Friday, August 5, 2011 at 11:47pm
I was up by 4:30 this morning. Jet lag is wearing off slowly. Amma was up too and casually asked me if I would like to go to the temple. There is only one answer when moms use that tone. I was showered and dressed by 5am.
We walked to the nearby Aalthara Devi temple. While climbing up the steep slope of our lane, Amma asked me to slow down. “I climb this slowly,” she said. Simple statement had quite an impact on me. She has aged. I hadn’t realized.
The Aalthara temple used to be a small one last time I was here. The name Althara means the floor of the Aal i.e. banyan tree. It used to be simple idols of the Goddess, a yakshi, in duplicate, one facing the road for the busy folks passing by and one inside for those inclined to really get into the rituals. There is always a crowd outside. The goddess is flanked by a Shiva linga and a Ganesh. Inside there is a small area for Nagar, the snake gods.
Nowadays there are two priests constantly attending to the street-facing idol alone. They periodically remove the huge amounts of floral petals that cover the floor in front of the idol and pass it on to a lady outside who carries it off in a wicker basket. Remarkably efficient, brisk process and it is only 5am.
Devotees can make fire cracker offering. I was jolted the first time I heard one. It is loud enough to grab the divine’s attention. The gods, I assume, are clinically deaf like most Indians. It must be the relentless assault from the traffic. I am asked frequently to speak louder here.
This small temple reflects the economic growth around. It now has a full-fledged auditorium and a bus.
From this temple, we took an autorickshaw to the largest Ganapati temple in the city at Pazhavangadi near East Fort. For those not familiar with Thiruvananthapuram, this Ganapati temple is few hundred meters away from the now international renowned Padmanabhaswamy temple.
Amma had promised 11 coconuts to the Ganapati if all the furniture she had moved from Kochi to Thiruvanathapuram came over without damage. Hinduism is the perfect capitalist religion. The gods come with rate charts but are negotiable according to the devotee’s financial capacity.
The auto ride early morning was fun. City was waking up. Lot more cyclists than other vehicles. Brand new multi-storey office and apartment buildings in their morning glory. Plenty of offices have ‘net’ and ‘tech’ suffixed to their names. But it was a bit surprising to find an ‘Arab Tech’ beauty parlor. Passed by good old Ajanta movie theater whose signboard today announces itself as a .com!
Right outside the Ganapati temple, there is a huge billboard for Fineform bra. Perhaps to test the celibate nature of Ganapati himself.
11 coconuts were bought outside the temple for Rs 110. While leaving the footwear outside, Amma advised me to put the left and right ones far away from each other to prevent stealing. I had forgotten these simple tricks. May be I was distracted by the Fineform bras.
I broke 5 coconuts. Amma went into the temple where some harvest related festival was going on. I waited outside.
Across from the temple is ‘Putharikandam’ grounds. Literally the name means ‘new rice field’. In the last couple of days, newspapers have been reporting the mini-harvesting that has been going on there sponsored by the local politicians, mayor and ministers. Apparently the first harvest from this field is offered to Padmanabhaswamy temple. I hadn’t heard of this tradition before. I guess now that Padmanabhaswamy is wealthy it makes sense that he gets some respect.
In the makeshift coconut stall outside hung the framed photo of some obscure guru. He looked certainly psychotic to me. The line between divinity and madness is invisible. Smashing coconuts is fun.
We decided to walk over to the street in front of Padmanabhaswamy temple since we had come that far. It took us through the bus station which was already bustling with activity. Students with backpacks, vegetable sellers boarding with spinach bundles, newspaper and magazine sellers.
A quick glance at the magazine stall while passing by. The word ‘arogyam’ (health) jumped out from the titles. Every publishing house now has a health magazine. Urine stink pierced the nose right next to the stall.
The white gopuram (tower) of Padmanabhaswamy temple glistened in the 6am sun. So did the golden letters of the massive jewelry store at the entrance of the street. A bunch of stray dogs were sharing tips before the morning scavenging. A bunch of men sat around under a flagpole loudly discussing their drinking achievements of the previous night.
Plastic and other refuse clog the edges of the temple pond. Amma was quick to blame the Ayyappa devotees from the other states for this sorry state of affairs. Half of whatever Amma says is hyperbole. Quarter of the remaining is stereotyping.
