The good, the bad, and now the Ugly

The whole series of posts on the recent 11 day trip to Chennai is coming to an end!

While those posts were a travelogue or commentary on the humorous side, mostly focusing on how the kids and the wedding brought back great memories, there is one last post that deals with things that remind you of how things could be better.

After my previous India trip, a lesson learnt was that if you do not live in India, anything slightly negative about India, will get you in trouble. Even if one mentally prepares to take an argument to the end, it still irks you to find out that you lose the right to say anything negative about India, if you reside abroad. It also gets ridiculous because the people who take you to task are the same ones who seem to have some kind of birthright to criticize things in the USA, although they dont reside in the USA!

In any case, this post will simply point out three things that were observed during the trip (which may be more information, than rant)!

1. Follow the Arrow (the line side, not the triangle side)

This seems to be a repeated theme in airports, stores, etc. where there is a board which shows an arrow for a line or a service, and the cops, regulators have the line setup elsewhere. Mutliple lines form because of the chaos and the last come get served first!!! Happened at Mumbai airport in the "transit" area! It was pathetic.

We had 100+ people, old people, little kids, who came by Jet Air (we were put on Jet through Shanghai after our Cathay flight through Hong Kong was cancelled because of a typhoon) and we were cooped up in a small waiting area to be transported to the domestic terminal to catch a flight to Chennai! There was one set of restrooms, both blocked by garbage and not in usable condition, no access to drinking water and we were told to wait for 2 hours there.

Why? because it is the Mumbai airport that provides the connecting shuttle and not the airlines! So the airlines people blamed the airport folks and the airport folks pointed the finger back at the airlines. There were five newbie kids in blue suits and orange ties who were asking "how may I help you?" when we walked in to hand over our baggage, but were useless and totally ineffective in helping anyone!

Apparently they were all "trainees". After some drama and what would have almost been a lynch mob, they got two shuttles to transport us to the domestic terminal, so no one would miss their connecting flights! The funny thing was the trainees pointed to the arrow and the people who were in urgent need of the shuttle waited by the door only to find that the folks who least needed the shuttle ended up getting in through another door (courtesy of a chain gate and backdoor line set up by same trainees!)

Same thing at the Chennai airport. There is a big sign that says "-> Check in" and you will see a policeman direct you to the exact opposite direction! Then there will be another cop who says "get in line. you are not in the line!" because you were redirected for follwoing the big painted "official" sign board!

Lesson : If you are travelling in India, don't count on FIFO. If there is a counter which says "tickets", do not go stand in front of that counter. You might never even get a ticket! Wait a few minutes to see a line form, then see where the ticket seller actually shows up. There will be a last minute scramble to get to the new location of the counter, and make sure you have the vantage point from which you can make it to the new counter or door or gateway.

2. Always build a temple (before you build a house)

After landing in Chennai, was calling Chennai Call taxi to get a ride. Was in the process of giving our door number when my dad suddenly corrected me..

Dad : "we are not 3/4 anymore, we are now 5/4"!
Me : WTF? When did that happen.. from when I was a baby this has been 3/4. I don't understand!
Dad : After all these years, the street temple has been given a number. Also the illegal house built with a shared wall to the street temple (both built by same dude, who was a king in the illicit liquor business in his heyday) have been given legitimate street numbers (this after 25 years mind you!).

You have to see this to believe it. There is a temple in the street corner. Sharing a floor and a wall with this temple is what appears to be a garage which also doubles up as a prayer hall, and on top of it is a residence! Imagine all the trouble the old folks in this street go through because their door number changed. Go back and do an address change in anything and everything from old bank records, insurance files, etc. etc. ! Bummer.

Lesson : If you want total protection for your house irrespecive of MMDA approval, postal department approval, which political party is in power, etc. dont buy insurance. Just build a temple as part of your house and you are covered. Lord Ganesha is the worlds best home insurance dude!

3. If you feed them, they will come ! (A must read if you plan on opening a restaurant).

Oh wait, I predict that the only restaurants in Chennai will be Saravana Bhavan's or Sangeetha's in ten years. Everything else will be bought by these two guys. They are spreading faster than the Starbucks craze in the USA. Every street corner has a "Sangeetha's".

