Kalyanam In Baltimore

Karthik and Samantha’s wedding in Baltimore , on September 15, 2011 made me realise how much one takes  weddings for granted, back home in Bangalore.  We pretend to be reluctant guests, and arrive with faces that make no effort to hide the fact that we are only there because we couldn’t find a valid excuse to skip it altogether.

Unless, of course, its’  a wedding in the family. Which means catching up with  cousins from across the globe, country, and city, packing  twenty years’ worth of nostalgia into the time between the muhurtham and the saapad. And letting it spill over into the afternoon, reminiscing and clearing space in the attic of memories for  the anecdotage that’s to come.

When Cousin Balu and his wife Janaki’s invitation to their son Karthik’s wedding  was received, I’d been here in Herndon Virginia two years,  and the last wedding I’d been to was a year ago in Bangalore -  and the yearning to sink my teeth into a spicy masala vadai,  and feasting my eyes on a banana leaf with all the “items” in their place- payasam, paruppu, avial, the kosambaries (two), curries, the thick sambhar and the aromatic rasam, and the sweets- a laddu and invariably , poli or chiroti…………… had me itching to take the next plane out of Dulles back to Bangalore and become a wedding crasher.

Of course, there was no banana leaf  at Karthik & Samantha’s wedding , though most of the “items”  that go on a banana leaf were served making it the most sumptuous meal.  But there were reunions!  And meeting a whole new generation of nieces and nephews with amazing talent and their joie de vivre which was quite infectious. I met Karthik’ sister Aparna for the first time. And since I’d met Karthik only a couple of times, and he didn’t remember, it was quite like the first time.

Meenakshi, Manju and Bhimu Chittappa came down from Minneapolis, Popy and Bernard drove down from Ottawa, and  Kumar put in an appearance too. Meenakshi drove us to Baltimore the previous evening and we stayed at the hotel which Balu had organised for everyone, since the wedding was to start rather early.

The aura of  a lovely Madras wedding had already taken over the Greater Baltimore Temple , where the arrival of the bride and groom was awaited. The oonjal, and the mandapam decked out in floral festoons, there were kolams and vilakkus. And looking glorious in Kanjeevaram and diamonds glittering on her  ears, rather MS-usque was Jana’s mother. Mami, whom I had last met when I was in college or school, at one of the weddings- her other daughter Meena is married to Kumar, Balu’s brother…….. put me to shame with how sharp her memory was-  how’s your mother doing after her surgery, how is Bunty, and where is your husband, why isn’t he here. Are you liking it in America?

Soon all her children and grandchildren began trickling in,  appropriately dressed in finest Kanjeevarams,  and there was so much beauty, joy and laughter . When the bride arrived, and it was time for Kashi Yatra and oonjal,  the young nieces and nephews began singing the beautiful marriage songs ……..maalai maatrinal, sita kalyana vaiboghame…….and all the songs that make one tearful and choked at weddings, especially when one never had this kind of wedding.  Jana’s sister Vidya’s son Anirudh enthralled with his fine rendering of “Enna thavam seithanai…….” and many more throughout the entire ceremony.

It was just as touching to see Samantha’s parents submit to all the rituals while they obviously had no clue what it all meant,  Samantha’s father told us later that he had enjoyed doing it all the same. Samantha herself looked  very comfortable in the madisaar,  and beautiful, enjoying the ceremony.
Meenakshi and I  noted that everyone looked tearful when the thaali was tied, and everyone stole a few moments to compose themselves and pretend that they never cried at weddings.

It was great to meet all the lovely sisters and brothers of Jana. Lakshmi, who had once come to Bangalore with friends, and I had been their “guide” in  Jayanagar 4th block,  I have to bashfully admit, I couldn’t recognise, but when I knew her she had curly hair!  She was the wedding planner, I learnt, and its thanks to her, my  urge to hop into a plane bound for Bangalore and turn wedding-crasher could be put on hold!

This post is long overdue. And  with this, my parting promise to Jana has been redeemed, I hope!

IBS over Delhi Belly?

There is something about Delhi Belly that says it should really be called IBS.  Facebook is awash with friends who have become irritable after watching it, and when they call it a crappy movie, they are being literal– the crap IS in-your-face. The real hero seems to the ceramic bus,  turning up like Superman  whenever the guy with the loosies needs to be near one.  A profusion of flatulence,  noises related to being afflicted with the Delhi Belly, and  a cameo appearance by the offending crap does  drain one of  all tolerance.  And one has no stomach left to appreciate  the  good parts of what I first thought was a Curate’s Egg of a movie.

“It is crass,  crude, coarse , ” my friend Chetan Krishnaswamy cavilled, rather alliteratively,  adding that if new age cinema was all about the perversions of Delhi Belly, it was sad.  And he forbore from clarifying on what he would wish upon anyone comparing this “offal” to that old classic, Jaane Bhi do Yaaron.

Another friend Brijesh Kalappa,  declared,  Delhi Belly- Ouch!! Painfully silly!

