The Grand Entrance (BH:D18)

August 21,2011

Youngest uncle visited yesterday evening. He comes frequently, stopping by on his way back from evening walks at Thiruvananthapuram Museum campus. Being the youngest uncle, he relates best to our generation of cousins. Decades ago, for his graduate studies and while job hunting, he had stayed with us in our old house. 

Achan was obsessed with grinding the batter for today's 'appam' breakfast so he stayed in the kitchen. This meant I could have a long one-on-one with the uncle. He talked about the tuition and coaching hassles he had to go through for his daughter. I will try to recollect here the jist of his narration because it is a classic example of what an average middle class parent goes through when it comes to the entrance exam:

"When she started 11th, because the IIT-JEE coaching center was near by, I took her there. I thought training for the JEE will automatically get her ready for the state-level entrance exam. She thought so too!

The fee was 1.2 lakhs for two years. Her maternal grandfather sponsored the first instalment of 22,000. Within a month and a half, she gave up! Only the kids from ICSE system were able to cope. She couldn't face me, so she introduced the matter to her maternal grandmother. Finally we agreed to forego that money. I ran around to find her new coaching centers specialized for state entrance. By that time, most of the centers were overbooked. Used some influence and name-dropping to get her seats. 

The three tuition centers for mathematic, physics and chemistry was on 3 corners of the city. Daily 2 liters petrol consumption!! The chemistry class was at 5:30 am which meant she had to get up at 4:30. I also had to get up at 4:30. I didnt get up at 4:30 even when I was studying! So I told her it wont work and she needs to find an evening session. Also 4:30 wake up meant she was sleeping by 7pm. Somehow she managed to change all the classes to the evenings and weekends. 

Things were starting to look ok when the state government changed policy. 12th grade public exam marks were also going to be counted in addition to the entrance exam score. This caused all the ISC, CBSE parents to panic because state system students get marks freely. Even if they scribble 1 or 4 or any number or 'a number' to a question whose answer is 14 in a mathematics exam, they get full marks. Three years ago there was a student who got 100% in every single subject in the state board 12th grade exam. That girl couldn't make it into the top 5000 kids who cleared the entrance exam. Shows you the difference in quality.

In between, we had to switch to a new tuition center which will focus on CBSE course chemistry as well and not just the MCQs of entrance exam. This new tuition guy was initially pissed off because she had gone elsewhere first. We had to pay the full year's fee and got her admitted. Anyways, after all this I am relieved that I don't have to shell out more lakhs of rupees to secure her an engineering seat now. People are making their kids write two and three times to get a good rank. The money, the time, the effort...its superhuman!"

The change in government policy came about because the 12th grade syllabus tuition and coaching centers flexed their money muscle against the entrance exam coaching centers. Decades ago the high court had ruled that the school marks should not be considered and only entrance exam should be. So currently all admissions are stayed by the court. It looks like the entrance coaching mafia will win soon.

Uncle also had priceless information about the lives of my maternal cousins. There are 22 of them. That is a sample size big enough to accommodate a handful of conservatives as well as ultra liberals. It looks like there are one or two of tea party members also in this cousin gang. In them, the older generation trusts to carry forward the family name despite the despicable liberal cousins trying to ruin it with their chatting and dating and love affairs and divorces! 

I have been absent from the radar so far but now I am back in the cross hairs of judgemental labeling. No doubt, I will be categorized soon.

I Vicks vaporubbed myself to sleep! Woke around around 4am realizing that the vaporubbing had managed to arrest the phlegm situation. No progress but no further damage. Sleep was gone so continued the reading of the Mahabharatha. 

The story of Aruna, the charioteer of the sun-god Surya, comes quite early in the epic. Let us start the story from a name which almost everyone can recognize: Shiva. His wife is Parvati. She is the daughter of Daksha. This Daksha had two sisters: Kadru and Vinathi. They marry sage Kashyapa. Kadru asks for a 1000 powerful sons. Vinathi asks for two sons more powerful than those 1000 sons. Kashyapa gives Kadru a 1000 eggs and Vinathi two eggs. After 500 years, Kadru's eggs hatch and snakes come out. Vinathi grows impatient and breaks open one egg. A half formed god comes out: Aruna!

He chides his mother for her impatience, warns her not to break the other egg which needs another 500 years and then goes of to fulfill his destiny as charioteer to the sun god. He had to become the charioteer of the sun god because the sun was causing global warming. You see when the elixir was churned out of the ocean and the Devas were drinking it, one Asura called Rahu disguised as a Deva and drank some. But sun and moon call him out and before the elixir can get down his throat, Vishnu beheads him. This immortal head of Rahu lives in the heavens taking revenge on the sun and the moon by swallowing them during eclipses. Sun is pissed off at the Devas that they are not saving him from this periodic consumption by Rahu. So he creates global warming by standing still. Here Aruna comes to the rescue by becoming the charioteer and restoring Surya's regular journeys.

