The rules of the game

Cricket, the wonderful game with which I have a love hate relationship, is gaining popularity even in China, according to the news buzz!

In truth, I have always loved the game. It is the players, the umpires (referees), the coaches, the cricket control organizations, sports media, gamblers, bookies etc. that I really hate.

A nice game turned into a mockery, sometimes even a soap opera!

When my brother was here visiting, we were watching CSI. He commented that, there was less crime and more cleavage, and it was something else other than the scene that was being investgated and my response was :

prime time shows : soap opera in stage
Star trek : soap opera in space
CSI : soap opera in lab
24 : soap opera in counter terrorism office
Law and order : soap opera in DA office
20/20 : soap opera in cricket field

If you noticed the previous post, you would have noticed that both Jr. and the little one are now courting plastic cricket bats, thanks to their australian cousin's refusal to share his bat, while the men and kids were waiting in the verandah, after being kicked out of the house during a "ladies only" ceremony before the BIL's wedding!

All these kids are growing outside India, but the aussie dude has an unfair advantage in that he is growing up in a land where Cricket is played! He even knew who Sachin was, and Jr. ignored his critical knowledge and insulted his intelligence by holding the cricket bat with one hand, baseball style, and generally swooshing the bat in arbitrary directions and coming up with a higher success rate at connecting the ball with bat.

Sachin in pink and Dhoni in yellow set me back fifty rupees on Station road in West Mambalam and the weird game of cricket played by three kids with three bats and three balls along a single pitch, started. We even had great grandpa (from San's side) keep wickets, for fear that the ball might end up in the open toilet!

This game as usual, brought back a rush of memories. The rules of cricket are simple and can be explained to non cricket playing folk in California terms as follows:

1: Dude hurls ball at another dude who has a bat
2: Bat dude hits ball
3: fielders converge on ball
4: Bat dude runs across and trades places (bases) with another bat dude while fielders get ball
5: If the ball clears the outer boundary of field, with bounce they get more runs, without bounce is even more runs.
6: If ball is caught before bounce or if bat dude misses the ball and it hits the wicket (equivalent of plate), he is out and next dude comes in.

the official rules are here! and as you can see, are a lot more elaborate than the ones mentioned above. However for most practitioners of the game on a field, the rules cover 80% of what normally happens.

The keywords here are "on a field"!

We now venture on to practitioners of this wonderful game on the streets of Mandaiveli. Come on, you knew that was coming way before you even came to this paragraph, didn't you?

As a touring member of the Mandaiveli Therukkutheru Cricket Club, myself and my brother must have spent approximately 45.75% of our middle school years playing cricket. Of this ~ 82.37% was spent around Devanathan street. The most important lesson learnt from all that time?

The game is defined purely by the boundary! Guess this holds true even for the "real" game. If you play on a smaller field, every tom, dick and harry can hoist the ball across the boundary and give the bowlers more than a "run" for their money.

In street cricket though, the rules are very different. It is almost like living through the story "A table is a table", where a bored fellow decides to call a Table a chair, a chair a bed, etc. till he becomes so wrapped in his new world he is unable to communicate with others!

Let me explain. Let us say, you are using the electric box on Sambandam street as the wicket.... Oh wait, you don't necessarily know the local map. So I have taken the liberty of using google maps, which by the way does not do justice to the street layout! The U shaped road marked in that map is Sambandam street.

(thank you Google)

Going back to the electric box wicket, the rules were, if you hit the ball straight out to Devanathan Street you got runs, if you hit to your right into the middle Sambandam street, you got runs (with the exception of the house with Django the dog) and you were out if you hit it into any of the three houses with musudu maamaa's and or maami's who would keep your ball! Django was another story altogether, and did I forget to mention that if you hit the ball into the house with the glass windows owned by angry thatha, you had to sit out the next two games?

If you have not got the picture yet, the danger houses from those times are all marked with red, orange or yellow dots depending on the % chance that you would get your ball back. Needless to say, the rules when the electric box on Chandrasekaran street was used as the wicket would be completely different based purely on the danger houses!

When playing the boys in another local street, they would first explain the rules on their street for the first five minutes before the game proceeded! This reminds you of the National Geographic videos where people from one polynesian island sail to another island and the locals explain things like "if you enter any womans hut, you have married her, and if you come out immediately after entering the hut, you have married her sister as well!". Once the rules were clear, you would just throw caution to the wind and hit the ball, hoping that you were not out by the local street "rules" and would stay on to play the next ball!

Now, don't even get me started on Uppukkuchappas! (something you won't find in any cricket rule book).

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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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India lives in Villages?!

The recent India trip time distribution was as follows:

Time at parents place : 7 days
Time at Sans Grandparents place : 1 day
Time at Marriage hall : 2 days
Travel : 1 day

While on the face of it, there appears to be a gross discrepancy in the way disproportionate time was spent in my parents place, let us assure the readers that of the 7 days spent at parents place more than 70% of the time was spent travelling between Mandaiveli and West Mambalam using a route that even I would not have imagined possible. Let me explain that in graphic detail.

As a guy who used to get lost within his own one bedroom apartment, within every locality we lived in, yours truly had a tendency to wander around. I used to miss exits on the freeway and claim to the Mrs. that we were taking "the scenic route", an excuse that would get me a smile and a dimple in her chin in those early years of marriage, compared to the "gas vikkara velayile..." (gas price being what it is...) lecture I get today... where was I? Hmm.. getting lost!!!

