. And just as I turned 30 and took a lipid profile test, I found my cholesterol level high. I was surprised (cholesterol? me? no way!) but changed my food habits thereafter. When I grew some beard recently, I noticed that a couple of strands of my hair have turned white and I was excited (I don’t know if the excitement would sustain if I found my whole hair turned grey or white). Being called ‘brother’ was fine but now being called ‘uncle’ seems odd. It is kind of a refusal that I am growing old. But I am yearning to hear my son calling me Appan (father) but he calls me chettan (brother) instead).

So perhaps this is just a small beginning of big surprises and changes to come in life. I mean, not just the physical changes but everything. And I hope I will have the courage to accept it gracefully. So here is to another birthday, another year in life. With all it’s shortcomings, challenges and pain life is still so beautiful!

My dear Appu,

Today is the 20th day since your appaappan, my father, has passed away. I wanted to write to you a note a day after his demise,  but something or the other kept me from it.

To be honest, I don’t have many fond memories of your grandpa. The very first memory I have of him is from my childhood. One day, I was lying down on my mother’s lap after the evening prayer. Those were the days without electricity in our house and we all would soon get to sleep after the dinner. The about-an-hour-long evening prayer session, the night and the dim light from the kerosene lamp that filled the room altogether created the right atmosphere to feel sleepy and I was just about to fall asleep when someone kicked my butt. It was my father. He did not like it that I was enjoying the warmth of my mother’s love. I remember that my aunt, your grandpa’s elder sister, was angry at him for this.

The second memory is from my school days (when I was in 3rd or 4th standard). One day, I came home from school complaining to my mom that one of my classmates bullied me. Your grandpa overheard the conversation and was so angry at me that I did not ‘straighten out’ the other boy, but came home complaining.

These two incidents show the two faces of your grandpa. The first shows that he did not like us children loving our mother. He hated my mother, who had obeyed him all through out her life and bore all the physical and mental torture from him. Obviously, we, the children, loved and cared for our mom more. We stood by her. This made him even more furious, which resulted in his extended hatred towards us which also lead to physical torture at times. He showed no mercy in these torturing sessions. I remember once when I had slept in between the evening prayer and he took some mud from the courtyard, spread it around me in the room and made me kneel on top of it with both hands widespread to the sides. I was supposed to stand like that throughout the prayer and if either of the hands had bent down, he would hit me on the back with a thick broom. It is perhaps my memory, but I don’t have many good memories of him from all my childhood, teenage and adulthood. Or perhaps there might have been moments that he showed his love (like, for one, he gave me money to buy sweets to celebrate the victory of KSU in my school – he was a staunch Congress party supporter), but nothing that I now remember of. It was fear that came to my mind when he was at home.

But he had his positives. He loved his mother and his two sisters. He did not impose any restrictions on us from going out and  coming back home late (all the value implants were my mother’s department). Reading about his hatred, you might think that he was a drunkard. But the only time in a year that I’ve seen him drinking was during the parish festival and that too only a couple of drinks and he never seemed ‘drunk’. He smoked though, and that gave him some serious respiratory problems till the end.

They say a boy’s first hero is his father and I truly wished your grandpa was a hero to me. When I heard my friends talking about their fathers and their stories of love and support, sometimes with a sense of pride, I wished I could tell them a similar story. In my childhood, if  somebody told me that I had my father’s features, I would frown and resist that I looked like my mother. People also said that I got my singing skills from him. In the evenings, he would sing old Tamil and Hindi songs aloud. That is how I first heard Rafi’s “Kya Hua Tera Wada” and some old MGR film songs.

He had mellowed down in his last years. And I took good care of him. I can say this with pride, with a sense of duty and love (yes) as a son, that I took good care of him to the end. I occasionally took him for a drive and the last one was just two weeks before he died. He was so happy in all those drive-arounds because he had not gone out much since he turned 79 and once fell on the road. Sometimes nursing him could get so frustrating and when I raised my voice he would softly ask, “why are you so angry today? this is unusual of you” which would melt my anger instantly. One day, after bathing him, I was lifting him to the bed and my muscles pained at one point. He noticed the pain on my face and asked, “did it hurt?“. In his last days, he was being the father I so eagerly wanted to love in my childhood.

