Title Change

Disclaimer - apologies for the hurried, 'unwriterly' language being used here... i am just writing this as a quick update and not a real post !


Yaaaaaahhh ! I changed the name of my blog today. Hmmm.... I had almost forgotten my blog and had most definitely forgotten the name of it as well. Then suddenly after a long time some free time on a Saturday, which has been a rarity the last couple of years, triggered a nostalgic trip into the blogger world. I do not even remember why I gave the name chutkut to my blog. But ChutKut world saw a few great times when it existed. I think as is the case with me, I never thought of changing the name as it didnt hold any importance for me.... until a few days ago, someone opined that the name of my blog is quite unprofessional and does not go with the LinkedIn profile that I have.

that got me thinking and hence I today found time to change the name. Although its not professional, yet it denotes the love of my life - Pappadam !!!  i can kill someone for papads/pappadams and that is the reason I have honoured it with a place on my blog.... the title itself !  he he ! a little indulgence cant do me much harm.

Oh by the way just noticed... this is the first post in 2 years or so... gulp ! what have i done to my life !! ?

A Look In Her Direction

Standing there motionless her face spoke. So much so that I stood there. My legs wouldn’t move and neither did my eyes. Transfixed was I looking at the emotion filled expression on the face of this woman. Why was she looking almost near tears?  Instinctively I looked at where she was emoting. Stood a girl in a tattered uniform, unmistakably her daughter – eyes welled up, holding on to the railing of a transformer box outside my office. For the mother and daughter the world didn’t exist for that moment. Only in existence was the angst that they shared. Mother looked at her child and the child looked back. Nobody could come in the way of their stare. Not even I, who stood in between. But they looked through me, over me and maybe with me.

The girl was crying and maybe cross with her mother. I thought she was maybe scolded or beaten by her mother, but one look at the woman’s face and I couldn’t fathom such a common possibility. This was something else. Didn’t have to think too long, as the mother, whose hands I hadn’t noticed before this – what with my preoccupation with her face – were clutching a ten rupee note. Her fingers opened a wee bit slowly and a bit more again, until she revealed the ten rupee note to her child. Her arms extended and so did her eyes. Yearning for her daughter’s acquiescence and maybe hoping for reconciliation. Her face was again a picture of sadness and love. Realizing that the child wanted money, which was denied by her mother, it was the mother’s love for her child’s happiness that created this emotional upheaval in the mother’s heart. She was on her way to work while her child was on her way to school – both separating at that turn in the road. Maybe the turn in the road was much more than that.

She held out the note to her child and was now pleading her to take it. I walked a bit toward the 10 year old child and saw through that her mind was in a twist…. She wanted the money, was hurting from being denied, realized her mother was denying for some serious reason, but was now being asked to pick up the money after her melancholic turn. I waited and waited, deciding to see the climax of this poignant moment in the life of this economically deprived family. Torn between her love for her child and her poverty was this woman. Torn between her need for little money for her school and respect for her mother’s decision was this child. The mother stood there, the child stood and it seemed Time also stood watching. So was I. Transfixed.  The mother was almost near tears, was getting late to work and here was her daughter maybe, just maybe throwing a tantrum. The child with her slow gait walked towards her mother, without looking into her eyes, and silently took the single note. I don’t know if she looked into her mother’s eyes after getting the money,  ‘cuz my eyes welled up looking at the mother’s face. She was still cringing inside while she looked like holding her child and crying her heart out at this cruel situation.

Maybe she knew she needed those ten rupees for that day’s food. Maybe she knew she was letting go her savings for the week. Maybe she knew that with the rains, she would be out of work for a few days this month and needs all her savings to pull her family through. Maybe she knew this money could be used for more essential than a child’s spending in school. At the same time, maybe the child was asking the money for buying a book that was absolutely needed for her studies. Maybe she wanted to get her tattered skirt stitched – a girl on the cusp of puberty starts becoming a woman much earlier than the world imagines. Maybe she needed the money for some coloring book or the afternoon munch at the school-side shop – which she was too young to let go, once in a while. What would we know of the reasons of these two actors of God, playing out their tragic roles to perfection in this theatre of ambition and wealth called Bangalore city.

With her reluctant hands clutching the note, the child turned, walked a bit, stopped, turned back to look at her mother, who was long gone in the crowd of workers making their hurried way to their sites – in pursuit of subsistence.   The kid walked slowly, staring at the note, not for a moment smiling, not for a moment showing any trace of victory, not for a moment happy. Neither was the mother happy, nor was the child. Either God was happy at his creation or was the Devil. We wouldn’t know.

