October 2, 2011
How many beauty parlors on the 1 km road between Vellayambalam and Sasthamangalam?
Ans: At least 6.
I think these esteemed offices must be commended for the invisible social change they are bringing about. Though I don't see any change, I am sure it is brewing like a black swan in the underground and one fine day, my morning walk will be dazzled by constant bumping into beautiful people. As of now, it is Karthika Nair's posters from the movie, Makaramanju, on the life of painter, Raja Ravi Varma, that shoulder the beauty responsibility.
While in College Station, usually on weekends, I would walk the 3 miles to Chalam's home. There is a community called Edelweiss Gardens on the way. So I was pleasantly surprised to find Edelweiss on a signboard while walking back from Sasthamangalam this morning. This was an investment service on the third floor of a building.
My neighbor's nephew dropped by a for a few minutes. The poor dude was enduring his second trip to Kerala in the 23 years of his life which was spent from birth in a small city, 40 miles south of Atlanta, Georgia. He was waiting on his residency calls after finishing medical school in New Jersey. His family had been to Delhi and Bangalore during this visit to India which is going to last till Oct 18. With a recovering tummy after an unfortunate dinner at a north Indian restuarant in Bangalore, he was clearly not in great spirits.
"I think I overate," he confessed, "but it is difficult not to do so if one has a sweet tooth. But still I have lost two kilos after coming to India." I was surprised that he used SI units. "Mysorepak is my favorite. It is pure ghee and sugar...but irrestitible" I wondered if being in India led him to consider himself overweight.
He hardly knew any Malayalam. "There are hardly any Malayalees in our town. Only Punjabis and Patels."
I tried to hook him onto some topic: football, baseball, Obama, tourism! Nothing worked. Finally, he smiled when asked about the traffic in Kerala."No disrespect, " he said throwing a glance at Achan, "but driving here is dangerous!" His parents are taking him on a pilgrimage of all the major temples in Kerala. His sister has done her masters in linguistics and was working on contract in Saudi Arabia. She would have had some interesting stories to tell.
Since it was a Sunday, Amma decided to use the traditional fire stove for cooking tapioca and fish curry. We had enough leftovers from the cut coconut tree to act as fuel. The uneven nature of the flame and the earthern pots contributes a unique flavor to any curry that is made this way.
In the afternoon, my cousin came over. More progress on business plans. Some interesting discussions on the construction mafia in the city. The nexus between politicians and gangs. These gangs are called "quotation teams". You can call and get a quote from them like the American insurance companies. The quote can be for any service ranging from threatening someone, kidnapping, physical assault, breaking legs, demolitions, general unrest, traffic block, destruction of public property and all the way up to murder. Unemployment, alcoholism, addictions and youthful trend of Indian demographics have spurred the growth of such criminal underworld scum.
It was a great topic to discuss on the birthday of Mahatma Gandhi. One of the last books I issued from A&M Evans library was John Lelyveld's "Great Soul" which became notorious and got banned for the wrong reasons. The book is a great documentation of Gandhi's experiments with himself and the society and his construction of a persona that would stand the test of time as an icon. The unfortunate fallout of becoming iconic is that you mean different things to different people, sort of like the word, love. And with the passage of time, veneration and faith take over, squeezing out any meaningful association and learning...again like the word love. Hundreds of corrupt politicians paid homage to Gandhi today in different parts of the country. Fantastic Farce!
Spent a good chunk of the day catching up on recent episodes of QI. It was great to learn that best decision making is possible when one's bladder is bursting for a pee. This is possibly because the subconscious, the more powerful part of the mind, takes over from the conscious mind which is completely occupied with the peeing. So if you know you have an important decision to make 40 minutes from now, drink a couple of glasses of water now!
From QI, I learnt about the art and science of sexing chicks. In 1920s, when the technique was developed there was an overnight drop in the poultry prices. The Zen Nippon Sexing Chicken school continues to run a 2 year course training people to gather speeds of sorting upto 1200 chicks per hour.
I wish two punctuation marks that were in vogue in the 60s would make a come back: Interobang & sarcastrophe. Would be very convenient! I will drink some water and come back to edit after 40 minutes.
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