The huge peepal tree near the pond now competes with some taller buildings for the sun. Couple of decades ago whenever we would go there, Achchan (father) used to show me the bats hanging like orange breasted black fruits from the branches. Massive numbers then. There wasn’t a single one today.
We decided to take the bus back home. We asked for two tickets worth ten rupees. The bus conductor took the money and promptly issued one ticket. That is five bucks in his pocket in the first trip itself. May be he is a communist rebelling against his bourgeois bus owner-employer.
We changed our plans to head home and got off two stops down to visit our old house. My cousin stays there with his family and runs his small business. The road here has unrecognizably changed. Huge buildings on all sides. Premiere stationary store from where I used by scented erasers and four-line notebooks has now become Premiere towers. The new showroom of Jayalakshmi Silks stood ready like the brides it is meant to attract for its noon time today by the Travancore king, Uthradam Thirunaal. Ever since the temple treasure was discovered, he has also found new respect in the state.
Cousin had gone for his morning walk. His wife and sleepy kids were around. In my memory, this small old house is rather scaled up. May be it is because I was much smaller when I played around here. Perhaps childhood memories are elaborately detailed. The distance from the gate to the steps is hardly 4 feet. In my memory, it was a lavish playground. The coconut tree has been cut down. There are banana plants. Two of them had recently fruited. Variety of bananas. Different shapes, different sizes, different colors, different tastes. A diversity that Gautemalan exporters have denied the American population.
Quick chat with cousin after he returned. Most productive discussion I have had after landing. Some business activities in the pipeline after sister’s wedding. Chitchat crossed into all other in vogue topics with temple treasure topping the list. Amma said something about ‘cosmic energy’. I winced. Cousin noticed. Took an autorickshaw back home because Amma had to go to work today.
Spent some time with newspapers. Friday review section talked about some new releases. There was an article on Veena Seshanna, court musician of Mysore who died around a hundred years ago. It is a pity that sound recording technology came later. Indian maestros of centuries will never be heard again. Mathrubhumi paper says that a movie called ‘Cowboys and Others’ has come to town. I don’t think Jon Favreu will approve this disdain!
8am: breakfast. ‘idiyappam’ and egg curry which is standard fare. Rema aunty brought over something called ‘Karkidaka kanji’. It is a gruel that is traditionally prepared in the month of Karkidakam, the final month of the Malayalam calendar. It has rice, oats, grams, coconut and some ayurvedic concoction added to it. Distinct taste with added flavor of the knowledge that it is meant to be healthy. All food has become brain food.
On her way to work, Amma dropped me at the Logtech shop where cousin had told me that I could find converters and surge protectors for all the American electronics that had accompanied me this trip.
The shop was open but staff weren’t in. “Everyone left late yesterday,” the man at the front counter explained. “What time will you open?” “9:45-10:00”. Business establishment freed from the tyranny of the clock. What stress?!
That gave me an hour. I walked down the road which leads up to the Central Public Library. The repaving and tarring of the road over the years has raised it, sending the hotels on the roadside below road level. ‘Hariharasuthavilasom hotel & tea shop’ had only its unforgettable nameboard and roof above the road.
In a Maruti car parked on the road side, a gentleman was trying to impress the lady in the driver’s seat. I don’t blame him. She was pretty. Parked cars are the Friday night pubs, I guess. Early man catches the birds.
Nobody had prepared me for the delightful sight on the street leading from Bishop Perriera hall to the public library. It is lined with 23 numbered make-shift stalls that sell pirated books. Only a couple was open at that time. Stopped by at stall number 10. J.K.Rowling would go into a coma if she sees the cover art of these Harry Potters! Huge stacks of engineering and medical textbooks. The entire left side dedicated to software guides.
The owner of this business concern, Saji, was interested in making his first sale of the day to me. He asked a hundred rupees ($2.5) for Will Durant’s The Story of Philosophy. “Look at the original price,” he said. The reproducers had faithfully copied the $7.99 price in the back cover.
“Only because it is pirated, we are selling it this cheap.” I liked the pirate himself using the word piracy.
“Are these stalls permanent?” I asked already dreaming up the prospect of cheaply restacking a personal library.
“As long as there is no road widening project,” Saji is a realist. Bought the book for Rs 90 and headed over to the library.
The massive banyan tree at the left gate of public library is still there. Took a photo. Went into the library. There have been some rearrangements. Self checkout kiosks and a browsing room. The huge reference section has disappeared. Will revisit soon to find where it has gone. Few people were scavenging for magazines in different states of abuse lying on a big table in the periodicals section. The librarian ‘on-duty’ was assisting two ladies with their new membership.