And I… well….    ;-( 

Oh Vadodara, If you may....

Allow me to ask you a question

Who are you, oh city?  You go by the name Vadodara but are known as Baroda, but really if you ask me, I don’t know who you are. We stayed together for 22 years and yet I fail to recognize who you have become. So allow me to ask you these questions.

Hooked to the Noir genre, I recently finished the latest – Mumbai Noir. Have already bought the latest book on Chennai, Tamarind City by Biswanath Gosh.  Cities don’t fascinate me as much as the inquiries that certain authors make into the heart of the city’s existence. Present existence.  Nine Lives by William Dalrymple rests on my table and silently beckons me to delve into the rustic moorings of the sacred. But that has to wait, because of this relentless throng of questions in my heart.

I move about the city and find myself staring at people, staring at the roads and the buildings. Strangely they neither stare back at me nor do they dismiss my presence. There is this disquiet I feel within me and maybe within them. The city looks back at me. Asking me something. While I stare back thinking who and how should I answer.  But is there an answer really that I can give?  

Allow me to ask you a question

Do I belong here? Why do I not feel at home beyond the walls of my home?

Let me explain.

When I talk to people here, I do not find the same sensitivities as in me.  This is no way means that they lack a sympathetic heart; on the contrary there are far more sensitive ‘societal goodness perpetrators’ in this city than in the other parts probably. There are so many institutions and associations, but I still cannot spot the intellectual outpouring as expected. I am unable to figure out where the socio-cultural debates are happening, where the agents of change are hard at work trying to figure out better and different ways of looking at the world. 

I find obedience. That is what I find in this city and maybe across the state.  There is no thinking beyond the diktat of the various groups – traditional businessmen, Govt. bodies, Univ professors, Mahila samities (Ladies associations), Swaminarayan guys, Hindutva groups etc.  The city seems steeped in stereotypes and strangely the more stereotyped you are, the more you are appreciated and accepted. Maybe that is why I have a problem here. No, I am not ‘different’ or a rebel or some sort of a progressive thinker. No. I am just a person who believes in assimilation of thoughts – different thoughts, different styles, broader strokes, finer outlines, wider canvas, thinner borders . Getting my point?

Allow me to ask you a question

There are hordes of boys and girls swarming the city’s streets on their bikes and scootys respectively. They all are coming or going to their classes – school or coaching. Then there are university students who are from various walks of life but are strangely similar in their thoughts. There are students who are traditionally dressed in unbranded clothes going around a bit apprehensively in the city that displays money and the goodies money can but at every step. There are wealthy kids in branded stylish clothing strutting around in their vehicles looking down upon creation of a lesser kind but unable to have a still moment within their head.  These both sets of students, who are supposed to be well educated and torch-bearers of the society, lack the sensitivities that I have seen in the college students of Bangalore or Chennai or Mumbai or Pune.  Somehow I don’t get the feeling that these students think beyond what is taught and what is shown to them. There is hardly any sense of enquiry and any attempt at asserting a slightly refined yet radical form of behavior. 

There are no books shops worth going to in Baroda.  There are no theatres or music gatherings worth going to in Baroda. There are no workshops worth attending that discuss present and future issues beyond the industrial or business centric issues. There are no groups that take up issues like pollution, global warming, child rights, freedom of expression, gay rights, capital punishment, displacement of indigeneous people due to construction of innumerable dams, women’s liberation etc.  Am I measuring with the stereotyped measurement glass? Maybe yes, but then I feel if the populace needs a channel to show their progressive and broad-minded thinking, then these are them.  If there are such gatherings, such groups of youngsters or wise men, then I feel they are not coming out as much as I would like them to. Shouting anti-Modi slogans or doing a dharna like the NBA is just rhetoric.

That brings me to the other disturbing aspect – overt enthusiasm.  People are sometimes too enthusiastic about things like Ganesh Utsav, Rath Yatra, Sadbhavna Sammelan, community get-togethers, etc.  There is a sense of intolerance to anything or anyone who voices concerns surrounding such events.  So much so that all including the women and young children go shrill in their vehement disapproval of anything slightly in variance to their set norms of thinking and doing.

