29 posts tagged “nostalgia”

Yesterday, after nearly three months of getting acquainted with the tip of the iceberg of "Naalaayira Divya Prabandam" set to music, I accompanied my Guru in a stage performance.  No matter that I only knew six of the twenty six paasurams she sang...still, a performance is a performance, what?

I started music lessons when I was in kindergarten.  The music class was held in a car-shed  that was generously donated by a gentleman who had sold his car.  The teacher, whose name I didn't know, was a thousand years old.  He wore the vibuthi pattai on his forehead and carried with him a silver box of beetel leaves and associated laagiris, that he would periodically stuff into his mouth.  I was the youngest of the herd and was never even given a passing glance.  Usually, by the time the sarali varisais were done, I would be fast asleep on the torn jamakkaalam, and my grandmother would carry me back home. 

Although 5 is too young an age to remember anything, I surprise myself by remembering interesting data from my first paatu class. For example, there were three sisters   - Kanaka, Durga and Malathi. Of which, Malathi, who was four years my senior was considered a protoge, since she could already sing gamakams and brihas.  I believe the old man had high hopes on this girl, but as of now, I don't know of a Malathi in the Indian Carnatic Music jungle. Perhaps she got married to an NRI and lives in Canada or Australia, with music long forgotten.  There was another much older "akka" called Uma, who asked the teacher to teach her something special to be sung to the bridegroom's party as they came to "see" her.  And the teacher taught her (and us in the process), "Kaamakshi, kaamakoti peeda vaasini" in Simmendhra madhyamam. I was in UKG then, but I remember that song today.  I don't remember where I put the shopping list an hour ago.

I stopped going to this class in a couple of years because much of my formative years were spent shuttling between Triplicane and T.Nagar.  During my tween years, we shifted permanently to T.Nagar, and that was when my music lessons took a more serious turn, and consequently became a chore for me.  That is probably why I am very wary about getting my kid to join a formal music class yet. Sri Vaidhyanathan, a strict task master, may his soul rest in peace, would teach me one-on-one in my blind grandfather's room - my grandfather loved music and was particularly thrilled to hear his only grand daughter sing.

Sri Vaidyanathan laid a heavy duty foundation and refused to let me proceed to songs until all sarali varisais, jantai varisais and 35 alankarams were hardwired into my system. I must have been one of the rare kids that even knew that there were 35, and not just seven, alankarams, let alone being able to sing all of them.  Considering what a dedicated teacher he was, and that I was blessed with a melodious voice, I could have enjoyed the process. However the enormous pressure from home to perform and the odd hours that the Guru would turn up - at 9 PM just when I would be nodding off - made me hate the whole concept of music class.  Peer pressure that my friends, who did not sing as well as I did, proceeded in their respective classes to ada-thaala-varnams and keerthanais, while I was still plodding along with jathiswarams and swarajathis demorlaized me.

And then my mother fell seriously ill.  I begged my folks to take me off the paatu class and given the stress everyone was under, it wasn't too hard to give in to me. Five years were spent struggling with an ailing mom, mourning her death and facing public exams that music was retreated into the dark recess of somewhere.

Once the dust of public exams settled, my mind slowly moved back to music. More to find solace from the wild, weird world of college I was thrown into. This time, I joined Sri B.V. Raman (may he R.I.P too), of the popular Raman-Lakshmanan duo.  I enjoyed three years of music lessons with him immensely.  I learned many many varnams and keerthanams, which, sadly, I did not write down because BVR believed that the moment you wrote down the songs, the compulsion to learn them by-heart is lost.  He may have been right, but two decades from then, I don't remember these songs, and I don't have them written down as well - double darn !

And then academics took over again. That was pretty much the end of formal structured music lessons. I did visit Sri BVR now and then when I returned home on holidays to brush up on music. I even gave radio performances on the youth section a few times.  But my own insincerety and laziness took me away from a natural talent.  My aversion to public display of myself was another reason.  People who heard me sing pressurized me to perform to a bigger audience, and although I did sing well, I didn't believe I had the skill to take my music to the next level.  Although these days I am beginning to doubt that since some so-called "popular" singers seem to have no more skill than I did at that point.  But then, no excuses for my own lack of sincerety of purpose.