For those who love smell of old books and silence, this is the place to be. While walking back from the library stopped by to ask Saji the prices of couple of other books. Will pick them up in the coming days. One on ‘Vadakanpaattu kathakal”, the Kerala martial arts folk tales, will be a good project for translation. Took a photo of the book shacks. The photos need to wait for resizing before upload using the slower internet connection.
9:45 back at Logtech. Slightly improved employee presence. Asked for the converter. “Not sure, might have one in the store, need to wait for another staff member, it will be Rs 650.” Sat on the cushioned sofa to wait.
The store had the hemispherical security camera attached to the ceiling. I think its cctv is exclusively capturing the grand life of a spider who has built his web around it. Nat Geo channel should get the rights.
Life size cut out of Kareena Kapoor advertising Sona Vaio. I can understand her selling soaps and cosmetics. But this made no sense. “More colors and more style” was the tagline. Nothing to do with what a computer is supposed to do. May be Apple should ask Angelina Jolie to walk around in a flowing gown with wind swept hair to sell more iPads?
Anticipated staff member arrived by the time I started reading the first chapter of Durant’s book. He took me downstairs to the store room. Another waiting sofa there while he fetched the key. Lots of display monitors and desktop towers lying around.
With the key, he mouthed a silent prayer before unlocking the store room. No coconuts were broken. The surge protector cost Rs.400.
“Can I bring it back if it doesn’t work?”
“No.”
I walked the kilometer and half back home. There is newly paved footpath which was unusable only for a few meters where a tree had been cut down. Trees and lamp posts are intermittently present through out the footpath. In some places it is narrow enough to prevent obese folks from passing through. I use ‘folks’ in the American sense.
Caught myself smiling and nodding with hellos to fellow footpathers. Their return stares questioned my sanity. Put on the sunglasses and continued the rest of the walk with the grim expression of my fellow citizens. I am adapting.
Stopped by to admire the new bust of genius poet and lyricist, Vayalar Ramavarma, at the Keltron junction. There was a ‘Furniture exhibition cum sale’ going on nearby. Reminded me of the stain detector UV lights used on beds in CSI shows. Made sure the smile didn’t come back on.
Kerala Financial Corporation has a huge billboard outside its office announcing its services. Moderately successful actor Vineeth models for it. I don’t think he had a well-managed career at all. May be this is a kind of truthful advertising.
Weight restrictions on the flight baggage meant I traveled without shaving cream. Went to Spencer grocer shop to buy. Security guard gave me a token for depositing the book and converter. Luckily he didn’t ask me to remove footwear. Needed assistance to find the shaving cream shelf.
In the 90s, there was a TV ad of a young man stuttering and mumbling in a medical shop while a confident model with better hair strides past him to ask, “Moods, please!”. It was revolutionary condom ad. At the check out counter in Spencer noticed that condoms are kept in the same shelves right before checkout which are usually reserved for chewing gum in America. I don’t know if this reflects the casual attitude towards sex or concern towards the overpopulation. Either way Kamasutra, Durex and Moods rub shoulders with altoids and gum here.
By 11 am, Amma came back home because the cable tv installers were coming and needed to see her proof of identification. The dudes showed up promptly and declared that the house needs to be rewired. Amma panicked and started producing copious amounts of documents to prove that we had Asianet connection years ago.
“What you have is a lower size cable, if we connect it, your picture will freeze often.” Size being bandwidth. New, bigger size cable was pulled. Cisco set top box installed. Amma left. I decided to check out the channels.
Numbers from 100 to 175 have Malayalam channels. 200-299 are reserved for Tamil, Kannada, Telugu. 300-399 sports. 400-499 Hindi soaps, 500-599 Hindi music and movies, 600-699 Bhakti crap, 700-799 phoren channels, 800-999 handful of tellyshopping ones. The remote control is non-ergonomically designed. But it thus acts as a successful deterrent against channel surfing increasing eyeball time for ads, I suppose.
Haven’t watched a lot of Hindi songs lately. Actresses are clad much more skimpily. There must be plenty of leg show and cleavage. I can only assume because more than half of any frame shown is covered by ads, textual and animated. Cleavages and legs hide behind bouncing MDH masala packets and swirling cartoon shampoo bottles or a message from a Vipin telling a Sajini that he loves her!