And he loved you so much! Your mother was the luckiest one among the daughter-in-laws in the family because she had his hands-on-head blessings (which he has never done before and actually surprised everyone who were present) before she left to her home in the 7th month of pregnancy. When your grandpa heard the news of your birth, he was all smiles and commented, “am glad it all went well“. Then you both became good friends. You would laugh aloud if he just waved his hands at you. You would cry if I’d stopped you from entering his room. And when I go near him and if you were not around, he would ask me, “is your son here?” or “is he sleeping now?” or “is someone with him upstairs? he shouldn’t be left alone” and such. When I was cleaning his room just a couple of weeks before his death, he told me “your son likes me so much“. I smiled. Then shortly afterwards, he fell ill and he couldn’t smile at you when you looked at him. He would just stare at you.

At the end of it all, I wish people gave chances a chance. As early as possible in their lives. To reconcile, to love, to understand one another. I don’t know if I will ever be your hero, though I would very much be pleased if I heard you saying, “my father is my hero“. But I know I have to live up to that. What I would suggest to you is to be your own hero. Grow up yourself to be the hero you wanted to adore or model after, Appu. Or you know, you could even be my hero. Keep your heart, my son.

ഈശോ…

നൂറ്റൊന്നു സുകൃത ജപങ്ങള്‍
ദിവസങ്ങളോളം ഉരുക്കഴിച്ചു കൊണ്ടുണ്ടാക്കിയ
പിച്ചള വളയുമണിഞ്ഞു
എല്‍.പി.സ്കൂളിന്റെ മുറ്റത്തു സ്ഥാപിച്ച
ചില്ല് കൂട്ടിനുള്ളില്‍ നിന്ന് ചിരിക്കുന്ന കുട്ടി.

യേശു…

അമ്മയുടെ ശുഷ്കിച്ച വിരലുകള്‍ക്കിടയിലൂടെ
ഊര്‍ന്നിറങ്ങുന്ന കൊന്ത മണികള്‍ക്കൊടുവില്‍
തൂങ്ങിയാടുന്ന ദൈവപുത്രന്‍.

ജീസസ്…

ഭാഷാ വരത്തിന്റെ അലര്‍ച്ചയിലും,
ഉപദേശിയുടെ കറുത്ത ചട്ടയിട്ട ബൈബിളിലും നിന്ന്
സുമുഖനായ അമേരിക്കന്‍ ദൈവത്തിന്റെ മുഖം മൂടി മാറ്റി
ഇറങ്ങിയോടാന്‍ വെമ്പുന്ന ഒരു ജൂത വിപ്ലവകാരി.

(പ്രേരകം – സാറാ ജോസഫിന്റെ ആത്മകഥ കുറിപ്പിലെ യേശു അനുഭവം).

My dearest Appu,

I’m not so good at story telling, though I do or rather did like writing them when I was a boy. One of your aunts was so good at telling fascinating stories and we the younger ones were enthralled by her story telling skills. But today, I’m going to tell you a story. Story of  a young man called Varghese. You won’t get to read the stories of people like him in the books or in history because to the public, they and their lives are so uninteresting. There are probably millions of Vargheses in the world who born and die everyday and not a single person would take notice because they are so ordinary. They are ‘destined’ to live their un-interesting lives.

Okay, so our story begins in a village, now a town, in the middle part of Kerala. Varghese was born 41 years back on an August 3rd to a crude father and a lovely mother. He was the fourth child of the couple. He was named after St. George and don’t ask me why people with the name Varghese have St. George as their patron saint. Perhaps it is because St. George has a Malayalam name of “Gee Varghese” (‘ghee-varugees‘ as the name spelled in Malayalam).

Varghese was different from other kids in his family. He was slightly dark, too much of an introvert and artistic. He loved painting, movies, music and reading. He was very possessive about the people whom he loved (here, perhaps you can draw some parallels between him and your Appan). Varghese did not study much and dropped out of school early. He did many jobs after that. He worked as a salesman in a fancy goods selling shop in the town. He worked there for many years and then moved on to masonry.