Thinking about a couple of  scenes in the movie that had been truly funny, I  ventured, rather gingerly, a ” may be its silly but it is not gross,”  and regretted it immediately.  Since watching the movie, I can’t  deny the thought of a  mensinkai bajji     tossing on a bed of chopped onions on a newspaper, which has a review of this movie printed on it, leaves me queasy.

I am now obsessed with the growing list of things about Delhi Belly that gross me out.

On top , of course is the fact that Aamir Kahn seemed to have grossed his investment in the first week.

It grosses me out that anyone can go laughing all the way to the bank  , by banking on crap and toots.

It grosses me out that once the  real crap has been cleaned up ( hasn’t anyone heard of  what happens in diapers ought to stay in diapers?),  Delhi Belly is just an avial of genuine ROFL scenes from rom-coms and don-coms of Hollywood. The toilet scenes came from Along came Polly,  Tashi’s parents are the Fockers , and  the dog that humps Arup is Moses, also of the Fockers fame.  The domineering girlfriend looks suspiciously like the girl in Transformers 3, but since both movies are running, it must be my IBS acting up.

Bollywood is not just a copy-cat. With Delhi Belly, it has become crappy-cat.  Hollywood had to send us Analyze This so we could morph our own gangster into the bumbling, insecure, therapy-needing   Paul Vitti, Godfather, whose day-job is  being a comedian.  I can’t think of any  Bollywood gangster movie  in which  the godfather  isn’t required to provide the laughs as well.  Not that I’ve seen most of them.  But everyone knows that you can get into the story of a Bollywood movie at any point, and still never miss, nay, escape  the plot.

And that’s another reason why Delhi Belly grosses me out-  we got it when the Russian doll ended up at doctor’s laboratory. We got it too, when the  crap landed on  Somayajulu’s table, and would have laughed louder and longer if  the cannister wasn’t opened.  I was a bit surprised that the cliche of the loquacious Madrasi was missing. And I don’t think  the young fellas who cuss and swear through their first job/relationship like being busted in this manner.

Jeez,  hope  there isn’t going to be a sequel.  IBS can be aggravating, I think.  And if that’s the title,  I’m suing.

This is for Chetan and Brijesh.

Ode to Upma

Ode to Upma

The Upma is a wondrous thing, it is verily without a simile

In Kalidasa’s verse, Upma is the simile, to us it is family

God, who couldn’t be everywhere, sent to us our Ma

And Ma , in her necessity, invented the Upma.

 

 

Most days, the common Upma , an object of frequent scorn

Can hold out against the idli, and come into its own

Idli, like Pa, goes from steamy to soft as a flower,

The Upma, on the contrary, is magic made of salt and flour.

 

 

In recent days Upma has mushroomed in the Big Apple,

With Yoga, Ayurveda and Nirvana, the Upma is the new Indian staple

Mundane to exotic be it Upma, Uppindi or Uppittu

Will McUpma one day be dished up at a drive-through?

 

Will there be a temple to Upma Maheshwari

And has Upma already made it to the Oxford English Dictionary?

And a battle royal over who, Meenakshi Ammal

Makes a better Upma, or Tarla Dalal?

 

Now I write in nostalgia, home may be where the heart is

But, is Upma, like ignorance, truly bliss?

All I know is the true worth of the Upma

Strikes home only when you become the Ma.

–

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Roads Scholar Runs Again!

Road Runner has run out of her teens!  She’s got wheels!  She’s got a passport that she already used the way its meant to be used.

Is it just a year since she was 19,  and we all thought she was using her brains in a way that Mom and I wanted to call her Parsi-mani?

The gal’s 20 today, and we are stunned to see that her idea of saving her brains for a brainy day is actually a stroke of genius!

She twists her Mom round her little finger, drives her nuts, apart from driving her around -to malls mostly and I love the  jewelled bookmark she brought me from Romania  in the year she went from 19 to twenty.

This is also a good time to let her know she has the gift of gift-giving. After all, I am twice-gifted by her- the woollen gloves that her mom tucked into my hands as I was leaving for America have kept me warm for the second snowy winter in America and are still good for a couple of winters more.I always said everyone isn’t gifted enough in the matter of choosing presents for the dear ones, and for the no-so-dear ones who need to be gifted once a year. Even the cake that she gives Mom , every year for her 32nd birthday, with the latest one cruelly screaming “Happy Birthday Fatso!”

Proof,  that between Roads Scholar-I and this here sequel,  she has been obliging enough to giver her brain a thorough airing,–Mom’s happy she’s no airhead, thankfully, though it means she can longer fool Road Runner that her mom is only 32, every birthday.  Mom has hair-raising moments in raising her only heir-ess- she demands her mom gives oil and tender-loving care to her tresses, and calls it bonding.  Coyote Mom has chucked the fork and plate out the window,  and  Ma and Moll at the Mall is the way to go……

Mom and Dad are disqualified from Facebook. Lol, she said when I asked her why not. And don’t push your luck, be glad that Aunty is  FB friend, who’s not been dissed out.