Since Amma was at work, lunch was at Rema aunty’s. Tapioca and fish curry: that great Kerala staple. Then there was Karimeen fry. I hadn’t expected to encounter the big K of the fish world this early in my trip. There was ‘mathanga erissery’ (pumpkin), keera thoran (red spinach) and vendakka mezhukupuratti (okra). Scrumptious lunch.
I have been trying to read A.K.Ramanujan’s translation of U.R.Ananthamurthy’s Samskara since yesterday, but the lunch put me to sleep. I guess I can blame jet lag for couple of more days.
Woke up when my “professor” uncle came visiting in the evening. He was strict taskmaster years ago. In our schooldays, we used to be terrified of his visits. He retired as head of department of English at the Women’s College here and now runs an IAS training academy. He has mellowed over the years and we actually have friendly, humorous conversations these days. He had visited USA back in 2008 when recession was still a recession and not the ‘new normal”. Interesting conversation on immigration, diversity, capitalism and Nassim Taleb’s Black Swan.
He got a phone call from the editor of ‘Thozhil Vaartha’ (Job News) periodical for which he writes a column on English grammar. He writes in English. They translate and send it to him for approval before publishing. He borrowed Amma’s laptop, logged into his Gmail, pulled up the article on Google docs, went over it on the phone and approved. Business at the speed of thought.
Rema Aunty’s helpful driver Ravi stopped by in the evening. Amma offered him some chocolates. He ate one and saved three for his kids. When K. Karunakaran, Sonia Gandhi, other politicians and filmstars act the same way, we disapprove. Why shouldn’t they save more for their children?!
Amma watched some TV serials and singing competitions. Even if our TV is muted, we won’t miss a thing thanks to the neighbors. I decided to take another shower when power went off. Flashlight, candles, matches, candle stand were ready. As I headed to the bathroom for an unromantic non-aromatic candle light bath, power came back on.
Tapioca and fish are still being processed in my system, so dinner was restricted to three home-grown bananas.
Rain played truant today too. Tomorrow is one year death anniversary of Kunjumol Aunty who was the neighbor across the street. Her husband, Varkichen uncle, a humorous, helpful, friendly and enterprising man who had retired as Assistant Postmaster General died a few years ago. All three of their daughters and grandkids have come for the anniversary. A shamiana was put up today morning. The second daughter, Shirley chechi made the customary statement about my wedding. So that is two in two days as I am keeping track.
The next shamiana to go up in this neighborhood will be for my sister’s wedding. After the prayer ceremony and breakfast tomorrow, we will head out to our native villages to do the wedding invitations.
I have seen glimpses of what has happened to the city in seven years, will the villages recognize me?!
I was up by 4:30 this morning. Jet lag is wearing off slowly. Amma was up too and casually asked me if I would like to go to the temple. There is only one answer when moms use that tone. I was showered and dressed by 5am.
We walked to the nearby Aalthara Devi temple. While climbing up the steep slope of our lane, Amma asked me to slow down. “I climb this slowly,” she said. Simple statement had quite an impact on me. She has aged. I hadn’t realized.
The Aalthara temple used to be a small one last time I was here. The name Althara means the floor of the Aal i.e. banyan tree. It used to be simple idols of the Goddess, a yakshi, in duplicate, one facing the road for the busy folks passing by and one inside for those inclined to really get into the rituals. There is always a crowd outside. The goddess is flanked by a Shiva linga and a Ganesh. Inside there is a small area for Nagar, the snake gods.
Nowadays there are two priests constantly attending to the street-facing idol alone. They periodically remove the huge amounts of floral petals that cover the floor in front of the idol and pass it on to a lady outside who carries it off in a wicker basket. Remarkably efficient, brisk process and it is only 5am.
Devotees can make fire cracker offering. I was jolted the first time I heard one. It is loud enough to grab the divine’s attention. The gods, I assume, are clinically deaf like most Indians. It must be the relentless assault from the traffic. I am asked frequently to speak louder here.
This small temple reflects the economic growth around. It now has a full-fledged auditorium and a bus.
From this temple, we took an autorickshaw to the largest Ganapati temple in the city at Pazhavangadi near East Fort. For those not familiar with Thiruvananthapuram, this Ganapati temple is few hundred meters away from the now international renowned Padmanabhaswamy temple.