Little wonder then, that there is a Sangeetha's next to our place also. Apparently they showed a garage in the basement while getting their permit and are now using the basement as storage. That means the customers park on the street and jam the road!

Now what happens? The entire road is made a "one way". One way's are the universal solution to all traffic jams in Chennai. If the Chennai politicians food gets into a jam in his stomach, he will probably make his @$$ "one way"!

As usual, instead of keeping my mouth shut, I ask the people around me, "Why don't you guys complain to the cops? This Sangeetha's is running a valet parking service on the street, when he is illegal in the first place. That parking is for residents!"

They quietly pointed to the three cops redirecting the "valet" effort. Apparently the cops get a free breakfast, lunch and dinner at the restaurant and therefore complaining against their annadaata might not work out in the best interests of the residents!

Lesson: Follow the food chain before you make hasty judgments!

Why bother to write about these things?

In spite of the trip being a short one, there has been plenty of time within the 11 days to do some soul searching on Chennai, never going back, fitting in, etc.

One of my Chinese friends remarked that India could use a project manager like me. He said "If they had ten guys like you, you would whip that place to compete with the US!". Told him that while being extremly happy at that compliment, being a great project manager in the USA does not mean success in India. My own parents never approve of my methods.

Finally told him, "They will throw me out, because they cannot handle me". His response "Why? What is wrong with you?"

Have been trying to answer that question. For starters, "speaking out" is considered a risky activity by everyone in the family. Hush, keep quiet, what if someone hears you, why do you want to buy trouble, etc. etc. is all they tell me, when my blood boils at seeing something and I actually try to go take someone to task, be it a storekeeper, a call taxi dude or a cop! My relatives promptly tell me "you dont know how things work here. your memory of this place is still based on what you saw as a school and college kid fifteen years ago. Things are different now!"

Also, any attempt to point out the current state and a suggestion to improve is always considered as a "negative" stand on the current state of things. This is a catch 22. Why?

Improvement is change in the positive direction.
It can be seen only if measured simply as an equation

"Change = New - Old"

That means, there has to be a mention of the "old" or current and if that is perceived as accusatory, finger pointing, NRI attitude etc., then there is no point in continuing a conversation. For every improvement there is a reason. A problem statement, which when attacked methodically, can have a solution which should also be measured against to verify that improvement has indeed happened!

Any discussion of the metrics, and the discussion turns to argument and the "we are happy with what we have" sets in!

Thought right is right and wrong is wrong... and boy was I wrong on that one!

In any case, it has been proven to me that life for an average middle class person in an Indian Metro like Chennai is ridden with issues that the people just put up with, for fear of retribution. To me, that is unacceptable in the worlds largest democracy, but then again, I do NOT partake in that democratic process and the people who do the "putting up with BS" tell me that it is their way of life and they did not ask me to come and try to change things (for fear that it might make things worse for them after I leave) and have instead gotten used to it!

With that in mind, will leave them to their ways, and will keep myself busy with my way of life. My retirement age just got advanced another 10 years thanks to Lehman, the banks, the @$$holes who gave home loans and the @$$holes who took home equity loans on their homes (which they had no way of affording in the first place) to pay for trips to exotic islands and are now cooly declaring foreclosures and bankruptcys!

I want my money back!! All of my retirement money.. NOW!! Want every person who gave loans without checking background on the loan applicants to be arrested. Want every one who took that loan, to have stuff they bought repossessed. Why should sincere people shoulder the burden of the irresponsible? How can these guys who borrowed money knowing that they can never pay it back, be allowed to walk away with no consequence? This is economic terrorism inflicted by an irresponsible few on the taxpaying many. Is anybody listening?

Well, guess not! So life is not much different in the USA after all. Much like that cop who gets fed by Sangeetha's restaurant, the politicians and regulatory agencies here were probably fed by Lehman?!

For those of you who came here expecting funny stuff, my apologies. We will get back to the lighter side of life starting tomorrow.

It has indeed, been a long day! A ten year extension of your retirement age will do that to you.

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Stone Temple Pilots

As we were going through the old CD collection, a CD of the "Stone Temple Pilots" was spotted. They were a popular rock band in the early nineties. Popular for a very short time, but they had one single that I liked and hence the CD in the collection.

