I strive to be a connoiseur by not making ignominous and wierd mistakes!!

Did you spot the mistake? There’s one s missing in connoiseur (ought to be connoisseur) and one i missing in ignominous (ought to be ignominious) and it’s not wierd but its weird.

My innate and foolhardy writing skills today fails me and such silly mistakes creeps into the lilting prose which I try to pen. Now they call it Mental Obesity.

Blame it on computers, blame it on MS Word, blame it on Firefox, blame it on software!! I don’t care much about spellings in the most granular level. I shudder, when I think I’m just with a paper and pen contemplating to write an article for my blog. God knows! how many spellings are going to be weird and fallible.

So how vulnerable you are in this realm?

So are computers graying out our mental faculty as automation (mechanical) has squeezed out our Physical Activity? Is it the ultimate challenge to muster Design Patterns and develop a best-in-class software or is it small things like remembering a spelling or quick calc on brain of 37*47, that matters more in life……I ponder.

Have you experienced this? Morning wake up and have a brush and sit on the sofa; one hand hold a piping hot Madras Filter Coffee and in the other the late night Edition of The Hindu. At one end you have the smell of the Madras Filter Coffee sneaking into your nostrils and in other end the smell of freshly printed paper pulp. And your head sink into the blighty and pithy op-eds with your mind scurrying in thoughts – about the content or sometimes about a new word which has been unearthed and added to the dictionary in mind. Well, this has been my routine for past (thinking….) 8yrs.

Alas! Now everything seems to be in tantrums; with this new raging, engulfing passion inculcating in other inhabitants in home. The Number Mania, The 1-9 Mania, The Squares Mania.

Me: What the heck this is?

Wife: This is Sudoku; unlock your brain cells dear.

Net effect:-
I scamper through the corridors and front-doors looking for the paper. There is no chance…other beings who get up earlier than me (of course I am the last) have regurgitated to the door and collected their papers. I have two subscriptions Hindu and Business Line and ironically both comes with SuDoKu. So now, I feel the kick of drinking Madras Filter is gone without the op-eds to read. But then I had a nice idea!

Got a couple of books like Sudoku – Will Shortz; hoping for a respite to get my paper back. But then life takes its own course and the move boomeranged big-time. So now I’m confronted with invigorated passion in Sudoku solving. Morning solve the papers, afternoon start with the books.

Innocuous visitor to my home now may be taken for a surprise every furniture has a new paraphernalia on top of it – a pencil here, a sharpener there, a eraser on the side. And then you see people sitting in corners and writing 1-9 erasing some of it and again writing 1-9. No boss this is no kindergarten – Welcome to the world of Su.Do.Ku.

Me: Give me the damn paper?

Wife: Have this for now – The Metro Plus supplement dear.

I feel like asinine; brood about it; but then I read Calvin and Hobbes and take things lightly.

Aug End:-

Lying on the bed I could feel my son’s leg in her womb. Every night I could feel the feelers sent by him – the kicks and his wriggles sending ripples across her tummy and those were the days on the verge for he could come out any point. Right from those days we could hear an elusive baby cry….a shrillness that peeks in to our ears reminding us of the days ahead. It was a baby in the next block SMR apartments who has just arrived. I believe it’s a SHE from her cries. Till today every morning we pry in the opposite apartment balconies to see the cloth-lines lined with laundry gleaming in the sun. We could never find a nappy or a tiny tee-shirt. The origins of the cry remains elusive but sound never elopes us.  

 Sept: -

Our son arrives and he lands here with an evasive companion awaiting him; whose companionship he is never coy to accept. This also means the days of duet cries are here. One starts…the other stops…..other starts…this stops….this starts…other too starts….and just mix-n-match the starts and stops a gamut of combinations and rhythms traverse the air between the blocks.

Once in a while his stifling squirming and cries get outs of hand; when our jabbers and pats just doesn’t work; when his face turns red as an apple of shouting we gently tell to him…oh! Boy look at that SMR girl how good mannered she is passing an indignant look on him. Then just when things get under control….we console him all that sweet chides were not for him…but for her

Then once in a while when in a giggling mood we stroll with him in the balcony the cry flows from the opposite side and we spritz a kiss on him saying Ananthu is a good boy! And for this he may make a sound of approval….like Haaa!

At times when we put him to sleep or play with grandparents we start hearing the cry….deep in our mind we know its not his but still we walk to take a look at him and give him a gentle clasp in his sleep or play and then continue our chores.

So the days pass….he and his compatriot giving sleepless nights, timeless joy and a feeling of completeness in the house. Some day we will meet his friend and exchange confabulations till then their cries bond our evasive families through the air.