Varghese did not have many friends or rather was very choosy of his friends. He did not hang out with friends much. He spent his spare time painting. He loved art though he did not have access to learn much about art or artists. All he knew was to paint with the pastels and a single brush that he had bought with his own money. He could not afford to buy a canvas paper, so he would collect the old Sivakasi calendars to paint on it’s back, on the white space. His youngest brother would curiously look at him doing the painting – first the outer form with a pencil and then the pastel colors flowing on the paper with the stroke of a brush. He was so skilled. People who saw his artistic skills asked the family to enroll him in an art school or send him to somebody who can teach him art. But how can a family that struggled hard to make their ends meet afford to pay the fee for such a thing? But he did not give up. He continued painting with pastels on the back of the calendars or with a white chalk on their verandah. He even applied some of his skills in his masonry work with the permission of his supervisors.

Another passion of his was movies. He so loved movies. And he would take his youngest brother along to watch movies. Imagine a young man just in his twenties taking his brother who is ten years younger than him to movie halls while he could have hung out with his friends. If he couldn’t take his brother, he would narrate the story lines to him. And Varghese had some skill in narrating the story line of movies with hand and face gestures. So he would narrate Ten Commandments or Benhur to his brother who loved these story telling sessions. Like I said before, he rarely went out with his friends but he had a solid set of friends who stood by him. After each day’s work, he would come home, take a shower and would go to the nearest library where he was a member. Or he would go for a movie screening organized by Navachitra Film Society in which he was a member.

Then on a bright Sunday morning of January in 1997, while he was on his way to attend a friend’s wedding, he met with an accident that took his life away. He was just 27 years old when he died.

If you ask me why Varghese’s life was so interesting to me, it is not only because he was my second elder brother, your Valyappan, and we loved each other so much but also it is about a young man who was denied the opportunities he could have had as an artist. It is about young men like him denied of the chances and had to suppress themselves because of the lack of money or the people around them thought that art could get them no where. And one day they just fade out to memory. Nobody asked him if he was happy with the life he had. He never complained.

Do you know why his birthday this year makes me sad than ever in his memories? Because now I understand why my Amma still can’t control the tears when she speaks of my brother. Now I understand how it would feel when you lose a child forever. How precious a child is to a parent. How the first memory of holding their child would rush to their mind when they think of their child’s birthday. Today, I drop a tear for your Ammamma and pray God give her strength and comfort.

PS: You know I don’t usually cross-post anything I write in this private blog I created for you. But I made an exception this time and I am going to publish this post in my blog also, because I wanted to tell the world about him.

PPS: I love you so much!

Train journeys are not always interesting if you are a frequent traveler. When you travel twice a week in the same route and train it can get so boring. I always take either a book to read or charge my Zune fully so I can hear music or podcasts while sitting in the train for long 6-7 hours. But I realized last week that there still could be something interesting if you look around. Last week’s train journey back home was quite interesting that way.

The Thiruvananthapuram-Guruvayur intercity express train is always packed with daily commuters and devotees of Guruvayurappan. Daily commuters would get off mostly at Varkkala, Kollam, Kaayamkulam stations. The devotees to Guruvayur travel with family and there would be new born babies in many of these family groups. I assume that they take their little ones for the “chORooNu” ceremony at Guruvayur temple. It is a pleasure for me to see these babies, mostly because they would come close to the age group of my little one (they would mostly be 5 to 8 months old). Their bright colored dress, wide smiles and naughtiness would remind me of my kiddo and my heart would yearn to get to my son, take him in my arms and plant a kiss on his cheek.

An ordinary seat for three, with no dividers in between doesn’t give you much comfort. So imagine the other two people sitting beside you are XL. The man who sat next to me was a tall, big fellow and there was his wife, who is not so tall but still big, sat beside him. They did not really squeeze me in the beginning, but who has control over their bodies when they fall asleep? So as the train moved, the man’s body went loose and I had to bear much of his body weight.