At that time, it was my opinion that,

Amitabh Bachchan : Mithun Chakraborthy :: Pearl Jam : Stone Temple Pilots

Anyways, this post as usual, is going to steer away from the opening paragraph. To a different world, a different time and place!

The very first time the name of this group was mentioned, and we (Myself, my friends Sedat Alkoy and Indradev Samajdar, may god find them happy wherever they are!) were watching the group perform live on one of the late night shows, it remined me of a different type of Stone Temple Pilots, and for some weird reason, that memory came back! Now we are going deep into my brain, for this is a flashback of a flashback, something not attempted, even in K. Balachandar movies!

Once upon a time, in a land far away, was a custom called Pradhosham. Every 15 days, the entire family would assemble at the Kapaleeshwarar temple in Mylapore and watch the idol of lord Shiva (on his silver bull) being carried around the temple three times, with a short break after each round. The temple would be "standing room only", and the oldies and the kids will go hours in advance to reserve vantage positions to see the prayers during the breaks.

Think of it as stadium seating where the half time show is viewed best!

My brother and me, would have our own agenda when going to the temple. While grandpa would be busy choosing a safe view point for grandma, we would go do our thing. We would watch and chase the peacocks behind the "punnaivana naathar", chase each other around the entire temple, put vennai to the hanuman on one of the pillars outside the Kapaleeshwar sannidhi, and last but not the least, chase each other on the stone elephants in the hall facing the subramanya deity! It was by far our favorite activity.

We would race across fantasy lands, throw in some Mahabaratha lingo learnt recently from grandma and beat the elephant on the head to go faster, faster! We would hog the elephants as much as we could till grandpa would dislodge us to give the the other waiting kids a chance.

The beauty of the pradhosham, is that if you pray to Lord Shiva over that narrow 90 minute window every fifteen days, he would forgive you for all your sins and grant you all your wishes! The other beauty of the pradhosham is that as soon as the final deepa aaradhanai is done, the crowd disperses within 10 minutes! The ladies disappeared to feed their family while the men had to go around the Mylapore tank and bargain with the vegetable vendors to buy veggies for the next days menu! The gaslit lamps, the crude weighing scales which made the bargaining moot, the cows that would be running the backlane between the open stalls for the discarded vegetables, the smells, the visuals... someone needs to come up with a software that can take the image in your head and convert it to .jpg and upload to blogger! Better, make that a request for video upload directly to youtube.

Where were we? Ah, the rapidly dispersing post pradosham crowd! You see, grandpa was a very patient man and he loves us dearly! That said, he would let us play on the elephants for an extra half hour. This would be followed by a request for drinking Kalimark goli soda outside the temple and he would yield. Then we would make our way to the Ambika Appalam Depot and buy :

1 piece Palkhoa each (wrapped in a translucent butter paper)
1 bag of kara sevai
1 bag of ribbon pakoda

and we would start the long trek back home. Occasionally I would roll and the floor and throw a tantrum outside the book store near Leo coffee for the latest issue of Chandamama and grandpa would buy me that too!

Every India trip over the last fifteen years has included a Pradosham, call it an old habit, a prayer for shiva or whatever. Except this trip!

We went to the temple one evening, to stand under the same Dakshinamurthy who was in some ways instrumental in me marrying San, while my brother pointed out the real Dakshinamurthy shining high and bright over the Madras sky!

Jr. is now about the same age as my brother was when we enjoyed piloting the stone elephants. She really enjoyed it. The little one will have to wait a couple of years, and then we can have the next generation race all over again!

San tells me that I live in the past when we visit India, and it is true. When you spend less than a month out of twelve in India, one does tend to live in the past, look for those connections, grab for roots, all in the hopes of refreshing the DRAM's in your head!

All said and done, it is great to go back to this temple, anytime, any day, be it Pradosham or otherwise, and take a look at those elephants!

I can be eight years old again!

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A wedding and a Deepavali ?!

After the BIL's wedding was over, we had 4 days before we were going to be on a plane.

Just before we left for the airport, we celebrated a mini Deepavali on our terrace.

You see, my parents miss me terribly, every Deepavali, especially when they see how kids today have no enthusiasm for firecrackers. It simply devastates them to think that kids today don't obsess over crackers.