Sigh.  Pinky is the Brain now.  Time to be the couch potato and watch Road Runner, well,  run. Or may be tread the mill, in case she flings the Fatso cake my way.  I know what to say then……..You got brains, duh!  And what I see is just the interest on the principal.

Happy Birthday once again Jenu.

Khara bun in Bush Country

Went to Dallas for a nostalgic week with Venky, Priya, Sanju and Rajeev. It was my maiden solo flight in the US, from Dulles Airport to Dallas Fort Worth . My alarm at being swallowed into the gargantuan oesophagus of the departure terminal at Dulles (Dullus, is how you say it, not Dulls I learnt) as P left me to my fate , was inversely proportional to the relief that washed over me on  sighting Venky in DALLus  (not Dullaas).

Because, at Dulles, I went down a deep escalator that looked long enough to connect  Mt.Everest with its base, walked through winding passages, went up a couple or three escalators, and took a little train ,  went down the escalator and finally reached the RIGHT Gate. No fear of getting on the wrong plane and going off  to Brisbane this time.

No such confounding exit awaited me at DFW.  I was out  in under 10 minutes, and was found by Venky and we got home to Plano in about 40 minutes.

Priya had a lunch that was redolent of Madras waiting,  which was eaten over IPL   followed by a bit of Sun TV. With Rohini’s famous cross-stitch of the bald eagle swooping magnificently across a backdrop of purple mountains and a couple of her other masterpieces hanging on the living room walls,  it felt more like Madras than Dallas.

The heavy Sunday lunch called for an afternoon spent lying prone like a python that had wolfed down an elephant ( haha– that’s the wildlife taken care of) which all of  us  proceeded to do, snuggling  with fleece blankets on the sofas (Venky and Priya) and on the lounger (me). Sanju and Rajeev disappeared into their own lairs.

In the evening we went to the mall.

AND I DISCOVERED THAT BACK IN 2000, GEORGE W BUSH HAD ACTUALLY CHOKED ON THE KHARA BUN FROM HASSAN IYENGAR BAKERY!!

ALMOST.

Venky was being the indulgent Big Brother, asking me what I wanted, and telling Priya to get me this , that and the other, as we strolled through the mall,  looking for things to buy and then waiting for the feeling to go away, thus saving ourselves a lot of money.

We just looked in windows, and I tried to stare unobtrusively at guy who had gelled up his hair in punky pikes, remembering not to  say anything in any of the languages we knew, because in Texas, apart from Bush, you never know who speaks the same ones. And the consequences of such indiscretions cannot really be contemplated.

When we came to the pretzel shop, Venky asked if I’d like one. I knew of the pretzel, and the legend of George Bush choking on one, and the zillion jokes that grew around it, but  what with one thing and another, never really googled that one.

I was coming face to face with the presidential offender at last. Venky insisted I should try the jalopeno  pretzel. Of course, this wasn’t the one that  launched a zillion punchlines, but I prefer the pungent to the sweet, and soon I was salivating over a loop of what looked like ………

nothing I had seen before. I popped a bit in my mouth, and then my eyes popped out in surprise. Venky had become quite still, and was staring unblinkly at me……

“Hey……….this is like the khara bun– Hassan Bakery style!!”

Venky’s delighted crack of laughter said it all!  How many khara buns with bits of chillies, onion and coriander had we bitten into through countless summer holidays, and later when Venky stopped by on his way home to Madras from Hassan, where he was studying engineering!

Rainy afternoon with Enid Blytons (me , not Venky, who wasn’t the bookish sort in those days, though he has turned into one now, thanks to his job that takes him Up In the Air,  like George Clooney. I can see him looking at this menacingly!) and khara buns to munch on– it was bliss.

That March Sunday evening, it was uncanny… Venky and I  munching on khara bun in Bush country!! Who’d ever have thought it possible? !!

Pretzel BTW  is a type of European-descended baked goody made from dough in soft and hard varieties and savory or sweet flavors often in a unique knot-like shape. The archetypal pretzel shape is a distinctive symmetrical looped form, whereby the ends of a long strip of dough are intertwined, says Wikipedia.

Here’s the pic of a pretzel– not the jalopeno. Probably the kind that Bush choked on.

Roads Scholar

Road Runner

If you’re on the highway and Road Runner goes beep beep.

Just step aside or might end up in a heap.

Road Runner, Road Runner runs on the road all day.

Even the coyote can’t make him change his ways.

Road Runner, the coyote’s after you.

Road Runner, if he catches you you’re through.

Road Runner, the coyote’s after you.

Road Runner, if he catches you you’re through.

That coyote is really a crazy clown,

When will he learn he can never mow him down?

Poor little Road Runner never bothers anyone,

Just runnin’ down the road’s his idea of having fun.