On another seat was a girl with dark circles around her eyes. The Infosys logo on her backpack explained the dark circles and why she looked so sleepy. She must have worked long schedules to get her leave. You don’t usually spot a regular weekender in a Thursday train. She plugged in the earphones and looked away throughout the journey until she finally got off at Ernakulam. Just a couple of blocks away, a group of cheerful young girls were persuading each other to sing. Finally, they sang together but I guess they were a bit shy, even with their loud voices, so the song faded out after a couple of lines.

When the train passed through the Varkkala-Kollam stretch, I saw many homes that had the Gods’ photos in their sit-outs, all brightly lit with electric bulbs. I guess these are Eazhava houses from the photo of Sri Narayana Guru that took the center stage of the Gods’ photos. Seemed interesting to me because usually the Hindu households would have a lit Deepam on the front.

At Munroe Turutthu, a group of people were waiting to see-off a young man. One of them, an old lady, was weeping loud enough for people inside the train to take notice. A young woman whom the old lady was hugging tight while weeping was looking at others with embarassment and tried to comfort her. As the train slowly moved, rest of the people – all of them looking cheerful except the old lady – moved along with the train to wave to the young man. The old lady, now without a shoulder to cry on stood there alone, still weeping and wiping her tears off with the tip of her saree.

There is something different about the toilet art lately. In the toilet at one end of the compartment had the same sleeze you usually see in the train toilets, but on another end lied a surprise. Here, people were a bit spiritual and philosophical. Here are a few I read while taking a leak.

“Body is mortal, but the soul is immortal – Bhagavad Gita“, read one in Malayalam.

“Why does Lord Vishnu have five hands? To control our five elements“, again in Malayalam.

“We love all, we help all, we are the sons of Lord Krishna“, read another in English.

Another curious one read, “You don’t know yourself, think for once about who you are, then do as you please“.

Finally a fairly new one that read, “I want girls, call 9xxxxx xxxxx“. And next to it another one that read, “Go to your mother“.

(Thoughts after one chat session with a friend)

I remember reading a quote about old age that, ‘old age is always 15 years ahead of my age‘ or something like that. When I was in school, I thought that the people who went to college were old. When I moved to college, I thought that the final year students were old. After college, I thought 25 was old and then 30. At 31, I don’t know what is old anymore. Are they the people who have kids in highschool? Or whose kids are married and have kids of their own? Or those who have retired or counting their time in the death bed?

I would have said that the old age is when you stop being young in your mind, but that’s not true (for some, its about the physique; keeping your body fit). That kind of statement comes from those who have seen only boring examples of the old age. A generation of lecturing, boring and ordering people. One can grow old gracefully and staying alive doesn’t have to be staying young. We just have to grow old gracefully. And to do that, and to stop being the uninteresting people that the youngsters hate, we just have to stop being the oldie that we hated when we were young. And how do we do that? I have the following suggestions.

1) Interact with young people : Youngsters are full of enthusiasm and ideas. You feel a certain level of energy when you talk to them and that could trigger some fresh thoughts in your mind. They seldom think of the risks involved or spend too much time on planning and focus their energy on execution. Whereas oldies spend too much time estimating the risk, drawing out a fool-proof plan and sometimes end up with discarding the idea of execution altogether (though I’m not downplaying the importance of proper plan and risk estimation here). Their years of experience would primarily lead them to see the negatives first and most, while the youngsters always see the positives first because of their passion and enthusiasm for the execution of their ideas.

2) Give tips and opinion, not lectures : I hated it when old people started lecturing me when I asked them for an opinion or help. They would just go on and on, as if my life totally depended upon their words and they take a kind of pride in it. If you’re a parent, do not use your ‘parent power’ on your children and give them your opinion and tips that could help them without getting into an elaborated lecture. That would really make an effect on them.

3) Do not ask for respect; earn it : Many old people seem to think that being old gives them the right to ask for respect from the younger generation. That may not work anymore. Apart from the basic human considerations (of considering and giving space to the old like we do with little children), I don’t think anybody would give respect to any person just because they are old unless they are part of family (certain odd rules work for families in the name of blood-relation). And there is nothing wrong in it. You have to earn respect in your life. Age is no license to ask for it. The sooner you realize this, the better.

