September 13, 2011
Today's morning walk took me and Amma to the Museum compound. It was still dark. The nautical twilight period. Frogs and crickets were not done with the night. "Ee thavala shabdam kekkumbo enniku pillaveedu orma varum," (Hearing these frogs reminds me of Pillaveedu) Amma said. Pillaveedu is her childhood home in our native village. It has a narrow channel in front of it. Great environment for the frogs and the watersnakes which feed on them.
It had rained so heavily last night that a tree was uprooted inside the Museum campus. Early morning walkers had to negotiate between its branches. For a moment, the bipedal walker brains must have reverted to primate instincts, jumping between branches.
I no longer have any outstanding debt with the milk booth owner. So I can return to reading the news and discussions about America's deficit smugly.
Since it had rained enough to bring down a tree, it was no surprise to find on coming back home that our primitive support structure for the young long gourd and long bean plants had also collapsed. I changed my jeans, en-shortsed myself and proceeded to dig deeper holes to firmly hold the dry support stumps!
Sweaty labor even on a cool morning.
Over-enthusiasm induced carelessness and I found my fingers in the space that did not exist between a stem node and the solid, heavy, iron digger.
Loss of sensation and difficulty in motion for a minute. Wet mud that had transferred unknowingly from the digger acted as bandage. Not much loss of blood, just a bit of blue around some lost skin. The closest I'll come to royalty.
Second youngest uncle came by in the morning. His first visit after the wedding. He used to be here every morning before the wedding to act as the family doyen. He browsed through the wedding album. Achan and him shared stories. Achan talked about a bank "recovery" operation that took him 24 hours in the middle of a huge rubber estate. A stone crusher had to be extracted and send to the receiver because of defaulting on a loan. Achan was the bank manager in that place called Devagiri in central Kerala. The armed guard of the bank, who was also Achan's roomie, a wonderful ex-military man, Antony uncle, assisted in the process. The defaulter's brother threatened in the evening to disrupt. Seeking local police assistance brought over two sleepy policemen. By next day, 9am the machinery was disassembled and taken to the bank for storage. 16 days later Achan was transferred from that branch of the bank....unrelated to the incident. He said he learnt later that the defaulter bought the machinery back during the bank auction.
Post lunch day was dedicated to the grand finale procession of the Onam week. Thousands of coconuts and other bribes must have been offered to the numerous gods to prevent the rains. The finale procession that is nearly a mile long and takes 90 minutes to pass a point from start to finish, is a stupendous organizational effort. Not to mention the participants, kids to veterans, Malayalees and those from other states who gather for this one event in the capital city.
I found a spot close to Vellayambalam junction by 4pm with my second youngest uncle for the viewing. Amma was to come walking in the procession along with the Reserve Bank of India's float and join us. Achan skipped the procession this year and said he would catch snatches of it virtually on TV.
Armed with umbrellas, the city poured out into the main road soon. The procession was to be flagged off from a stage erectred near KELTRON (Kerala State Electronics Corp) which was couple of hundred metres away from the tree under which we stood. So the first twenty display items of the procession passed us by before 4:45. That brought, item 21, a magnificent team of drummers from somewhere outside Kerala right in front of us waiting for the green flag at 5 pm. These drummers were tireless much to the delight of the crowd and much to the chagrin of the Mohiniyattam dancer girls with their pretty costumes and palm-frond umbrellas who happened to be item 20, right in front of the drummers.
A moment past 4:50, the governor's car with its pilot car and escort car left Raj Bhavan for the pavilion for the flagging off. At 5pm on the dot, as announced,the procession began. I was in heaven. An event of this magnitude beginning sharply on time in India. Incredible!
My heart hardly had the chance to get back down to its cavity in the 90 minutes that followed. The procession was organized in such a way that every 5 minutes a drumming item will come along. This kept up a perpetual, high octane background music for the entire duration.
Head banging time for the head-bobbing society!
Colorful floats, colorful costumes, colorful decorations, it was a rainless rain of color for the city!
Once every few floats, one really high one will come along onto which the hanging illumination wires or tree branches will get stuck. These technical delays were handled pretty well. The items preceeding the delayed floats slowed down to entertain the crowd more.
It was advantageous that we were right at the starting point of the procession. By the time they make it through the city, 5 km to their ultimate destination at the East Fort, I am sure they would be thoroughly zapped. Especially the dancers, drummers and martial artists!
Plenty of cameras around. Majority were cellphone camera totting amateurs like me. But a few young men (who looked like non-resident Indians) with gynormous lenses were walking around getting all the bright color combinations into their lenses.
The spectators packed on either side of the road were extremely well-behaved. Not any of pushing, shoving, poking, sleazy comments and eve-teasing that I had expected. I remember the catcalls, laughter and comments during the 1995 procession when the float for Hindustan Latex, India's largest manufacturer of condoms, came along. I was an age then that is prone to absorbing such remarks. The HIV awareness float today did not draw any vulgar reaction.
May be it was the presence of the policemen. These men and women have done an outstanding job this week. In between the concert that I had gone to couple of days back, a cop approached the lead singer to request an announcement. A 5 year old boy named Kannan had been lost in the crowd. Today's Manorama newspaper carried side by side the wonderful photographs of Kannan standing among affectionate police 'uncles', fighting back his tears, and the photo of his tearful reunion with his mother. Kids lost in crowded festivals had been standard plot line for Bollywood in yesteryears. But with the dedication of Kerala police, there aren't going to be stories of lost and not found for 25 years to be told in 3 and half hours of screen time.
This evening, I saw a group of policemen on duty actually open their purses and pay a chai-wallah on a bicycle who had served them tea.
Policemen paying for something!!!! that too to a simple chai-wallah!!!
Team Anna might have just benefited from a strong, steady undercurrent of change for the good that has been guiding this society!
This morning I read a newspaper report about a couple of policemen who had interrogated for two long hours a ten year old girl in public. She had been molested. They asked her to describe the details in front of the accused and 200 other people. So it is not utopia here, but I am tempted to think that such ugly incidents are no longer representative of law enforecement behavior.
The couple of hours of excitement at the procession has left me thoroughly exhausted. I was not this tired even on my sister's wedding day.
There was an old lady selling popcorn to the spectators.
For her, the opulence, the happiness and the celebrations did not matter.
Livelihood mattered.
May be an extrea hundred rupees of business today.
There is a lot that is wrong with this society. There is a lot that must change.
But today, the thousands thronging the road side of Thiruvananthapuram and the hundreds in the procession who relished the attention lavished on them, reminded me that there is a joy, a celebration, an enjoyment that is possible sans alcohol, sans sex!
The cynic in me had forgotten!
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