Now my music is restricted to teaching a bunch of kids and more recently my Prabandam class.  Yesterday's performance made me realise something though.  I love to sing my daughter to sleep. I love teaching the neighbourhood kids.  I don't mind singing at someone's kolu. However, hand me a mike and a group of people watching my face, my voice gives up on me.  I am not sure if my Prabandam Guru would like agree to teach me if I say this, because she was banking on my vocal support to her programmes.  I find the spirituatlity of the whole thing lost when I "perform".

Such is my sound of music.

 

 

I got this as a mail forward, and am impressed at how true the points are w.r.t. me. All but point 21. I never watched movies, so I wouldn't know.  I also don't know who Salma Sultana was, but in my end of the country, Shobana Ravi wouldn't smile when the country was mourning.  But then, she never smiled.

 

It is amazing how many long-lost school friends have found me online.  A bit puzzling too; I'd most definitely wear branded sneakers and sprint to the next continent at the first instance of my name appearing in my radar - goes to prove that masochism is alive and kicking (pun unintended).  People-from-hoary-past fall into my trap ever so often, most probably regretting it for the rest of their lives, but Karma can be quite a bitch. 

A high school friend turned up on my linkedin.  A few emails later, she claims that I helped her with her Praveshika exam.  The instance eludes me, and is most probably a figment of her imagination, but I wouldn't admit it in public (or did I just?).  The fact was shoved to a corner of my ageing memory; I was pretty sure it would turn up unexpectadly, triggering a volley of verbal garbage, steeped in nostalgia.  But within two days?

On yesterday's lazy, cloudy, dull Sunday afternoon, I sat at the dining table, stirring a cup of Earl Gray admiring Douglas Adam's quote "I love deadlines. I like the whooshing sound they make as they fly by", with particular reference to three deadlines that are less than a fortnight away, and my adrenalin still on hold. The cling clang of the spoon on China stirred something inside me, besides the tea, and it did not take long to figure out that the sound brought back memories of my first "Hindi class".  (Digression for my Non-Indian readers - India is a country with many many spoken languages.  I speak Tamil.  Hindi is another important language, not "Hindu", which is a religion - I could be a millionaire for the cents/time I have been asked, while abroad, if I spoke "Hindu")

I grew up in the era when anti-Hindi sentiments in my State were subsiding, and people were cautiously dipping their feet into the pond of National heritage and such. The Hindi Prachar Sabha was at its heyday, with Hindi teachers at every street corner, enticing young boys and girls to learn the language. The teacher I chose, a septugenarian, deaf woman, lived a couple of streets away from my house.  My "Hindi class" was held in the veranda of her tiny house, in the corner of a huge land, filled with shrubs and thistles, in the middle of which was a beautiful temple for Panduranga, ala the temple of monkeys in Kipling's Jungle Book.  Every evening, as our "class" concluded at dusk, she would walk us through the snake-infested shrubbery to the temple for a prayer service to the beautiful Pandurangan,  during which, she would sprinkle water from a small brass tumbler with a brass spoon, which would make the same cling clang as my stainless spoon against China. 

I wrote my first two exams, Prathmik and Madhyama, ably guided by the old woman, whose name I did not know.  Then, she sold her property - house, temple, woods and all, and now a big apartment complex stands in the location, called, ironically, "Panduranga Apartments". 

By then, I was smitten by Hindi.  I joined another more formal "class" at Rajachar street, where a very ambitious Hindi teacher, had converted his entire house to a school, with black board on every room, students sitting on the floor, and the teacher, on a chair with a stool in front of him.  Mr. Srinivasan was an enthusiastic and enterprising man with a passion for the language, which made me hold on to the hobby, and finish the rest of the exams - Rashtrabhasha, Praveshika (the one S claims I helped her with), Visharad Purvardh, Visharad Uttharardh, Praveen Purvardh, and Praveen Utharard, within the next three years, all by the time I was 12.  I was proud of my achievement, and I remember it gave me a thril for a long time afterwards. 

I met Mr. Srinivasan again seven years ago, to invite him to my wedding, and was shocked at the a shadow of his old self he had become.  A spate of domestic problems, including the loss of his beloved wife, and financial woes had forced him to sell his house, where again, an apartment complex arose; he, confined to a small room in the complex, with a plethora of ailments and heartaches.  That was the last I saw of him, for I heard that soon after, he had died, more, I suspect, of a broken heart than anything else.