I hope the same story repeats in the other side of the wall too…..

Haa….diwali lurking around the corner…along with it comes the pleasant memoirs from the past.

Invariably diwali is THE occasion for TamBrahms one of the two days in a year we would compulsorily wear new clothes (other being birthday), gulp calories of sweets without any guilt and end the day with Ingie Lehiyam (Ginger Paste) which is supposed to be good for tummy after consumption of voluminous amounts of ghee.

Diwali also ushers in the crackers! Diwali and crackers for me are two sides of the same coin they never can be separated. Lets for god sake rubbish those intellects and media loonies who rake up debate of fire crackers and pollution; what the heck? In India does any one care about the rambunctious State Transport buses emanating black smog; does any one care dumping of drainage in rivers/lakes? So why this din….let us celebrate this one day in our lives every year without shame/prejudice.

Crackers always bring to my mind Chinnam Potti Kadai (a small dingy shop hardly 6ft * 6ft) near our home which is everything for us. For exams we go there to get Rotomac pens, when school opens we go there for buying notebooks, when vacation comes we go for buying rubber balls, after a tired day we go there for a cold juice, after a stroll in the nights we go there for a sweet maladu (a white Laddu) and list goes on……amazing shop considering its dimension. This is what I can definitely call the experience of shop, eat & celebrate….with a humane touch….what today’s malls misses…..

A week precursor to Diwali Chinnam Potti Kadai (Shop) will be transformed into a cracker go down. A customized order form is supplied to the clientele; which my father brings home a week ahead. Next two hours are spent by me and my sister debating what to buy and what not to buy and mostly my decisions have an upper hand . Always after a lots of scampering and pruning we would settle for a list usually worth anywhere between 500 to 800 rupees. It was a huge amount in those days.

The final entrants in the list would be the most privileged crackers in town bursting which fills pride for the igniter. So invariably we never buy Mukku Vedi(small triangular shaped cracker) and Ana Vedi (cracker which looks like a Crayon) which we consider Bachcha stuff. The list includes (in increasing order of sound) Olla Padakam (cracker made of coconut leaves), Kuil Vedi (Koel brand cracker), Lakshmi Vedi (Cracker with goddess Lakshmi pix),  Atom Bomb (the loudest) and the usual kiddie stuff sparkles, flower pots, ground wheels. For us the celebrations starts previous night of diwali at 9pm when the street falls silent we start bursting. Me and my sister will man the two corners of street and start lighting one by one…forewarning any passer by calling “Chetta Vedi Vedi….Chechi Vedi Vedi” (no puns intended ). Its always a night of exhilaration and excitement and ends with lightning up the night sky with rockets. I must thank the Kings of Travancore who have build such a wonderful strong monumental wall in front of our house and this century old heritage wall is the placeholder for all our burning crackers and rockets.

Once we wind up the activities by 12am; the diwali morning is ushered in by more noise pollution thanks to Ramesh our beloved neighbour. He has this good habit of getting early in morning by 4-5am and start bursting crackers. I remember when Harish (another beloved neighbour) was there — we go on Diwali day to get more stock of crackers with our pocket money as we run out of stock of our quota which our parents have bought us….and mostly the diwali day ends with a good topping to by bursting a Mala Padakam (a chain of crackers usually 10,000 no.s). Diwali afternoon is spent by bursting the Bijli cracker (the cheapest crackers), which we get 100 for around 15/= bucks. So till evening its just idly sit and light and throw, light and throw, some bursts….some fizzles…but the excitement never wanes off us….

Amidst all this frenzy, joy and excitements…I remember this guy who just stuffs his ear with swabs of cotton and shuts himself in the bathroom the whole day. For him life is not something worth the risk of bursting a cracker

I guess this is getting long…..so where are we know? I’m sad I have lost all those great days; life has become more mundane  now and I hope from next year I could light my son’s diwali with sweet moments like what I have experienced.

Happy Diwali to anyone who have reached here reading my travails on a Diwali day that year

I’ve been scratching the HSBC credit card for last two years for all my expenses. I rarely tend cash apart from paying the maid. As a result I have earned quite a few reward points.

Now is the time redeem them. So what have I got? It’s this: -

1. Angels and Demons — Dan Brown

2. Malgudi Landscape — R K Narayann

3. No Onions No Garlics — Srividya Natarajan

4. The Google Story — David Wise

5. Marley and Me — John Grogan

6. The Kite Runner — Khaled Hosseini

7. Grandmother Tales — R K Narayanan

So next couple of months going to be hectic