***                               ***                            ***

Ani and I were best friends from school through PU, after which she wandered into home science, and I  managed to finish my degree in science before straying serendipitously into journalism. In that time, I missed  Ani‘s wedding,(and more, as I found out later)  and one day I decided to putter over on my Luna to Luxandria ( Lakkasandra, where the old Alma Mater is, and Ani‘s home) and reconnect.

When I knocked, it was an urgently pregnant Ani who opened the  door. and in our excitement of  finding each other again, although we caught up on most things, she forgot to tell me her husband’s name, let alone what his profession was, and when I finally did find out, the bundle of joy had been delivered , named Jenu (knick kname only) and she was on the verge of turning four.

Oh! and her dad’s name is Swamy. Madikehalli Ranga Swamy. Pot-village Colour Lord . Jenu (whose good name, as they say in Namesake, is Neethi) was a rebellious Jerry Mouse, who refused to talk to me on being introduced, and for the next two-three years, gave me a hard time by answering the phone when I called, and forgetting  to tell her mother about it, and I  listened many times to her mother and Jenu slugging it out over why Jenu ought to eat her lunch.

It is all the more exasperating to  remember that this annoying habit  lasted until cellphones became a reality, and vanished as soon as everyone became cell-empowered, and it didn’t matter if Jerry Mice left you holding for 20 minutes. My attempts to get over such mortification  at the hands of an  infante’ terrible by  gently teasing her, didn’t fool her , and a couple of times she worriedly wondered why Ani was friends with me—  aunty thumba fun madthaare ma.

Suddenly, Jerry Mouse was growing up very fast. She was now Road Runner.

That’s her mother there, in the picture, going after her with fork and knife. As usual, she’s brought back her dabba, with the chapati and curry packed lovingly by her maaa……. intact and untouched, and her mother is furious and frustrated. “what can I do? I didn’t feel like eating”, is her bland explanation as her mother rages and rants.

Ani and I read the books appropriate for our age through school and college, and her greatest grouse is the Road Runner would never touch a book. I too tried. Every year, for her birthday I gave her a book– Enid Blytons mostly, but when I borrowed Malory Towers three-in-one after gifting it to her with the fervent plea, READ, FOR HEAVEN’S SAKE, the Road Runner never even noticed it had gone.

She was busy playing with kids half  her size and age or twice her size and age ,  on the street , and we wondered why they doted on her, particularly the six-footer (almost) who followed her around in Scooby Doo-usque proportions.

We planned a trip to Delhi and Jaipur, and hoping she would not be bland about it, we asked her to run down  to LuvSat’s  cyber  cafe down the road and download some info on these places. She never did. We harangued her, and on the third day, she couldn’t take it anymore. “What can I do? Shilpa didn’t give me print out!

Between us, Ani and I had decided Jenu didn’t want to use her brains, because she believed overuse could wear it out, fray it thin. We often wondered if she paid attention .   She certainly had to be called more than twice if her eyes were peeled on the TV.

We found her once,  lolling on the couch with her best friend,  Ananya, and they were watching a very bad print of a movie.

Which movie is that? I asked, and it was Ananya who answered, “How to lose a man in ten  days”, without taking her eyes off the TV. Jenu, as always, looked gloriously vague. But  I suspect she puts on an act. Because when Ani and I were once  talking about J Lo’s  awkward posterior, she interrupted  with asperity, “you are just jealous of  her”. We were too surprised  to laugh, which we did only after she had run off to be Road Runner, and concluded that she  was a thinking kid, after all. Ani who spent six  years telling her daughter she was 32 every birthday, could no pull that trick on Jenu any more.

She still doesn’t read much. She reads a little though. (Alchemist, a Sidney Sheldon and a couple of Jeffrey Archers. After counting her entire library, you might still have a couple of fingers and all your toes left ) Better than George Bush,  what a relief!  I never bothered buying her Harry Potter. At least she made an effort to get t the story from Shilpa and Ananya,  and watched the movies, and talked the talk that left people thinking she knew more than she was telling.

She always had a good head for business, and at any time, was richer than her mother, thanks largely to her maternal uncle Jithu’s  penchant for borrowing from her at heavy interest.

Almost as if she did it when we  blinked, the bland, disinterested (we thought) little girl has grown into a sensitive, caring young woman who can be depended upon to handle a crisis if she were plunged into it at the deep end. In other words, her  mother, who never learnt to drive,  will never want for a chauffeur now.

In a year, Road Runner will no longer be a teen. We have a pal, and a winner in her. No one could make  her change her ways, at least not her mother. She did  it all herself, mostly . The Roads Scholar!

Dear  little Road Runner never bothers anyone,( except her mum)

Just runnin’ down the road’s her  idea of having fun.

Happy Birthday Jenu.

Ceramic Bus From Ammallidoddi

Most of the time I am a proud and possessive Bangalorean, but sometimes I wished I had a “native village”  to “hail from” like most of my best friends , where they were taken by their parents, and the father officiated at the annual temple festival, and the villagers treated them like royalty, and  everyone was invited to the feast. It must have been like the boar-eating banquet that always marks the end of an Asterix-Obelix adventure, Cacophonix included.