When it came to "pattasu" or firecrackers, Mandaveli Sundaram who currently goes by Sundar Narayanan or Dr. Narayanöhe, set the bar high. Very high!

Before the local "pattasu" stores would come into seasonal existence in and around the Mandaiveli, Mylapore area, more notably around St. Mary's road, RK Mutt Road and all around the temple tank, little platform vendors would start selling only cape! My parents did not save me any cape this time, but for those of you who do not know what we are talking about, they are little paper dots with a small amount of explosive chemical in the middle. You fire them with a cape gun or any other pressure spring (which would make the things look like mini spaceships)!

My brother and myself would even have cape revolvers where you would load a roll of paper tape with the "cape" dots and would fire them, mostly at the caterpillars eating the plants between our house and the neighbours and the process piss off the mami next door. The cape goes off with a sound and a little spark and we would play for almost 15 days with just the Cape, waiting for the stores to start unleashing the latest and greatest firecrackers from Sivakasi!

From Airplanes to rockets, Snakes to sparrows, sparklers to sizzlers, we would cover the spectrum over the last week. The only presents we would accept for Deepavali were things with the picture of Red Fort or goddess Lakshmi or a yellow sparrow on them.

We were probably the only kids in the street to burst crackers three days after Deepavali was over and most of that bursting would be done by me. When I was little, rumor has it that I would take all unburnt crackers and put them in a "Thulasi Madam" (a small shrine like thing in every Tambram household that grows holy Basil plant) that was empty and create a bonfire with the leftover chemicals!

When it came to firecracker bursting, let us just say that I was some legend, or at least my parents and relatives, still tell tales like that!

So, every India trip, my dad saves crackers for me to burst from the latest Deepavali. This time we kept postponing the event till the very last minute and an hour before the "call taxi" was to show up to take us to the airport, we went on the terrace and had a blast! (Well, there were none of the explosive crackers, so the blast was more figurative).

I was a kid again, and my dad had tears in his eyes watching me be a kid again. It is my sincere thought that given a choice, my parents would do some voodoo, convert me back into an eight year old and freeze me there. The grown up version of me probably has a lot less to offer them! Anyways, we are getting lost in thought, as usual.

We celebrated Deepavali, as a family for one hour and it made us soooooo happy, but we left India with a heavy heart!

Needless to say, there ARE pictures!

Belated Happy Deepavali to one and all!

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Rita Reeeeta Rïëeeeta Iscreeeeeaaaaaaammmm !!!

The man, if you could call him that, with his pencil thin moustache and pants that hug his legs to show their bow, would come screaming towards you, pushing a small wooden box with a lid that was covered in an old cloth, with those four letters in big blue lettering, RITA.

This by far, is the best memory of our time at the beach, etched deep into my head.

As a small boy who would visit the Madras Marina beach with his mother, or granfather, the highlights would always be:

1. Eating Rita kuchchi ice (gelato on a stick?)
2. Flying a kaathadi (beach kite, the ones with two sets of boxes and a short triangular tail)
3. Collecting shells on the edge of the waves
4. standing in knee deep water in the waves
5. running around Gandhi statue
6. chasing my brother on the sand
7. watching the horses and camels as they gave rides to people (never rode on them)
8. playing catch with a tennis ball
9. eating soan papdi
10. bringing the beach home with us in our pants, shirts, bags etc. and getting a scolding for spreading sand over the entire house!

Later, we got Kwality ice creams showing up in a shinier plastic/metal box with a well defined lid, an umbrella on top, serving everything from the plain orange or grape to Chocobar and Choconut ice cream. Guess that was the end of Rita!

Anyways, it is time to pinch myself and return to the glorious present day Chennaipattinam. We managed to hit the Marina twice in the 10 days we spent at Madras. The first time, we ended up near the University, and that was not a pleasant experience. The sand is too dirty in this area and there are people throwing half eaten fish on the sand. You cannot walk bare feet in this part of the beach. In our house, we don't even consider that a trip to the beach. Yeah, we are picky. To me, my brother, and sister, the equation simply reads :

Beach = Gandhi statue!

By the time we made it to the waves, the MIL, SIL and her two kids dropped out at a halfway point, and it got dark when we really made it to the water. After a meager 10 minutes in the waves, we had to return because it was too dark. Still not a complete washout, but we blamed it on the call taxi who took forever to get from West Mambalam to the Marina!