There is a magnificent portraiture of Garuda who is born of the other egg of Vinatha. Garuda agrees to bring elixir to his snake cousins so that they will free Vinatha from slavery. On his way to get it, Garuda picks an elephant with one talon and a tortoise with another. Since this is an epic, these animals are epic sized. Then on his beak he has to carry the broken branch of a massive tree from which some miniature sages are hanging upside down. Searching online, I could find only one painting of this glorious image and it is in what appears to be a Persian manuscript. I discussed with Achan if we can get such a painting, may be a mural, done. It is because he does "dayanam" (flying) with such a "guru" (large) load that he gets the name Garuda!

Garuda tricks his snake cousins by asking them to bathe and cleanse themselves before dining on the pot of elixir he had kept on a bed of 'darbha' grass. While the snakes go bathing after releasing Garuda's mom from slavery, Indra (king of gods and general asshole) takes the elixir pot and runs away. The snakes come back to realize that they had been cheated. They lick the grass hoping for some traces of elixir. But the sharp grass cuts their tongues into two. This is how snakes got their forked tongues. It's all true! And nowadays they lay eggs from which lizards, cockroaches, millipedes, chameleons etc hatch :-)

Mahabharatha, like most other religious texts, was composed over a long period of time (4th cent BC to 4th cent AD) with additions made along the way reflecting the changing social set up. In the Garuda episode, his mother asks him to feed on the "Nishadas" if he gets hungry. Then out of the blue, a few lines appear, warning against killing Brahmins. "Even if they get angry and violent, Brahmins must not be killed because they are equivalent to the sun and the moon and the Devas!" Discovering such abrupt, desparate, obvious insertions adds to the entertainment value of the rich epic.

Venu 'chettan' and couple of helpers came with a carrier autorickshaw to transport the extra furniture and other stuff that had come here from Chennai and Kochi. The owner-driver of the carrier-rickshaw was called "Pattalam"(military). He has a thick brush mustache which made it difficult for words to come out of his mouth. As his nickname suggests, he is an ex-military man who had worked in the Avadi tank factory. He displayed his credentials by making some cool military knots to tie up all the furniture onto the rickshaw. The old dressing table suffered minor injuries during the loading process. As if crying, it opened its drawers spilling numerous relics from the past: combs, old mosquito repellent Good Knight system, moisturizer, hair dye, safety pins, hair pins! The fully loaded vehicle pulled out of the drive way by 7am.

My oldest cousin visited this morning. He had dropped of his daughter for 'entrance coaching' and had an hour to spare before picking her up. Our family tree grotesquely branches in places with youngest uncle being only as old as oldest cousins. This particular entrance coach is known for using good old physical punishments like cheek (of the face) and ear pinching. "Some of these indisciplined kids need such treatment," the cousin reasoned. "Will your daughter be trying for JEE of the IITs?" 

"No, no! Girls can learn only what they are taught. It is beyond them to put in any extra effort by themselves!" 

I head-bobbed!

As part of the unpacking and rearranging process, two armoires exchanged places in the house. The metallic one with internal cabinets came downstairs to the main bedroom as if an extra pair of locks would protect against burglary. An old wooden armoire was promoted upstairs. After the relocation, we had to refill them with their original contents. Achan and I had to wade through a deluge of blouses: puff, embroidered, silk, cotton, gold-laced, back open, front open, side open, split wide open, eyes wide shut....all 'matching' for sarees, all kinds of fashion! Amma can match the other Amma of Tamil Nadu when it comes to blouses!

I was very happy to find an antique box full of old comic books (Amar Chitra Katha) and newspaper cuttings that Achan had collected. Moved them from the box to the book shelves. Looking forward to reading them all again soon. Like Amma, Achan also wanted to watch some Malayalam movie online. As expected, he started dozing off twenty minutes into the film. 

The house neighboring ours on the backside has closed of its terrace with wire mesh and roofed it with corrugated steel. A young crow was trapped inside it this morning. Few other crows were showing it the way out by repeatedly coming in through the wider opening between the roof and the mesh and going out. The young crow kept latching to the wire mesh and then would fly forcefully to the other end to hit the mesh again. The commotion caught the interest of the neighborhood cats. I watched the crow struggle for a while and went to shower hoping it will have the good sense to imitate the its crow gurus. 

When I came back after showering, the crow and the cats were gone. I was reminded of a story told by Shams of Tabriz about a prisoner who was banging his head against the wall, digging the floor and trying to bend the window dividers till he was told that all the while the door had been open!