My best friend, Ani hails from Ammallidoddi. As you head Mysore-wards, you need to take a left somewhere in the vicinity of Channapatna, , and follow the signposts to reach it.  The same road  leads to  Kabbalamma  temple, the holy place for those who have bought  a new set of wheels, especially newly minted autorickshaws that have made this devi  a cult on the mean streets of  Bangalore.

She is nothing to do with the Kabbalah cult that has ardent followers in celebrities like Madonna, Britney Spears, Jeff Goldblum, Ashton Kutcher, Guy Ritchie, David and Victoria Beckham, and Elizabeth Taylor. Kabbalamma has an awesome mystic mesmerism of her own, as  I discovered when  Ani and I went , driven by Basha ,  to bribe her, that she may forever protect Ani’s brand new Santro from accidents and ward off   the evil eye of  ill-intentioned people.

Now, Ani’s  sense of direction is legendary  for being non-existent, and she clearly doesn’t come GPS-embedded. Basha who once nursed a grand delusion that a great career as a genius car mechanic awaited him in the near future,  has stopped using his GPS ever since I bragged about my own keen sense of direction-  I may not know the right way, but I am always the first to discover that we are lost, and also find ways to un-lose us.

Ani-mated conversation between best friends in the rear led to everyone not paying attention to the scenery ambling past ( the road was bad, and we couldn’t whizz) and so it took us a while to realise that  while we went to Kabbalamma’s via the Kanakapura Road, and  the return journey took us in a different direction.

When I suddenly spotted the signpost which  said Ammallidoddi  we  realised we were going where we have not gone before. Dear old Ani, for whom this wasn’t the first visit to Kabbalamma, is blessedly never disoriented,  thanks to the non-existent sense of direction, was however, puzzled, flummoxed, befuddled . Flashbacks from Ammalli had never impinged on her trips to Kabbalamma before this. Was Kabbalamma trying to convey something here?

We decided to press on, and followed in the wake of the dust raised by a bus that was tilting dangerously to the left ,  resembling  a giant  centipede with some broken limbs   thanks to the dozens of arms and legs swinging out form the windows and the doors.  The centipede, though agonised by multiple fractures on multiple limbs, obviously had been here, done this, ad nauseum- it was just doing its day job.

I quickly deduced that we were going to emerge on Mysore Road.  Basha  grinned triumphantly as if he had engineered this course correction single-handedly, while Ani still bemused, began babbling about the familiar landmarks that  suddenly began to blast in (or is it out?) from the past.

Ammalli has become my vicarious  native village,  I  know enough about its denizens to pass off as a genuine Ammallian. I  feel an inexplicable ownership towards one  particular denizen, whom I have never seen.

Iskanta is part of the Ammallidoddi  fable that we constructed around a single episode which  defines Ani’s tenuous bond with her native village. On one of the family’s mandatory visits to Ammalli,  Iskanta,  emboldened by the fact that he was safe  inside his  home, put his pugnacious nose to the tiny window, and shouted rather rudely as Ani and her sister Mangala walked past.

It was unadulterated country-bumpkin-takes-revenge-on city-slicker- cousins.  And it was priceless.”Anita…. Pinita………..poo!! (the last was said in Kannada, and I’d rather not soil this blog with earthy outpourings, and as long as the meaning is conveyed………..)  assaulted their ears like the sharp, defiant  report of an autorickshaw backfiring without any provocation at all.

Ani and Sis were livid. With little to do until it was time to go home, the sisters spent the next three hours working out  a plan for an   apt comeback.. On their way back , they were pleased to see their unsuspecting prey  sitting on the jagli of his house, but  he scurried back inside on sighting them. His truculent  face reappeared at the window, and obviously having expended all his creativity three hours ago,  merely repeated the same battle cry.

As the two girls came abreast of the window, they chorused: Iskanta kantad meley …………!!! (Translated– something-something……… on Iskanta’s  neck)  and marched on, and soon were in splits, laughing till tears rolled down their eyes, stopping only when Father roundly scolded them.

We have replayed this one scores of times, and   “sitting on Iskanta’s neck”  has  long been a part of the Best Friends’ Lexicon.  Iskanta no longer lives in Ammalli, and not even Ani’s cousin Raja knows  what became of him. So, one lazy langorous afternoon, we created a fable around the further adventures of Iskanta.

Since we associate him  with  the Ceramic Bus (thanks Antony Bourdain)  we have  given Iskanta  an outstanding career in the manufacture of custom-made designer ceramic buses.

Oh! and he now calls himself Iskant Amali, and probably has a show of his own on Travel & Living. If  Iskant Amali turns up on Facebook, I deny everything, on account of any resemblance to anyone living or dead is purely  coincidental and unintentional.

Also I am keeping my fingers crossed, and since I am not in the country anymore, I urge Ani to talk Basha into making another trip to Kabbalamma, and enlist her help in warding off  the evil eye that Iskant Amali could cast this way.