My Hindi dreams were not without their share of risks too.  The Indian television channel - Doordarshan, would air Hindi programs, mostly movies and soaps after dinner every day, and my family would sit around the idiot box, and ask me to translate the dialogs for them.  I remember watching episodes of Hum Log and Buniyaad, not understanding a word.  Spoken Hindi was not quite the same as the Rahim Dohas I knew by-heart.  But, can the world know of my ignorance? No. I'd make up my own dialogs and satisfy them.  To date, my family thinks "Buniyaad" means "Nostalgia" -  I am pretty tickled at how I could come up with THAT translation. It means "Foundation", in case anyone's listening.

That was long past. Now, my Hindi is restricted to speaking to our campus security fellows, who speak as much broken Hindi as I do (they are usually Biharis), and entertaining my Marati neighbour's mother whenever she visits her son, with my child talk.  I sometimes suspect she comes down to Chennai only to hear me murder the language. 

Anything to oblige, what?
 
 

I am not quite a movies person.  Our school used to screen movies occasionally as a "treat", and I have watched "The Sound of Music", "My Fair Lady" and such like, squatting on the floor with other kids in a big hall, the movie being projected on a white cloth screen.  I remember that when I was 5-10 years old, my mother would leave me with my father, and watch Tamil movies with her mother in a theater called Krishnaveni, that was close to my grandmom's house.  My folks got a television when I was around seven (mostly to satisfy my mom), and every Sunday, a tamil movie was aired in the Doordarshan, the only channel at that time.  The entire neighbourhood and their kith and kin would turn up to watch the movie; the living room jam packed with women of all ages.  I would take a sneak peak now and then, and if there were a "duet" on at that time, I would be strongly reprimanded and ordered to "go upstairs and finish my homework" that I had already finished two days ago.  During the fight scenes, I would close my ears with my palms to lock out the "dishum dishum"  noises that would rattle me.

The first movie I watched in theater was "Bombay", with my M.Sc. classmates; I was 23 years old then.  I hated the movie, because, more than once it made me cry.  On that day I realised that the only way I could exhibit ANY emotion was by crying.  It holds good even now. Pretty pathetic, what?

I "improved" when I went to grad school.  I would go to the local mall (Carousel mall) with my roomies and impuslively watch a movie, mostly soppy ones because one of them was a hopeless romantic - "You got mail" types.  After grad school, another break for a few years until I married an all-in-all connoisseur.  Since then, we have been watching one movie almost every weekend, in our laptop perched on dude's lap (laptop perched, that is, in case people are letting imaginations run wild),  kiddo snuggled between us, fast asleep right at the first scene, and I sprawled out, mouth open, eyes half-shut and in general totally comfortable. We occasionally go wild and catch a matinee in a theater, in the middle of a working week.I have watched more movies in the last seven years than I would have thought possible in my lifetime, and have enjoyed every one of them, partly due to the good movies I have been shown by the connoisseur, but mostly due to the pleasant company. 

I have been meaning to put up a list of movies watched in the recent past, but lethargy and procrastination being my middle names, dude beat me to it.  Here, is a list of movies we have watched this past summer.  The reviews are what I would have written, albeit less succintly, so it may be considered a bit of a crisp summary of a verbose post I would have written on the topic, had I not been the lazy rear end that I am.

I am not quite a party-animal.  No specific reason I state it now, except to start the flow of verbal runs arising from the belly of nostalgia.

My cousin, younger to me by a couple of months, and my closest pal for a very long time until life took us through different paths, went to a slightly upscale school where birthday parties were common.  She would attend at least one birthday party every week.  I, on the other hand, went to a school where birthdays were spent wearing colour dress to school, and distributing 10 paise chocolates to all and sundry that cross your path, and that is where the party ended.  So, when the cousin described the balloons, the cakes, the games, the fun and the return gifts, I was naturally tempted.  Especially since my cousin had one on her sixth birthday.  Never mind that the introvert that I was, I stuck to the corner of the room, reading a book, while my cousin and her friends (Shobha, Mathangi, Sthuthimathi- can't believe I remember names of my cousin's kindergarten friends, I am unable to remember where I put my pen a few hours ago), would have a gala time.  My aunt, having been bought up in "modern" Bombay rather than the backward, barbaric village of Madras that the others of the family belonged to, would make interesting snacks for the party- sandwiches (yes, sandwiches were novelty of sorts) with mint chutney, tomato chutney and cucumbur and bhel puris. I wonder if it is a Mumbaiya thing - I recently accompanied my daughter to her friend's birthday party, and the mom of the friend, a Mumbaiwali, made the yummiest snacks (Vada Pav etc.) that I would not dare to venture into under extreme durress.