I roam around the streets, eating at the road side shops, exulting in their easy friendliness. I look at the attractively dressed young women who look appealing till they open their mouths. Just like the elegant looking women in the Crossword Bookshop. I went there to find some solace from the burning sun and found a few people browsing through the books. This lady got a phone call and at the top of her voice started gossiping and chit-chatting about the villainous aunts in their family, unmindful of the disturbance she was creating with her loud mouthed ‘ummm and ohooos’.  Then there was this pretty yet simple girl in a pair of jeans and shirt, leafing through the fiction section, a girl of normal intellect but impeccable sensitivies – again as per my perception. Then there was this chap who was probably there for the first time and was shouting under his breath the common shout-out of gujaratis – ‘Yuuussss’, each time he found something. Or was it that he was trying to show to me that he indeed landed upon the treasures of knowledge just by spending ten minutes in a bookshop.

There is so much in this city and yet I am unable to find it. For a person with my experience in roaming and analyzing cities, I find it hard to figure out my own home town.  Roaming through Varanasi, I found the squalor and dirt accumulated in the mask of religious endings that the city wore each day. Delhi I found the heart which was lost in amorous eyes of the men. In Chennai I found the wet hair of the hard working women churning out dreams. In Cochin, Kanpur, Calicut, Lucknow, Madurai, Cuttack, Coimbatore, Salem, Bhubaneswar, Behrampur, Ahmedabad, Rajkot, Pune, Mumbai, Bhopal, Malda, Siliguri, Indore, Jhansi, Hyderabad, Karimnagar, Kannur, Mangalore, Belgaum, Dharwad, Hubli etc etc etc…. I have found the pulse of the city.  And after all that hoo-haa, I find myself unable to comprehend my own city.  What a shame !

I go the shopping malls, the railways station, the airport, the city bazaars, the general hospital, the cinema halls, the roadside food vendors, the sports clubs, the upscale and the downmarket residences. I go everywhere from morning to noon and from evening to night. I roam like a man possessed, a man trying hard to figure out the missing pieces in the puzzle that has became his city.  Who do I meet, that I might get some knowledge, some hint into the ways of this city?  Who do I seek, that I might get a peek beyond the bosom of the society that surrounds me? How do I get to the end of this tunnel that is neither dark nor illuminated?

Allow me to ask you these questions!!!

The Mud Path at Chaliserri

Sunlight seems to be in a pensive mood today at Chalisseri. The house stands like a small pet dog, cute and fragile – even in the depressed sunlight. The house seems a bit offbeat in the symphony of nature around the village. But then I figure out that all other houses nestled in between the coconut and areca nut groves are all somewhat similar in stature and structure – all out of tune with the surroundings.

Am home. The Chalisseri home. Well the Chalisseri House. 6 months ago I had seen this house when it came up from a desolate ruin to this humble simple structure that tried to recapture the simple essence of the famous Kottapurathe House – the simple subsistence like essence of Amminiamma, my grandmother. Yes I slept that night under the new roof, all the time longing for a ‘feeling’. My dad was smiling away in sleep. He saw this house as his footprint on his land. His footprint that he hoped would be indelible unlike the paddy fields which he owned but didn’t till, unlike the Guruvayur ancestral house which he was born in but never lived beyond his teens, unlike the Baroda house which he created in a far off land away from his roots.  This Chalisseri house was his claim at belonging.

I didn’t realize although I understood. More than realize I thought I must become aware. And that is what took me back to chalisseri. Am spending the day here again, this time alone. I paid for some expenses of the house and the whole housing loan with which this structure was built is in my name. I feel the walls, the windows and the breeze that wafts in through them. In solitude I try to understand what I feel. I don’t know what I should feel ! Pride? Satisfaction? Responsibility?  Indebtedness? Gratitude? Happiness? – all occur to me, but they do not stay. It’s a momentary feeling I get but then these feelings are driven by my thoughts. I want to feel with my heart, that feeling which stays. 

The saplings planted by my parents have started to leave infancy and the coconut trees around might find some interesting herbs surrounding them in a year’s time. I walk around the pond in the orchard and then look back at my house from a distance. Suddenly I think of M T Vasudevan Nair. Haven’t the Malayalam literary greats written their masterpieces sitting in surroundings like these? In fact MT Vasudevan Nair’s house is just a few kilometers away and Chalisseri finds a mention in almost all his works.  I too get a sense of how I might also be able to exercise my mind matter in this house. I rush inside, take my laptop and open the windows. I am ready to type away. I have the sun outside and the breeze besides, the companionship of the solitude within Nature makes you think of many things that never occur to you in the melee of the urban paraphernalia.