On the  other hand,  he may not turn up at all- who wants respond when the  REAL author of Anita……..Pinita…… is asked to stand up?

Kabbalamma’s restraining orders on Iskanta will keep, for now.

I W MNIK I A!

I W MNIK I A.

That’s:  I Watched My Name Is Khan In America.

Only it didn’t feel like I W MNIK I A.

Because things happened just the way they do back home.

The theatre was NOISY.  There were people speaking  Telugu, Hindi, Tamil,  may be Oriya.  Didn’t hear any Malayalam, or Kannada. The lobby was milling with people waiting to barge into the movie hall the moment it opened. We (P and I) waited until it wouldn’t look like we were part of the stampede, and for our  trouble, earned a couple of frowns from a lady in front of us, who thought her family and friends had brought up the rear, only to find us.

Inside, was India.  A few American-Americans stuck out like sore thumbs. Had no idea A-As swoon over SRK the way some of us go for Clooney or Brad Pitt!  Rows and rows of empty seats- a couple of them sporting a coat flung carelessly by its owner.Trying to settle into a nice-looking seat, all we heard was, “Excuse me those seats are taken.” The ENTIRE  row?” And the one in front as well, the solitary lady waiting for her gang to arrive, informed us crushingly.

We managed to settle down in the last row, against the wall, taking the last two  available seats.

There were a couple of seat guardians who were taking their job very seriously. The rules were being read. The kids had to occupy the last seats on either side, and NOT ALLOW other people. People who came together sat together. That is the code of the movie-goers.

Besides, as the lady said to no one in particular, “everyone is reserving seats for their near and dear ones, why pick on me?”  She also seemed a good hand at multi-tasking. Managing her brood, protecting the menfolk’s places, and keeping up a steady flow of gossip with the other lady, who didn’t seem to want any responsibility. And ordering young Durga to  redirect anyone who bounded towards the empty seats in their midst.

In the row in front of us, the arrangement was – a lady, two seats sharing a coat, a lady in a coat, two seats, followed by another lady. The lady in the middle seemed to be in charge. She spoke to her companions in what I suspect is Oriya,  and occasionally slipped into “American”  courtesy Rosetta Stone, and even threw in the English as she is spoke back home in India.

Every one grumbled, found other seats, and watched this sideshow while waiting for the movie to begin. Everyone who was not interested was now privy to the details of how the row (of seats) had been reserved and protected.  Those who knew Telugu could also have learnt the details of how the family of Durga , two rows away, had spent the day, and who ate what, and , how each of them had made it to the movie.

A conspiratorial silence fell when a lady marched up, a cop trailing behind her. She annnounced “reserving seats is not allowed”, and demanded to know if these two noisy rows had been “reserved”. This was stoutly denied by the Rosetta Stone lady, who casually picked up  her coat and bag from the seats next to her, and the other, argumentative one, who was very keen that her entire brood should sit in the same row, and was ordering the husband around to achieve this end.

The lady and the cop left. The coat and bag went right back on the seats, and the muted sounds of argument, seat reservation, keeping poachers off, started all over again. Everyone was an accomplice in this conspiracy of reservation. Those who found other seats, didn’t bother, and those who came in, and stumbled on it, quickly learned to not bother.

We wondered, “who could have complained? Could it have been the American Americans, who, not being Indians, are ignorant of appropriate behaviour when you bump into a bovine  jaywalker/ squatter-  which is to negotiate a quick u-turn and nudge your friend away , saying, “COW IS THERE, COME PA!”

Reservation (of seats in movie halls, buses, and trains and any other place where seats can be reserved  ) is a fundamental right of Indians every where. Handkerchieves are all the time flung into bus windows to reserve seats, and one  messes with a handkerchief waiting decorously to be reclaimed by its owner at his own peril.

And then the Indian Standard Time thin happened.  The theatre staff came in and announced the movie was going to be delayed by 5 minutes, and we would have to be patient. It wa actually 15 minutes, and the the folks for whom the seats had been reserved arrived at last, and everyone breathed a sigh of relief. No one notice the movie hadn’t started yet.

Meanwhile,  the Rosetta Stone group let us know in  its newly acquired southern twang that two of the ladies had left their cellphones at home, and one of them had just got a good deal on a used (?) car for his dad. they were also going to have popcorn and “waaaaaader” to  wash it down.

That is why I didn’t feel  I W MNIK  I A at all.

At least, no cellphone beeped during the movie, no one textmessaged, or regaled the audience with family fables as Rizvan Khan winged his way to America to tell the President ” MNIK, and I M NAT” and educated us on Asperger’s Syndrome.

T E

(That’s : The End)

Snowmageddon! Now

Since October 2 , 2009,  I have done many things for the first time. I used my passport for the purpose it is actually meant to be used.  I left India, and my home in Bangalore, and came to the US of A to join the husband.  As autumn gave way to winter  in the following weeks,  I clapped eyes on snow , for the first time in my life, one cold Saturday morning in December.