So, on my seventh birthday, I had a birthday party.  I was so excited I couldn't sleep the previous night.  I carefully made a list of friends I would invite (my cousin, Rupa, "Periya" Nandini, "Kutty" Nandini, Revathi, and since Sowndarya was going to visit Revathi that evening, she too).  The mother ordered a cake, after grumbling about the enormous hole it would make in the monthly budget. The party itself was an anticlimax, because once the cake was gone, none of us knew what to do and everybody went home; the shortest party in the history of humankind, I am sure.  That effectively put a stopper on future birthday party plans.

The next party I attended was in tenth class, when a classmate with a rich father, threw a "farewell party" to the class, at her upscale apartment in Haddows Road.  All I remember of the party was that there were organized games, lots of food, soft-drinks (that we were not permitted to drink at home) and that our parents came around 8 PM to pick us up.  This was the first time I was allowed to stay in someone else's house until 8.  The curfew time was (and continued to be for decades after that) 6.00 PM. I actually thought it was normal and everybody lived that way.  I still feel very anxious if I am out of the house during dusk.  Talk of permanent scars.

College was a culture shock to me.  I went to an ultra-mod, hyper-oomph college, and mixed among the hep and high, belonging to a social strata I did not know existed.  The gang I found myself in (thanks to one of my closest friends from kindergarten being in it) wore designer clothes and internationally branded cosmetics and often cut class to sit in the canteen eating puri with channa that often smelt of vomit.  Needless to say, I hardly fit in, but carried on, often finding refuge in the library, the reading room of which had a lovely mural of waves crashing on a shore.  During the brief lunch hours when they ate the nauseious channa puri as I ate my yummy curd rice-mavadu packed from home, I listened to them describe their daily parties.  The father had business parties at home (involving lots of booze, according to them), their moms had "kitty" parties (involving lots of booze, according to them) and brothers had stag parties (involving lots of booze, according to them).  I spent most of these lunch hours, gaping at them wide-mouthed, trying to imagine the parties and failing miserably. The one thought that would always come to mind would be, with so much booze every evening, how does the family manage to stay sober during the day.  I never got invited to any of these parties, thankfully, for (a) I would never have made it past the six-o-clock curfew at home and (b) I wouldn't have had a dress to wear other than my chungudi salwars and faded jeans.

The years at my post graduate institution were lost in more natural, comfortable, nerdy pursuits. And then in grad school, I was once again thrown into the cruel world.  My neighbours were a set of raucous undergrads, who partied every Friday, and when I say "partied" I am being very very polite. They played music that rattled my windows, they shouted and screamed until I threw few pillows over my head in agony, threw around beer to stink to high heavens and made out with random partners in the room right across my bedroom, with lights on, and window open.  All night. Every Friday.  I started working late on Friday nights, in my lab, with my conjugated-bis-ruthenium compounds soon after.

I have been to and hosted the most parties in the past five years.  And it seems to coinicde with the arrival of my daughter.  Thankfully, most of the parties are birthday parties involving a select bunch of people I know and am comfortable enough with to visit in daily-wear clothes and hair in a random kondai.  I hope even these parties peter of soon and I get back to my natural life.

I find it fit to end this topic with mention of a lovely movie called "The Party" starring the incomparable Peter Sellers.  A bittersweet, feel good film with just that touch of melancholy that makes it sweeter at the end.  This is the only party I can stand.

  

The m-i-l decided to paint our local "town" ("downtown" in American lingo), aka "Parry's Corner" red by her presence with the excuse of buying knick-knack-brick-bracks to gift to kids during Navarathri that is three months away.  Sometimes I think had the m-i-l been around in the late nineteenth century, she would have laundered and ironed the Indian Tricolour on the day the baby was named Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi.  I know of advanced planning, but with the m-i-l everything is so advanced that you'd need a time machine to visit her in the present.