The second time, we came to the beach from our house in Mandaveli, in all of 10 minutes. We used to walk/bike to the beach when we were kids and once in a while, use the 21 or 21N buses. Devanathan street, Pumping station, Matriculation School and Santhome, four stops in 10 minutes! (I have no idea if these bus numbers still exist, or if the buses stop at these places, but they do in my head and will do so for a long long time!)

We came early, with my brother and his family in his little Maruti, spent a lot of time on the waves, ran near Gandhi Selai for old times sake, ate Soan Papdi, watched the kids play, and finally made our way back after spending a good two hours at the beach!

Sadly, there was no "Rita" ice cream!

It is no secret that I love beaches and we are so glad that both Jr. and the Little One love the beach as much as daddy, if not more!

Outside of the wedding, this was the best day spent in Madras. I love California beaches because they are clean, but the water is too cold for us to stand in the waves. The Madras Marina, is nowhere as clean as it was when we were little kids, but is still not bad considering how many people live in the city now and how many visit the beach, but the water is just the right temperature for my feet!

And yes, there are pictures!

"Horsies", not the ones that give rides to kids, but we saw many of them!

The kids enjoying a spin on what we called the "ranga raatinam", except these days there are plastic cars and bikes and in those days there were wooden ducks or ponies. This was not on my top ten list because my parents would never let us go on the raatinams!

Jr. walking the little one and her cousin. Of all the people, I miss my nephew the most after returning to the states. Last year he was a six month old boy. This year, he is a two year old toddler! He called me ippa (his speak for Periappa) when I wore pants, and Anna (brother) when I wore shorts.

It was the greatest compliment to a guy who is worried about looking 42 when he is really not yet finished 36! My nephew would also call Sangeetha "aatha", because he heard me call her Sangeetha, and all he could manage was the "aatha" part, which means "mother"! San, my mom, my brother were all upset that I got to enjoy this!

Everytime he would scream "Anna, Anna, Annaaaaah!!" it brought an automatic smile to my lips! I really miss that kid now! Going forward, I plan to wear only shorts at home on future India trips.

Jr. decided to take up a job as "Boat Inspector" for a few minutes, but once she found that the boats smelled "eeewww", she ran back to us.

This beach is really a gift!

Soan Papdi.... mmmmmmmmmmmm... yummy... ate as much as I could and went to instant heaven! Hundreds of thousands of Indians live in California and all they could think of is build temples and have concerts with Amitabh and family! Bah! Someone needs to worry about sprinkling the local beaches with Soan Papdi-walas! Maybe that someone is me?

The little one, is really a beach person, like her dad! Just refused to come out of the waves. Reminded me of, well.. Me!

A mom and daughters moment...

If you happen to live in Chennai, you have no idea how blessed you are! You have the Marina, and living in so called "sunny" California, on the coast, we still envy you!

You have THE Marina!!! Go on, go to the beach and take a bow!

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I love you, Ambuja

There is no dearth of love for Sangeetha. There is just someone else, we all fell in love with, on the recent India trip.

The old female elephant at the Vaidheeswaran Kovil, so full of grace, with an ever present smile, she blessed all the kids and me, multiple times for a modest fee of 10 rupees. Do not know her name, and hence we are calling her Ambuja!

We stopped at the temple, because it happens to be the family deity for my maternal side and San's maternal side. After spending a good 15 minutes with my new love Ambuja, we went to the temple "kuLam" or water tank. This, thanks to San praying that, if she makes me throw pepper, salt and jaggery in the tank, my frequent sickness over the first half of 2008 will hopefully stop continuing to the latter half of the year and beyond!

Considering that my hair has survived several tonsure attempts in the name of such prayers over the last decade, I usually oblige when it comes to throwing salt, pepper, jaggery, coconuts, cucumbers, or what have you into anything and everything, in an attempt to save my already receeding hair. "Sure, lets get the salt, pepper combo and dissolve it in the tank! I have done it many times before as a kid, so why not once again?", I said and off we went with the packets.