Would’ve missed it altogether if P hadn’t cut in on my call to the S-I-L ,  N who lives in the coolest part of Mumbai- the IIT Campus, with the Big Brother One and the little niece H.  N never stops talking, on the  phone especially if its your call, but more alarmingly,  is an incurable shutterbug of whom one can only ask, “What makes her CLICK?” .  She has been known to sneak  into the room, waddling like a duck-billed platypus,  trying to take a shot of you and the niece having a bedtime giggle, all because she doesn’t want to lose the “spontaneity of the moment”.

So when it came to the question of cutting the call and taking pictures of MY VIRGIN (IA) Snow which would be emailed and shared with her forthwith, she hung up. Forthwith. Another first for me, wielding the camera – ever since I’ve declared myself non-photogenic, I’ve longed for cameras became extinct. In my photogenic days, I had no camera, and it took a really long time before you got your copy. and by then you had degenerated further, and the picture was a RELIC and proof of your faded good looks, to be cherished as a bookmark in the ” reading now” book because you don’t want it to become dog-eared. Book and bookmark then get consigned to the upper shelves where it remains until little H grows up and is introduced to the pleasures of reading, and stumbles on the RELIC.

This is how things start small and SNOWBALL into a controversy.

Back to the snow.

The bright autumn colors that had welcomed me to America, the pond outside our living room window where the ducks (Plain ducks, no d-b platypus)  waded about and sometimes disappeared ( flyin’ South for the winner?) had long since turned grey and  everything  had begun to look desolate. P had said it hadn’t  snowed much these past few years, and there may not be much to write home about this year , either.

I got a lot of pictures, and even managed a video film of 6 min of the snow , which  flickr-ed  to the family with undue haste, and which was watched by said family even before I could call and tell them to watch it all , on mute, because the camera  made such a din. When snow falls, it REALLY is Silent I quickly learnt, though the camera, obviously didn’t care.

There was another snow at Christmas, and New Year’s. But no one took the hint. Until last week, in FEBRUARY! There were snow-storm warnings,and, when P went out to stock up on the milk, water and groceries, he found everybody in Herndon  had the same idea.  It started snowing, silently, as usual, that Friday night, and it snowed all Saturday. We watched the pond turn icy, and the last of the 50-odd ducks leave reluctantly, in groups of  four or six or ten, like troops returning home from Iraq, and the cars in the parking lot turn into snowy shells of their steel and glass selves. Trees began to look like Swarovski crystal creations.We could no longer discern the pond , as the last duck took a few slippery steps and flew away.

Over the weekend we were snug in our warm apartment, reading, net-ting and watching TV, and chatting online (not to each other,, though  the idea does have possibilities) but to friends who hadn’t yet disappeared into la-la land back in B’lore)

By Monday, we’d had 32 inches of snow. No one wanted to even think of going out. I hated winter, at least the American one, and wanted nothing more to do with snow. The drone of planes taking off and landing at Dulles Airport , which is out backyard, was missing, for a change, but it wasn’t easy any longer to pretend there was no snow. The silence was deafening.

When another blizzard hit Tuesday, Obama , a year older as President, and wiser about snow, called it Snowmageddon.

Last year, snow in DC and how its denizens dealt with it had amused  President Obama. and his daughters. His daughters’ snow day Wednesday, which meant they stayed home as it was too snowy to go to school for most of their mates,  made him “want to see a little bit of flinty Chicago toughness. The girls’ school was canceled . Because of what? Some ice?  he’d  told reporters.

This year,  it took 32 inches of snow, and his having to work through teleconferencing and phone and e-mail and notes sent by his staff for a couple of days, although he did make it to a Democratic National Committee meeting to give them a pep talk on healthcare for him to call it Snowmageddon.

The Winter Olympics have started in Vancouver. Ahead of it, people were worried there was not enough snow to go round!

Snowmageddon, also  SnOMG!  Snowpocalypse and SnObama to some,  is  a lesson. BE CAREFUL WHAT YOU WISH FOR.

I am happy.

I got my first snow.

Now there is one more thing I have to do for the first time. I have to learn to drive. P suspects I’m avoiding it. He’s right.

PS:- I hope the PS I live with doesn’t read this one.

Who stole my Nephelococcygia days?

ITs a Big Day today.  The might of the Indian Armed Forces- Army, Navy and Air Force will be on display. We shall know once again ,  how safe are our skies. and who keeps them so. There will be Saare Jahan  SE Achcha……. Ye Mere Watan Ke Logon………. and the National Anthem . There will be a billion lumpy throats and two billion misty eyes, most of them glued to the telly,  as Doordarshan belts out its staid commentary on the wonders  wrought by our rockets,  missiles, fighter jets, missile- launchers, and  finale of the tri-colour clouds that trail  artistic strokes in the skyline with great flourish as fighter jets fly past in salute to  the Supreme Commander of the Armed Forces. This being the first Republic Day I am going senti over  away from the Motherland, I am not sure the voice-overs are by Komal G.B.Singh, Rini Simon, and/or Suneet Tandon.