But I digress.

So, with the new found time due to (a) a deadline so far away, you’d need hubble to see it and (b) the kid being off at school "full day" rather than the meager two hours as until last year when I would just have enough time to take a leak before rushing back to school to pick her up, I bravely volunteered to accompany the m-i-l, more to see if there were any k-k-b-b I could pick up for myself.  The m-i-l as usual planned every detail of our rendezvous a week ago, and I left this morning after spending a good half-hour haggling with auto drivers to take me from our end of town to my m-i-l's without demanding my pound of cardiac flesh in exchange.  And so, as the auto took me through the town I grew up in, the mind automatically shifted to reverse gear, bringing back memories of places long known.

As the auto crossed the bridge over river Koovam at Saidapet, a dilapidated building at its bank reminded me of a school classmate called Deepa, whose father owned a posh furniture shop in that building.  It was called "Grafix Furniture" and was a landmark in the area.  Deepa herself had a bit of a celebrity status as she belonged to the "upper middle class" in a school full of middle class kids.  And what is more, Deepa's mother would visit school everyday in their chaufffer-driven car, wearing synthetic sarees, in stark contrast to the rest of the Tam-Bram moms who would be draped in chungudi. And she would wear lipstick. LIPSTICK.  We would look at her clandestinely, believing that even a look at her stained lips was a sin-of-sorts.  Deepa was a chubby, curly haired, oily skinned, fair girl, prone to throwing tantrums, if I remember right and always shepherded around by her elder sister Prabha.  I wonder what became of them.

We turned into a few random lanes and entered the bastion of middle class Tam Bram community of yore – West Mambalam.  As I crossed the Ayodhya Mandapam, I could not help remembering the platoon of friends that haunted the area.  Soumya, my first friend in life lived in the area, and I have spent hours at her house playing house, something about both of us being neighbours and cooking for each other (girls will be girls).  Sudha, a friend during adolescence, did not have a phone in her house and we would send letters to each other every week during summer vacations listing the activities for the week, the books we read, the cousins we met, and planning the next meeting.  For some strange reason I remember the gift we bought for her housewarming event.  It was a wall-hanging that said “Old things are always the best – old books, old wine, old friends”.

Fast forward a few hours and the three women (mil, sil and yours sincerely) left for our excursion, resolved to not let the scorching sun go waste.  As we crossed panagal park, I remembered Sugan where we bought our uncomfortable uniform material and Kesavan, the tailor, who single-handedly stitched three sets of uniforms each for over a thousand kids in the area every summer.  If there is a heaven for tailors, he would be king.

After much excitement we reached Parrys corner.  I wistfully thought of my first bicycle (Hero) that my father bought for me from there when I was in sixth class. A red heavy contraption that groaned and moaned as I pedaled to school for the next seven years of my life.  And the Chenna Kesava Perumaal Kovil that my father once impulsively dragged me to, a day before my big exam.

For some reason, that is where nostalgia ended and current events took over.  After dragging our feet over most of the tar-melting roads, we filled our bags with junk and more and returned, a spent force, ready to gulp down the Indian ocean after desalinating it.

Image from : http://jonnadula-madhu.sulekha.com/albums/allphotos/slideshow/204962.htm

My daughter's vacation ends and school starts tomorrow.  She is pretty indifferent about it unlike her mother who is shaking with excitement and also nervous and is behaving much like a cat on a hot tin roof.   Excited because her little baby is going to first standard now - she can still vividly remember the juicy kicks she got when the kid was inside her.

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Back during school years, I would always look forward to the first day of school after summer vacation.  The glow on every child's face, the sights and smells of school (not near the toilets though), the new uncomfortable uniforms, biting new shoes, the new school satchel, newly covered books, the excitement of knowing who would be in my section that year (there was "shuffling" every year), who my class teacher would be...and so on.

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While at school, I was part of the school choir.  The dramatics club would stage musicals now and then and despite my secret hope of being chosen to play a part on stage, I was always delegated to the side stage, as an alto, which in itself was not necessarily bad; at least I did not have to wear makeup.  A lot of effort went into these musicals, and I wonder where the teachers got the energy from, to herd a group of children and bid them do their stuff.  I distinctly remember a musical called "Thumbalina" where the title role was played by a rather short classmate of mine.  I don't remember any of the songs in it though, it was staged when I was in primary school.