4) Do not act like you’re young : Some old people seem to think that ‘acting young’ would give them space among the young generation, which in my observation is completely wrong. If you want to act young, take your friends or the people of your age to do that. Otherwise, you would be making a fool of yourself. You would think cracking porn jokes or doing ‘fun’ things with youngsters would make you acceptable among them but they would think that you are a joker and they would make fun of you at your back. Similarly with your children. A friend once wrote in his FB page that his father was strict until he was 19 years of old and then became a good friend. I think that makes the point.

How do you see growing up old? As for me, I see the years to come with much excitement. For I know that I have changed for good and learned many lessons in the years I have lived so far. I am curious about what life has in store for me in the years to come. To see what the world would turn out to be in the future years. To see how life and living would change. To see my family and children grow. To see what relationships mean as we pass on each stage in life. The only thing I am concerned about growing old is to depend on someone else. About going senile, being bedridden and immobile. That truly is scary.

But what I don’t want to be is what my friend told me in the chat conversation – “I don’t want to end up like a wise cracking smart ass“.

What are your thoughts? 🙂

Image: Arvind Balaraman / FreeDigitalPhotos.net

There were two things in my life which I thought would never happen. First, an academic degree and second – a driving license. I always thought I never needed the first but these days I have a passion for learning and planning to enroll for a distance education degree program of Calicut University. It still remains in the plan but now I have confidence that I can at least give it a try.

If a degree was something I thought I could do but wouldn’t do, obtaining a driving license was something I thought I would never be able to do even if I gave it a try. Right from the boyhood, I never had the passion to learn driving or even riding, for that matter. It’s strange that I cannot remember many boys who rode bicycles in the neighborhood and that probably shows the lack of my interest in driving. My family kept insisting that I should learn but I was hesitant. When my brother was about to buy a new motorbike he offered me his old one, a Kawasaki bike, if I learned to ride but I did not show any interest. Some of my friends were interested to teach me and offered help, but they finally gave up because I would never comply .

Years of people insisting led me to join a driving school eventually at the age of 25, but the fees I paid was wasted. Those ‘teachers’ at the driving school were much younger than me and they couldn’t understand why I was such a dumb student and I couldn’t take their insult. I couldn’t even balance a gear-less Kinetic and it reinstated my belief that vehicles wouldn’t work for me. I completely gave up on driving after that.

I don’t know why, but I was plain scared of the roads. Or rather about taking control of the roads I should say, because I was never afraid to travel in a fast moving bike or a car if somebody else was in control of the vehicle. In fact, I loved the speed as long as I wasn’t the one accelerating it. I also thought driving wasn’t fun. I could never understand when people said they would just take their cars out for the fun of it. For me, enjoying a ride means sitting on the back and enjoying the passing sights, but never about when to hit the brake, how much to accelerate, when to change the gears, watching out on people or other vehicles on the roads and traffic.

I have been humiliated or felt being insulted many times in my life for not knowing how to ride or drive a vehicle. My friends do it all the time, my family were concerned and would bring in the topic during family events, sometimes I was asked to take a vehicle and go (by people who did not know that I couldn’t ride) and I was so embarrassed in all those moments. After the wedding, the pressure was being unbearable. My wife kept begging and bugging me to learn driving and finally I had agreed that I would try again.

The driving lessons were tough and scary for me right from the beginning but this time I did not give up. When the first driving test failed, I was nervous and even thought of giving it up again but then I decided no matter how many road tests I fail, I would try again and again until I got the driving license. So finally, I got one in the last October. And then on January this year, I bought an old Maruti 800 and driving it since then. It’s not like I am a master of driving by now (I still learn new things everyday I go out in the car), but the fear of driving or being on the road is slowly fading away. I am beginning to enjoy the drive now.

So I am happy that I can finally say that, even though I do not know how to ride a bicycle or a motor bike, I know how to drive a car though I am not a perfect driver yet. And I can take my family along to places without having to wait for an auto-rickshaw, a bus or rely on other people for a lift.

And do you know what a driving license could really do? It’s not just that I learned to drive. But learning to drive has brought some self-confidence that I was seriously lacking in my life. And it is afterwards that I seriously thought of enrolling for the degree program. Isn’t it amazing what little things could do to change your life for good?