Amma had promised 11 coconuts to the Ganapati if all the furniture she had moved from Kochi to Thiruvanathapuram came over without damage. Hinduism is the perfect capitalist religion. The gods come with rate charts but are negotiable according to the devotee’s financial capacity.
The auto ride early morning was fun. City was waking up. Lot more cyclists than other vehicles. Brand new multi-storey office and apartment buildings in their morning glory. Plenty of offices have ‘net’ and ‘tech’ suffixed to their names. But it was a bit surprising to find an ‘Arab Tech’ beauty parlor. Passed by good old Ajanta movie theater whose signboard today announces itself as a .com!
Right outside the Ganapati temple, there is a huge billboard for Fineform bra. Perhaps to test the celibate nature of Ganapati himself.
11 coconuts were bought outside the temple for Rs 110. While leaving the footwear outside, Amma advised me to put the left and right ones far away from each other to prevent stealing. I had forgotten these simple tricks. May be I was distracted by the Fineform bras.
I broke 5 coconuts. Amma went into the temple where some harvest related festival was going on. I waited outside.
Across from the temple is ‘Putharikandam’ grounds. Literally the name means ‘new rice field’. In the last couple of days, newspapers have been reporting the mini-harvesting that has been going on there sponsored by the local politicians, mayor and ministers. Apparently the first harvest from this field is offered to Padmanabhaswamy temple. I hadn’t heard of this tradition before. I guess now that Padmanabhaswamy is wealthy it makes sense that he gets some respect.
In the makeshift coconut stall outside hung the framed photo of some obscure guru. He looked certainly psychotic to me. The line between divinity and madness is invisible. Smashing coconuts is fun.
We decided to walk over to the street in front of Padmanabhaswamy temple since we had come that far. It took us through the bus station which was already bustling with activity. Students with backpacks, vegetable sellers boarding with spinach bundles, newspaper and magazine sellers.
A quick glance at the magazine stall while passing by. The word ‘arogyam’ (health) jumped out from the titles. Every publishing house now has a health magazine. Urine stink pierced the nose right next to the stall.
Plastic and other refuse clog the edges of the temple pond. Amma was quick to blame the Ayyappa devotees from the other states for this sorry state of affairs. Half of whatever Amma says is hyperbole. Quarter of the remaining is stereotyping.
The huge peepal tree near the pond now competes with some taller buildings for the sun. Couple of decades ago whenever we would go there, Achchan (father) used to show me the bats hanging like orange breasted black fruits from the branches. Massive numbers then. There wasn’t a single one today.
We decided to take the bus back home. We asked for two tickets worth ten rupees. The bus conductor took the money and promptly issued one ticket. That is five bucks in his pocket in the first trip itself. May be he is a communist rebelling against his bourgeois bus owner-employer.
We changed our plans to head home and got off two stops down to visit our old house. My cousin stays there with his family and runs his small business. The road here has unrecognizably changed. Huge buildings on all sides. Premiere stationary store from where I used by scented erasers and four-line notebooks has now become Premiere towers. The new showroom of Jayalakshmi Silks stood ready like the brides it is meant to attract for its noon time today by the Travancore king, Uthradam Thirunaal. Ever since the temple treasure was discovered, he has also found new respect in the state.
Cousin had gone for his morning walk. His wife and sleepy kids were around. In my memory, this small old house is rather scaled up. May be it is because I was much smaller when I played around here. Perhaps childhood memories are elaborately detailed. The distance from the gate to the steps is hardly 4 feet. In my memory, it was a lavish playground. The coconut tree has been cut down. There are banana plants. Two of them had recently fruited. Variety of bananas. Different shapes, different sizes, different colors, different tastes. A diversity that Gautemalan exporters have denied the American population.
Quick chat with cousin after he returned. Most productive discussion I have had after landing. Some business activities in the pipeline after sister’s wedding. Chitchat crossed into all other in vogue topics with temple treasure topping the list. Amma said something about ‘cosmic energy’. I winced. Cousin noticed. Took an autorickshaw back home because Amma had to go to work today.
Spent some time with newspapers. Friday review section talked about some new releases. There was an article on Veena Seshanna, court musician of Mysore who died around a hundred years ago. It is a pity that sound recording technology came later. Indian maestros of centuries will never be heard again. Mathrubhumi paper says that a movie called ‘Cowboys and Others’ has come to town. I don’t think Jon Favreu will approve this disdain!