We also staged a musical called "The Prodigal Son" (from the Testament), and for some reason, one of the songs in the musical has been running in my head all day today.  It seems to fit my own ruminations of the past few weeks. The song goes thus:

There seem to be several people
Locked up inside of me
Fighting a constant battle
For my identity
Sometimes they keep me prisoner
Sometimes they set me free
Is one of them my true being?
Is one of them really me?

Who am I? 
Just a dreamer of dreams?
Who am I?
Quite a failure it seems?
No, A Hero.
The Idol of the crowd.

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I can't seem to get over the vacation mood.  Got a deadline in a week, and not even a semblance of sense yet.  One of these days I am going to go into hyper panic and I hope my Vox will be ready at that time for verbal outflow of tension.

This deadline is weird.  The requirements are so abstract that I am not even sure I can write anything.  Which is not good because right now, I am the only one in the company who can write, and if I get into a real or perceived mental block, the boss is not going to be a happy camper. 

HELP !

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Read an interesting book (for sake of internet censorship, I won't mention the name of the book), which is an ancient Indian treatise on some essential social umm...customs and practices....that mentions in the passing what makes a good wife.  Of course, it is all atrociously chauvinistic.  It says that one of the requirements of a good "house wife" (which itself is an aggravatingly cliched term) is that she maintains a thriving garden.  I suppose the author would find me an adequate "housewife" in that regard.  My garden, after many years of toil and sweat is just about beginning to respond.  But I won't talk anymore about it lest I jinx it.

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For a birthday treat, we had dinner at a restaurant called "Georgio" in Besent Nagar (Thanks for the tip Gayathri).  Good place. Decent ambience. They even had a projected show of the live World Cup cricket match that junior insisted on watching while eating.  Their Mamos were to die for, and main course was good too.  Desert however, was sadly lacking.  Try it out if you have some moolah to burn and event to celebrate.

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End of Ramble. 

 
    

  

When I see my daughter "enjoy" her summer holidays, waking up late, sitting in the sweltering heat of the verandah reading comics, I am transported to my own identical childhood summer vacations.  I belonged to a rather stiff-upper-lip-don't-know-how-to-enjoy-life-rigor-mortis family that would throw a fit if I slept a minute later than seven, no matter what day of the year it is (there, I got it off my chest), but the rest of the day was pretty much the same. Laze around with Amar Chitra Kathas-Laurel Hardy (they came in comics)-Nancy Drew-Hardy Boys-Perry Mason-P.G.Wodehouse-etc. (in chronological order), the fan churning up the hot air, and home made snacks - coconut burfi, murukku fried in coconut oil (and cholesterol), gulab jamun, all stored in big tin coated brass containers in the "valai beero" (netted almirah) in the store room adjacent to the "madi" kitchen.  The store room was locked, the cook maami had the key tugged deep into the recess of her madisaar, and snacks were rationed carefully to the perpetually hungry bunch of cousins and their friends. 

But what is more indelibly branded is the moment of waking up. As the cloud is lifted from the brain, the first sense organ to awaken would be the nose.  The aroma of saathumadhu, with its dose of katti perungaayam, mixed with the invigorating smell of filter coffee is something that has been inexplicably hard-wired into the brain that just stray thoughts can brings back the aroma to the nose.  Sundays especially were a treat to wake up to, for the aroma of shallots sambar, which was otherwise forbidden (abachaaram abachaaram) in the household would instantly kindle hunger pangs, despite grand mother grumbling that it is truly "kali kaalam" that shallots are even allowed inside a house that has the saligramam.  And the various olfactory treats would continue through out the day - cardamom tea after siesta, Kancheepuram idlys, masal dosas and the like for "tiffin", milagu rasam and poricha kootu for dinner, and to end with a bang, the wonderfully rich aroma of freshly boiled milk, very recently milked from a cow routinely fed with boiled punnaakku, rather than paper posters that cows these days are fed,with added sugar and turmeric (or saffron if th lady of the house is in a particularly generious mood).