It’s when you reach such lonely places, that you start thinking of things that scare you. Sitting in a train besides the window also does that to me. It scares me that the thoughts that never occurred to me in the city start popping up in the mind with alarming frequency. Its vain to complain of a ‘writer’s block’ when in Kerala. There is so much to think about and write. That is when I start typing this. Even as I write this, there are other topics that pop up and I furiously make note on my phone, lest I forget.

I take a break after an hour. I step out. The hot air hits my face. The call for tea from my uncle’s house nearby comes at the right time. I need tea. I walk past the gate, through the narrow mud path and look back at the house. I smile. I have found peace. I have found responsibility but at the same time I think I have given an even bigger responsibility to the house. It knows that I will return once again and look for inspiration.  The house has the responsibility to inspire me, whenever I return after my failings in the city.  It’s a connect. A communion of a structure with a man’s heart and mind. To inspire is not easy but what I have left behind for the House to contemplate is whether it has the character to aspire to inspire.

When the house builds that character in itself, that is when I think I will feel the house.  We will see how the house fares in its quest when I return later someday.  

Hotels and middles aged men !

“Home is where the heart is”, “home-made food is the best food” – nice lines these and oft-repeated too, we all agree. I have always been fascinated by this penchant us commoners have of using famous idioms or phrases in between our conversations.  But I would like to propose a change in the usage of these famous lines. I propose we leave space or add space for relativity to be accommodated. Confused? Well let me explain with an example.

“Home is where the heart is for those who stay away”, “home-made food is the best food, for those who eat out otherwise” – getting my drift?  This is because people who stay at home or eat home food, secretly enjoy and cherish their times spent in hotels! No offense but I find the middle aged men enjoy their tours more than the young 20s something employee.

I have stayed in a few hotels across the country due to my travels and have always noticed the 40s something men who are there on business or official trips, feel more young, energetic and chatty at the hotels.  It seems they are soaking in the comforts, attention and variety of food and beddings. I am profiling these men but bear with me – they have been married 10-15 years or more, have kids, a modest house and good savings. They have been living in the same house with the same wife and the same kids day in and day out, eating the same food, going to the same temples and parks. Monotony is the norm and there is nothing new left to explore, be it in bed or in town.  Their desires from domesticity are dwindling and are satiated to a large extent.

Such men when they come on a business tour and stay in a 3-4 star hotel where the bed is soft, the tv is all for himself, the breakfast is complimentary, the room fridge stocks drinks and soda – tends to be in a better place mentally than at home.  He whistles while he bathes in the hot shower (compared to the mug and bucket bathing ritual at home), lathers the shaving gel and shampoo provided by the hotel, drapes the huge hotel towel around his bulge and admires himself in the mirror, trimming his moustache and strands of white hair.  There is nothing sexual about this; it’s just a person enjoying the comforts which are not available at home.  They step down from the elevator and greet the receptionists, ask some innate questions, plonk on the lounge sofa and glance through the newspapers before heading back to the room. In general they are extremely happy now. Of course in between their work hours they are extremely focused on their business and do not indulge, but once evening comes, they are back to their cheerful best.

 Yet there is no linkage between the socio-economic class of men and this behavior.  All men irrespective of where they come from, are happy to be away from home, it’s just the manifestations are in different ways. I sometimes wonder how their wives too must want a break from the chores and the monotony.  So I started noticing the women in the hotels. Yet I struggled to find happiness to the scale I noticed in the men folk.  The women are happy to be not cooking, cleaning and taking care of the house for a change, but they eat in silence, carry themselves with dignity, again irrespective of the socio-economic class they belong to and are in general very businesslike in their behavior. 

So I propose that the powers that be of the English language, need to use certain measure of relativity before coining such statements.  Maybe home is the best place form us young guys who have had enough of hotels and travels. Maybe home food is best food for us who shiver at another meal at the nearby hotel. Maybe hotels are for the uncles who need that break from the chaos and monotony of domesticity.  “Home is where the heart is – intermittently” ! 

It gets heavier as it goes on...

Mind diverts in its attention, the body tunes out, the soul goes for a walk and the thoughts come in. Mind and Matter – thoughts seem to be convalescing towards a concrete answer. An answer or maybe ‘the’ answer to ‘the’ question which will eventually be asked of any young upcoming professional either by an interviewer or by a senior executive or the discerning ‘to-be-father-in-law’.