8am: breakfast. ‘idiyappam’ and egg curry which is standard fare. Rema aunty brought over something called ‘Karkidaka kanji’. It is a gruel that is traditionally prepared in the month of Karkidakam, the final month of the Malayalam calendar. It has rice, oats, grams, coconut and some ayurvedic concoction added to it. Distinct taste with added flavor of the knowledge that it is meant to be healthy. All food has become brain food.
On her way to work, Amma dropped me at the Logtech shop where cousin had told me that I could find converters and surge protectors for all the American electronics that had accompanied me this trip.
The shop was open but staff weren’t in. “Everyone left late yesterday,” the man at the front counter explained. “What time will you open?” “9:45-10:00”. Business establishment freed from the tyranny of the clock. What stress?!
That gave me an hour. I walked down the road which leads up to the Central Public Library. The repaving and tarring of the road over the years has raised it, sending the hotels on the roadside below road level. ‘Hariharasuthavilasom hotel & tea shop’ had only its unforgettable nameboard and roof above the road.
In a Maruti car parked on the road side, a gentleman was trying to impress the lady in the driver’s seat. I don’t blame him. She was pretty. Parked cars are the Friday night pubs, I guess. Early man catches the birds.
 |
| Rows of second hand and pirated book sellers outside the Public Library |
The owner of this business concern, Saji, was interested in making his first sale of the day to me. He asked a hundred rupees ($2.5) for Will Durant’s The Story of Philosophy. “Look at the original price,” he said. The reproducers had faithfully copied the $7.99 price in the back cover.
“Only because it is pirated, we are selling it this cheap.” I liked the pirate himself using the word piracy.
“Are these stalls permanent?” I asked already dreaming up the prospect of cheaply restacking a personal library.
“As long as there is no road widening project,” Saji is a realist. Bought the book for Rs 90 and headed over to the library.
For those who love smell of old books and silence, this is the place to be. While walking back from the library stopped by to ask Saji the prices of couple of other books. Will pick them up in the coming days. One on ‘Vadakanpaattu kathakal”, the Kerala martial arts folk tales, will be a good project for translation. Took a photo of the book shacks. The photos need to wait for resizing before upload using the slower internet connection.
9:45 back at Logtech. Slightly improved employee presence. Asked for the converter. “Not sure, might have one in the store, need to wait for another staff member, it will be Rs 650.” Sat on the cushioned sofa to wait.
The store had the hemispherical security camera attached to the ceiling. I think its cctv is exclusively capturing the grand life of a spider who has built his web around it. Nat Geo channel should get the rights.
Life size cut out of Kareena Kapoor advertising Sona Vaio. I can understand her selling soaps and cosmetics. But this made no sense. “More colors and more style” was the tagline. Nothing to do with what a computer is supposed to do. May be Apple should ask Angelina Jolie to walk around in a flowing gown with wind swept hair to sell more iPads?
Anticipated staff member arrived by the time I started reading the first chapter of Durant’s book. He took me downstairs to the store room. Another waiting sofa there while he fetched the key. Lots of display monitors and desktop towers lying around.
With the key, he mouthed a silent prayer before unlocking the store room. No coconuts were broken. The surge protector cost Rs.400.
“Can I bring it back if it doesn’t work?”
“No.”
I walked the kilometer and half back home. There is newly paved footpath which was unusable only for a few meters where a tree had been cut down. Trees and lamp posts are intermittently present through out the footpath. In some places it is narrow enough to prevent obese folks from passing through. I use ‘folks’ in the American sense.
Caught myself smiling and nodding with hellos to fellow footpathers. Their return stares questioned my sanity. Put on the sunglasses and continued the rest of the walk with the grim expression of my fellow citizens. I am adapting.
Stopped by to admire the new bust of genius poet and lyricist, Vayalar Ramavarma, at the Keltron junction. There was a ‘Furniture exhibition cum sale’ going on nearby. Reminded me of the stain detector UV lights used on beds in CSI shows. Made sure the smile didn’t come back on.
Kerala Financial Corporation has a huge billboard outside its office announcing its services. Moderately successful actor Vineeth models for it. I don’t think he had a well-managed career at all. May be this is a kind of truthful advertising.
Weight restrictions on the flight baggage meant I traveled without shaving cream. Went to Spencer grocer shop to buy. Security guard gave me a token for depositing the book and converter. Luckily he didn’t ask me to remove footwear. Needed assistance to find the shaving cream shelf.