I flung the jaggery into the tank when the few onlookers gave me a "look"! To our rude shock, there was a sign at the Kulam which said "Please leave the jaggery in this container. Do not put it in the Tank". We were perplexed. This was followed by two dudes who had open boxes (one for salt, one for pepper) with a sign that said "deposit the salt here, and pepper here". I went ballistic! "WTF?!" I told myself in my head, unable to blaspheme in one of my favorite temples.

The whole specialty of this tank was that over jillions of years, people had thrown enough jaggery, salt and pepper to make a giant tank full of "paanagam", which was pretty much a ready to drink super strength "gatorade". My grandpa and grandma used to tell stories of how if they boil rice outside the temple with water from the tank, they would get instant "Pongal"! The special bacteria that thrive in sugar syrup mixed with salt and pepper were probably responsible for the millions of miracle cures reported by the bathing visitors.

In this day and age where a woman pays a few thousand rupees to get eggs, cucumbers, etc. on her face and hair to "fructify" and nurture herself, imagine the power of a tank full of Paanagam?! Healthy glowing skin, beautiful face, god knows what other powers the waters behold. Might have even been an aphrodisiac of sorts, which explains why so many prayers for kids were answered after a dip in that temple tank!

One has to drop off the salt, pepper, jaggery in the pond, then DRINK the water to wash away their sins and heal! How does one heal when you just dump it in a plastic bin? To top things off, dude 1 at the salt container said "Sir, take one grain of salt and one grain of pepper and eat it! only then your sins go away". I was about to give the dude a piece of my mind.. "I paid for the whole plastic bag, you idiot! Can eat the whole bag if I want! Bah. Bah.. Bah!", all said to myself inside my head, as he started repacking my sins, ready to sell them to the next person at the temple door!

The funny thing is, that this happened in Goa a year back when I wanted to light a candle at the Bom Jesus Basilica! They would not let me light the candle, instead there was that same plastic container!! Once filled with unlit candles, it would be taken back to the front to be resold! The prayer paraphranelia recycle business is hitting devotees hard, irrespective of religion.

We did go and drink the water from the temple tank, and it was still sweet! That was a consolation. On our way out, we went to check San's Naadi Leaf. On our way in, we had already given her thumb print and date of birth and they had told us that it is 150 rupees for finding the leaf and another 250 rupees to read the leaf if found.

On our return from the temple, the triumphant declaration was that the leaf was found and San went in to ascertain that it was indeed her leaf. She came out with a big smile saying all the details they mentioned about her dad, mom, me etc. were accurate. Then came the shock. To read the leaf was now 1500 rupees total. This obviously pissed off San to no end. Told her that it was her call and if she wanted to go read the rest, it was okay. After all we visit India once a year and we don't show up at this temple that often!

After about 30 minutes, she got her leaf reading taped. I got to listen to it only earlier today, but heard the highlights. Apparently the tape said San's hubby, aka yours truly is a very "saadhu" and simpleminded person! San was trying to disown the leaf, but considering the rest of the details fit like a glove, this had to be accepted as fact!

Other than that the reading was not as interesting as the one done 11 years ago by my parents! This Naadi astrology has become a highly commercial activity now. Where there was one office, there are now a whopping 23, possibly split factions from the same family that controls the palm leaves.

This time there were no written poems in old Tamizh, just a horoscope on the first page.

The person who did the reading was almost making horoscope based predictions, which any qualified Hindu astrologer would!

The thumb print classification system of these guys still baffles me. How they manage to get the exact names right, based on a generic gods name also baffles me, but my brother says they use a "yatchuni" and read your mind. Possible!

San was apparently irritated, because the guy kept saying she was going to have various problems and that if she did certain "parihaarams" (appeasement), wore certain amulets made of certain metals, she would mitigate the effect and was trying to sell her amulets in the middle of the session. She pretty much walked out early because there were two hungry kids waiting in the van. Apparently in the entire history of the Naadi Astrology place, she was the first one to lose interest after her leaf was found and walk out before the reading was finished.

Either San is a very unique person, or that dude overdid his salesman bit! Looks like the leaves are now a commercial hit, and that does not spell good news for people who actually believe in it, and go seeking what the wise sages wrote for them!

Naadi is still fascinating, but beware of business!

ps. If anyone knows Ambuja's real name, please let us know. She has a special place in our heart!

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