Even the guy who gets lost with this kind of consistancy, would not take a route to West Mambalam from Mandaiveli that involves taking a right on Chamiers road, geting on to Anna Salai via Cenatoph road, then going through the entire pondy bazaar just to get to Doraiswamy subway! What used to take us 30 minutes, now took an hour and 20 minutes, not to mention having to hear complaints from every auto dude about rising petrol prices, the longer distances, government policy, how no one knows which route is one way in which direction anymore, how cops are exploiting the new one ways to gouge unsuspecting auto drivers etc.

To top this, you see the guys in autos frantically screaming to the auto drivers urging them to drive as fast as they can, as one approached panagal park for fear that the women folk might just jump out of the stagnant auto, into Nalli's, Pothy's, RMKV's, Prince Jewelry or what have you at that corner! The reason, why guys always sit on the open side of the autorickshaw when rounding the south Indian Saree capital, finally dawned on me! Enough about traffic.

Now that we are back on track, lets say the probability density function of the Narayanan electron cloud around Madras was more likely to be :

Time at parents place : 2 days
Time at Sans Grandparents place : 1 day
Time at Marriage hall : 2 days
Travel : 1 day
Time spent in Madras Auto : 5 days

The only abberation in the cloud is the 1 day travel spent outside of the city, which actually happens to be the focus of this post. You can clap now, as though the title has been mentioned, in the middle of a Vijayakant movie!

We were not yet out of jet lag after reaching Madras when we were whisked away in a 13 seater A/C van booked by my FIL to take us to Anandhathandavapuram and back within one day!

Let's break that down for the non-Tamizhian folks... Ananda(happy)-thandava(dance)-puram(place). Literally, the place where lord Shiva did the "happy dance"!, with his wife Parvathi, of course (it is one of the few temples where the goddess is sitting on the lap of the god). With that in perspective, one is open to interpreting the "happy dance" part, as gods are always an inspiration, but that is outside the scope of this blog, which considers parenting as part of its staple!

The trip was promised as a safe, fast and comfortable one by the in-laws. While it was fast and comfortable, it was nowhere safe, especially if you sat on the front passenger seat with your four year old nephew on your lap.

While the kid thought he was in some real life video game, dodging cars, trucks and government buses coming head on towards you, on the wrong side of the road only to careen away in the last split second to pass a speeding bullock cart, the adults were screaming at the driver to go safely, who in turn was cursing the other drivers in "pure thoroughbred" -"thooya" Tamizh, unmindful of the octagenarians, ladies (or both) who were travelling within the same confined space.

The BIL and me, being the only young men?! in the van, learnt a lot of new "gaalis" which make us "current" w.r.t. Madras, sorry Chennai slang!

We even had a thirty minute break when our van encountered a fallen tree in the middle of the Highway. The locals came with saws and a mover to clear it. The kids had fun watching the proceedings, while goverment bus drivers decided to gridlock the road by trying to check out the happenings by coming on the wrong side of the road.

Soon the tree was gone, but the traffic was jammed in both directions! More choice epithets were used by the drivers on both sides, as the vehicles moved through surrounding marshes to continue on the adventure. The brigaspathi who started the jam, even obliged us with a picture!

Once we hit the villages though, it was pretty. Not many people in sight, a glorious calm, rice fields and greenery everywhere, the occasional hut with a few goats tethered outside, a few chickens running around and the naked toddlers running around behind the chickens! Pity we were on a schedule. Could have exhausted a 2GB memory card right there.

We went on to the little "kula deivam" temple at the edge of the village. The last time we visited the place was in 2001. This time the water tank was empty, but the greenery was still all around. We all got to bathe in the temple, then pray, eat food cooked for the prayer and then leave.

The best part at the end, was when the little one and daddy both asked the priest "where is the rest room?" and his reply was "inge adhellam kidayadhu. appidiye vayakattu pakkam pongo!" (there is no such thing here, just go around to the edge of the paddy field and do your business!). The little one, brave girl that she is, watched the chickens and goats and did her business. Luckily, no one took pictures of a sheepish daddy walking around paddy fields, in his dhoti with a mug of water in his hand, Vijayakant style!

The trip was a blast. It almost felt like Vijayakant was travelling with us the whole time in various get-ups because there was a poster of him every 10 feet, all the way from the village entrance back ot Chennai City, in village clothes, in military fatigues, in police uniform, looking tech savvy with rimless glasses and a cell phone, etc. etc.

What is a post about a trip without pictures? Here they are...

A place for good tea somewhere near Dhindivanam

If a tree falls...

The man with a plan!

The kids, looking visibly distraught at the first part of the roller coaster ride. Coming from US and Australia, where bumps are used as speed breakers, they were surprised by the drivers using the bumps as speed enhancers, by launching vehicles into the air!

Welcome to Pondy!

The speeding bullock cart with a top speed of 6 mph between two vehicles with a top speed of 60 mph. But the bullocks would give the Toyota Prius a run for the money what with the 60 mph vechicles consuming gas while the 6 mph bullocks, producing gas! Think the bullock carts are here to stay on the highways for a long time to come, because at the end of the day, it is all economics!

The nephew doing "peela" jadoo using a nimbu on the little one!

The village goats, a typical scene

The other avatar of Daddy Narayanan...

Posing inside the temple

Tickets to India for family of four : 6000 dollars
Renting a van to Anandatandavapuram : 600 dollars
Chasing your cousin in a village temple : Priceless

On the way back, we stopped at Vaidheeswaran Kovil to visit the temple, and the Mrs., on a whim, decided to check out her Naadi Astrology prediction.

That is where we stop today and continue tomorrow...

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