In the 90s, there was a TV ad of a young man stuttering and mumbling in a medical shop while a confident model with better hair strides past him to ask, “Moods, please!”. It was revolutionary condom ad. At the check out counter in Spencer noticed that condoms are kept in the same shelves right before checkout which are usually reserved for chewing gum in America. I don’t know if this reflects the casual attitude towards sex or concern towards the overpopulation. Either way Kamasutra, Durex and Moods rub shoulders with altoids and gum here.
By 11 am, Amma came back home because the cable tv installers were coming and needed to see her proof of identification. The dudes showed up promptly and declared that the house needs to be rewired. Amma panicked and started producing copious amounts of documents to prove that we had Asianet connection years ago.
“What you have is a lower size cable, if we connect it, your picture will freeze often.” Size being bandwidth. New, bigger size cable was pulled. Cisco set top box installed. Amma left. I decided to check out the channels.
Numbers from 100 to 175 have Malayalam channels. 200-299 are reserved for Tamil, Kannada, Telugu. 300-399 sports. 400-499 Hindi soaps, 500-599 Hindi music and movies, 600-699 Bhakti crap, 700-799 phoren channels, 800-999 handful of tellyshopping ones. The remote control is non-ergonomically designed. But it thus acts as a successful deterrent against channel surfing increasing eyeball time for ads, I suppose.
Haven’t watched a lot of Hindi songs lately. Actresses are clad much more skimpily. There must be plenty of leg show and cleavage. I can only assume because more than half of any frame shown is covered by ads, textual and animated. Cleavages and legs hide behind bouncing MDH masala packets and swirling cartoon shampoo bottles or a message from a Vipin telling a Sajini that he loves her!
Since Amma was at work, lunch was at Rema aunty’s. Tapioca and fish curry: that great Kerala staple. Then there was Karimeen fry. I hadn’t expected to encounter the big K of the fish world this early in my trip. There was ‘mathanga erissery’ (pumpkin), keera thoran (red spinach) and vendakka mezhukupuratti (okra). Scrumptious lunch.
I have been trying to read A.K.Ramanujan’s translation of U.R.Ananthamurthy’s Samskara since yesterday, but the lunch put me to sleep. I guess I can blame jet lag for couple of more days.
Woke up when my “professor” uncle came visiting in the evening. He was strict taskmaster years ago. In our schooldays, we used to be terrified of his visits. He retired as head of department of English at the Women’s College here and now runs an IAS training academy. He has mellowed over the years and we actually have friendly, humorous conversations these days. He had visited USA back in 2008 when recession was still a recession and not the ‘new normal”. Interesting conversation on immigration, diversity, capitalism and Nassim Taleb’s Black Swan.
He got a phone call from the editor of ‘Thozhil Vaartha’ (Job News) periodical for which he writes a column on English grammar. He writes in English. They translate and send it to him for approval before publishing. He borrowed Amma’s laptop, logged into his Gmail, pulled up the article on Google docs, went over it on the phone and approved. Business at the speed of thought.
Rema Aunty’s helpful driver Ravi stopped by in the evening. Amma offered him some chocolates. He ate one and saved three for his kids. When K. Karunakaran, Sonia Gandhi, other politicians and filmstars act the same way, we disapprove. Why shouldn’t they save more for their children?!
Amma watched some TV serials and singing competitions. Even if our TV is muted, we won’t miss a thing thanks to the neighbors. I decided to take another shower when power went off. Flashlight, candles, matches, candle stand were ready. As I headed to the bathroom for an unromantic non-aromatic candle light bath, power came back on.
Tapioca and fish are still being processed in my system, so dinner was restricted to three home-grown bananas.
Rain played truant today too. Tomorrow is one year death anniversary of Kunjumol Aunty who was the neighbor across the street. Her husband, Varkichen uncle, a humorous, helpful, friendly and enterprising man who had retired as Assistant Postmaster General died a few years ago. All three of their daughters and grandkids have come for the anniversary. A shamiana was put up today morning. The second daughter, Shirley chechi made the customary statement about my wedding. So that is two in two days as I am keeping track.
The next shamiana to go up in this neighborhood will be for my sister’s wedding. After the prayer ceremony and breakfast tomorrow, we will head out to our native villages to do the wedding invitations.
I have seen glimpses of what has happened to the city in seven years, will the villages recognize me?!
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