I don't claim to be a good cook, not even a decent one.  But even on days that I take extra pains to do a good job, the hardwired aroma continues to remain  hallucination and I am unable to bring out the richness of the same sathumadhu or shallots sambar that had us salivating right in bed.  I blamed my own lack of "kai maNam" until recently I realised that I cannot find that aroma anywhere.  Not even when my octagenerian grandmother, the once reigning queen of iyengar cooking, strains herself to make something simple, yet exotic, like Vepampoo sathumadhu for her grand daughter.   That is what set me thinking that while lack of skill could still be my cross to bear,  there could be a more basic mistake with the raw materials that are used to cook.  The stink of the store-bought payatham paruppu being cooked in pongal seemed to point in that direction.

That thought was shelved for later rumination, and perhaps a blog post (as it has turned out now).  Meanwhile, a familial drive towards "natural" living led to a few steps, such as use of a bronze pot to cook rice, instead of the pressure cooker (trust me, it does not take any longer; perhaps a little more water..), Iya sombu (tin pot) for saathumadhu, and as far as possible, fresh vegetables, bought from the local vendor rather than from supermarkets that exhibit unnaturally coloured food stuff.  And to take it a bit further, we discovered a supplier of "organic" food (a misnomer, all food are "organic" in the chemical sense, but the word refering to food grown without the use of pesticides and chemical fertilizers), and experimented with manure-driven, pesticide free (albeit a tad more expensive) lentils, rice and vegetables, and what do you know?  Despite my sad lack of skill, the aromas that were hitherto confined to the dark recess of memory are slowly making their presence felt.  And the "organic" spinach being cooked with cumin yesterday filled my house with memories of summer holidays many many years ago.

I thought at first that it was my imagination.  But I am beginning to believe it is true.  Food does seem to taste a lot better now. 

Dude has been downloading Ilayaraja songs from the net, and we were discussing how almost ethereal some of the songs really are. So, here I am, sitting and watching old ilayaraja songs on youtube instead of sleeping. 

Remembered this really lovely song and found it on YouTube..yay.  I simply can't get over how cute the idea is - a couple's alter egos singing a quartet with them.  What is more appealing to me now as I am hearing it as an adult is the romantic lyrics. "iLa maamayil, arugamayil vandhadum veLai inbam kodi enru anubavam sollavillayo", what a beautiful language Tamil is. I won't even attempt to translate it into English. If you know Tamil, enjoy. If you don't, enjoy the melody. And the honey-dripping voices of SPB and P. Susila.  The interludes are deceptively simple.  Check the interplay of the various instruments of the orchestra, as is usual with Ilayaraja.

No dress beats the elegance of a simple saree (did you notice those matching glass bangles?).

And this is what I love most.  The bus travels through my birth city, Chennai (then, Madras) thirty years ago. I remember my favourite city like that. Empty roads. I even remember the red Pallavan bus with green seats. I traveled to school in them.  It has been many years since I set foot in a metropolitan bus. Affluence, impatience and general yuppitiness makes me take the car, bike or an auto. I have an intense yearning to travel by the MTC (as it is called now), maybe this weekend. 

I love the bus honking to the music.  Can't help smiling at the conductor asking the "karuvattu koodai" to move forward, in the middle of the song.

I believe I have mentioned (?!) earlier about my sad lack of fashion sense.  Perhaps a small correction is due.  I do have a S.O.F, only it is outdated by a few years, maybe a century.

For example, when my friends were growing tresses to have them bounce off their blooming backside in the effort to look "ethnic", I chopped of what little I had, to look like a Brit memsaab of yonder years. (Clarification - I did not have to chop off much).  And when the rest of the world is mowing to look chic and fashionable, I am excited about the length of the offspring's hair (having long given up on my own).  And particularly thankful that she does not want to "look like a boy".  I am counting the days until peer pressure will make her convince me to take her to a beauty parlour, the inside of which I have not seen yet, to chop of her lovely mane into a style that I am sure to hate.  But until that happens, I intend to enjoy the crowning glory of hers, in every way possible, no matter how hideous it may seem to another.

Who knew that the ribbon existed still?   The drill in V's sport's day entailed lower-kindgergarten kids (such as her friend Rohan) to tie a ribbon around their wrist.  And that opened the eyes to the fact that nylon ribbons are non-extinct.  With a nasty gleam and an unnatural stare at the braids of the daughter, I stepped into the usual pet shop to buy 1.5 metres of red ribbon.  And the result ?

If that is not cute, what is?

PS: Photos only visible to friends and family.