There are different variations like “what is your objective/ambition in life?” , “what do you want to achieve?’, “where do you want to see yourself 15 years from now?” etc etc

I am yet to figure the answer to these questions and maybe they smell of monism to me. But well, materialism is something that I am not averse to, and hence it fits that I find an answer to these questions without mistaking myself to be a saint.

My current make-up of the answer is – I want to make money enough to buy myself an huge room full of books on a shelf.  My short term objective is to make enough money i.e disposable income, to be able to buy hardback books instead of buying paperbacks! Go figure that out, Mr. Recruiter/Father in law/mentor/shrink  (oops, did I spill out the beans?) ;-p

Look I started reading books  because a family friend gave a copy of Enid Blyton’s  Secret Seven. It was a hard back.  Being reasonable lower middle class in my schooling days, we considered books to be a source of expensive entertainment. Buying school books at the beginning of the year was a huge expense for which mom and dad had to save up months in advance. So the reading was limited to Enid Blyton borrowed from the school library, borrowed from a friend or found in the local old newspaper seller’s shop.  When other kids used to buy old copies of sportstar and filmfare, I was hunting for Enid Blyton – usually search was on for a hardback !

As years rolled on, borrowing continued but I had moved on to Hardy Boys, Jeffrey Archer, Mario Puzo and R K Narayanan. Still there wasn’t enough money to buy them. So I started permanently borrowing them  from some old uncle’s or aunt’s  collection.  I still have some of them. Must mention some ‘adult’ books that I ended up borrowing,  unaware of the thrills buried inside those pages – my first experience of adult literature in teenage – uufff, those were the days of innocent gratification !

Pursuing an MBA, I started buying some business/management/marketing related books that were a good read even after the studies were finished. Realizing the ‘high’ I was experiencing ‘owning’ those books, I started buying books from my first salary.  I was always against piracy and hence ended up buying proper editions. Over the last few years I have built up a decent collection of books. Each time I get promoted or get a hike in salary, my disposition towards the buying of books increased. The more I earned the more I bought. It was as if I was measuring my success in terms of the number of books that I bought. But hardbacks were still out of reach. 

Sister’s wedding, a house, a car, a bike, etc  maybe prevented me from getting those voluptuous hardbacks.  Excuses ?  Maybe.

Hence now that I have a chance to think of ‘the’ question – I realize that I want to earn more because of the necessity to buy myself hardback books.  Life seems going towards that ambition – a hardbound eventuality !  

English thoughts

 

The kid next door when she converses with her mom uses probably the only language that she knows to speak – English. The Malayali couple who are dating each other speak in English. The Hindi-knowing guys who have been friends for years speak to each other in English most of the times. The father who talks to his son’s friends uses English to connect.

Sometimes it sticks out in my head that English dominates our lives so much so much so that I blog in English.

I do understand that the kids are taught English in school but I still do not understand how this became so rampant that kids in Bangalore can’t speak any language other than English. It does limit their ability to connect to people instantly. The maid, the paperwala, the autowala, the vegetable vendor – how will the kids converse with them?  It instantly disconnects these English speaking kids from the world that is different from their own. So,

Question - does knowing mother-tongue or Hindi, matter?  - YES !

Consider though the fact that even these people who can speak only English are many a times able to connect to the crowd because of their ability to speak to people with much more than words.

Now comes the part where you wonder why the young couple also speaks English. Its strange ‘cuz one would imagine that they being from kerala, born and studied in Kerala – they should be more comfortable speaking their minds in Malayalam. Yet, for some confounding reason incomprehensible to my brain, they choose to speak in the ‘yo english’ that most young mallus speak in these days. No,neither are  they  any wannabes nor are they  trying to learn better by talking in English. They just are highly comfortable in English. Did our reading of English books when young, shape our thinking to be in English?  Maybe yes. That is why our intimate feelings are given shape in the As, Bs and Cs of the island nation.

By the way is it shameful to have ditched a woman/man for their lack of English speaking skills? What if a person not comfortable with English is dating a person who thinks and expresses in English? Is the need for speaking out and being understood far more important than being with a person whom you love in spite of not being able to speak comfortably?

So coming back to the idea of the mallu couple, I still haven’t understood why they would speak in English?  The only plausible answer is that they were reading English books and articles all their life due to the English schooling and hence they are attuned to speaking and thinking in English. Hence their intimacy is expressed in the Queen’s language.