This awesome show is interspersed with vignettes of  what ordinary Indians do under the safe sky of the Republic of India,  during the rest of the year- they dance the Bhangra, swing a lavani,  beat the dollu,  they celebrate Hampi, Konarak and Taj Mahal. They  show of their wildlife, the folk culture and celebrate the glory of unity in diversity that is India.

Everything though, is  very reassuring. Even when the bravehearts of our Armed Forces are posthumously decorated, and we are  briefly misty-eyed and grieve with the families of the martyrs, knowing they’ve passed into the realm of legend. Perhaps the Why? What for? quotient of these sacrifices will never be settled one way or other until war goes away altogether.

We are 60 now.  And each of these 60 years,  We The People Of India, have  remembered on this day the Preamble to Our Constitution, and believed that as soldiers protect our borders with their lives, because they CHOSE TO,  those who were CHOSEN by us to secure for us the Justice, Liberty Equality and Fraternity have done so, and continue to do so.

As in :

WE, THE PEOPLE OF INDIA, having solemnly resolved to constitute India into a SOVEREIGN DEMOCRATIC REPUBLIC and to secure to all its citizens:

JUSTICE, social, economic and political;
LIBERTY of thought, expression, belief, faith and worship;
EQUALITY of status and of opportunity;
and to promote among them all
FRATERNITY assuring the dignity of the individual and the unity of the Nation;

IN OUR CONSTITUENT ASSEMBLY this twenty-sixth day of November, 1949, do HEREBY ADOPT, ENACT AND GIVE TO OURSELVES THIS CONSTITUTION.

THIS BEING THE PREAMBLE TO THE CONSTITUTION OF INDIA ADOPTED ON JANUARY 26, 1950.

I wonder………..

What Republic Day and this Preamble to The Constitution means to some people, and Why:

Raj Thackeray who wants everybody to go home except Marathi Manoos.

The BJP Government In Karnataka that wants to reward law-breakers and punish law-abiding citizens with its Akrama-Sakrama scheme.

Karunanidhi who was more worried about the fate of Tamils across the sea in anotehr country, than the ones under his nose who “CHOSE”  him to be their Chief Minister.

The parent-body of a Leftist youth wing in Kerala which appropirated to itself the powers to moral/culture police a pair of adult (one male and one female of the species) in private terrain, and threatened a prominent citizen with dire consequences for protesting.

I also wonder……….

Who  stole my NEPHELOCOCCYGIA days?

Cloud-watching.  I don’t remember ever voting to lose my nephelococcygia rights. Lying on the grass ,  in our own garden, staring up at the azure sky puncuated with mountainous quantities of  cotton fluff that moved and changed shapes.  A world where cauliflower met cow, and cotton fluff turned into mashed potatoes, a dragon swooped breathing fire out of  the castle as  pigs morphed into Noddy’s car and Big Ears  floated past nodding sagely, or the Beast turned REALLY LIVID and went quite grey with suppressed rage, when suddenly a halo of sun rays backlit a wicked witch poised on a rhinoceros…………. No one saw the same thing. My rhino was ridiculous to your dolphin, and angels don’t do obvious no-brainer things like hide among the clouds.

Cloud watching  always happened unplanned. It didn’t happen often. It rarely happens now, and there are  plenty of parents out there who have not  introduced  children to the joys of  nephelococcygia. There is no time, and besides which kid believes there’s a Universe out there, beyond the iPhone?

But the awful truth that struck home on Republic Day is that the people We Chose have stolen our cloud-watching rights. I can no longer look out of my window to watch the sky and the clouds.  My neighbour just traded his (and mine) right to my bit of the sky by allowing the BBMP to eat into his (and mine) plot of land ( ostensibly so we could have a wider road) and let him build a couple of storeys that ate my bit of sky, and forever darkened the view from  window. No one asked me.

A mother-and-child , or buddies can no longer stroll down the MG Road Promenade, or even the footpath hoping to catch a bit of the sun and sky and clouds because soon all we’ll see is the underbelly of NAmma Metro as it hurtles across what once used to be a face of Bangalore.

I still wonder………………….

What is the point of  our soldiers dying, and keeping our skies safe.  If we can’t catch a glimpse of our  imaginary worlds forming and changing on the BIG BLUE SCREEN without any interference?

Yet……….

India is my country and all Indians are my brothers and sisters

India is my country and all Indians are my brothers and sisters.

I love my country and I am proud of its rich and varied heritage

I shall strive to be worthy of it

I shall give my parents, teachers and all elders, respect, and treat everyone with courtesy

To my country and my people, I pledge my devotion

In their wellbeing and prosperity alone, lies my happiness.

JAI HIND

Swami Vivekanada  gave us this gem. But does it mean anything to some of those honorables mentioned above?