Author: neoalchemist

Polayaadimone. That was his standard swear word. Depending upon the intensity of the tone you could figure out, if that is a serious telling off, a mild scolding or a benevolant appreciation. That one swear word was sufficient for mani periyappa to express his feelings. He was second eldest among the four brothers, of which my father is the youngest.

I dont know much about mani periyappa’s childhood, but from several anecdotes, it seemed he had an interesting one. My grandfather had a hotel business in Tamilnadu and Mani periyappa’s earlier schooling was in tamil. (He used to tell us couplets from thirukkural, occasionally). But the studies stopped, as my grandfather eventually moved to kerala permanently. The only clear information about Mani periyappa’s childhood came from my grandma who used to narrate stories from the past.

It seems that once when he was a kid, he got very upset with his mother over something, and threatened to commit suicide. Grandma narrated the tale with a chuckle, as how periyappa climbed a tree with a chaaku charadu (jute thread) and prepared the thread for ending his life. My grandfather came to know about this and immediately grabbed hold of a strong rope and came to the scene. The situation now got worse, as my grandfather threatened periyappa, that if indeed he came down without committing suicide, he will be beaten up, which he guaranteed that wont be forgotten for a long time.

My grandma was wondering who was more mad, my grandfather or periyappa standing confused and in fear on the tree with a jute thread hanging off the branch now. As my grandfather personally offered to replace the weak jute thread with strong coir rope the situation only offered two possible resolutions. 1. commmit suicide on the rope provided by my grandfather, or 2. climb down the tree and hope that grandma will save him from the imminent beatings. Sense prevailed and option 2 was taken.

After my grandfather settled in perumbavoor, Kerala, Periyappa got a job at Rayons factory, a job that he continued till the company locked out. Meanwhile he had got married to Narayani periyamma and had two kids – kumar anna and latha acca – the only sister for us 8 brothers of the joint family. Braving ups and downs of a life when the factory closed, leaving him unemployed, the family survived on murukku/pappadom business and kumar anna chipping in with his part-time work at a ration shop. But life’s sudden downs didnt break his will to go on. Years flew by as we all kids whom he had mentored, grew up braving those periods, got married, settled down. He grew older. Though his health was failing, his will kept him going.

I still remember the carrom board games, that he used to play with my father and friends, how my father would keep on losing the parippuvada/pappadavada/cigarette bet playing against periyappa, who was a master in his game. We kids used to watch his play in wonder, be it the carrom or rummy and other card games. I remember the day when I fractured my wrist, he was the one who rushed me to hospital, stayed with me for 3 days till the doctors sent me home with the plaster on. A father figure who kept a watch on all of us. I would gorge the thin crispy dosais he made, myself and periyamma would almost fight to have his dosais.

He is no more. I got a phonecall tonight – “Periyappa is gone”, my brother Prasanth told me over phone. That was it. He was in hospital for a nearly a week, and he passed away, just like that. As I heard the news over phone thousands of miles away in UK, nothing made sense.

I remember the last time I spoke with him over the phone. He was scolding me for not having kids yet after 4 years of marriage. “shandan ennu koopuduva ellavarum”, (people will call you a eunuch) he said, “vegam pillere undaakkikkoo” (make kids fast). “Not to worry,” I said to him laughingly, “it doesnt matter what the world calls me, I need no kids to prove I am a male”… He laughed at me, and shouted over the phone – “polayaadimone”.

As my cold is slowly on the retreat, I am getting back to my favourite pastime. Fitting myself snugly lengthwise on our ikea sofa and watching the telly.

Richard Dawkins was presenting a documentary about the root of all evil. Himself being an atheist, he was contrasting science with religion and the re-emergence of the christian equivalent of extremism. I was expecting him to bring Buddhism and Hinduism also into the documentary, but it didnt come at all. I was surprised, when I went to the channel 4 website for that program; they had eastern religious imagery on the left side of the page as background and the abrahamic religious imagery on the right. Though the program had not even mentioned eastern faiths, I was wondering about the appropriateness of that representation. I will have to assume that maybe in next episode he will bring in eastern religions also into context, to justify the imagery on the website.

Following that was a Paul McKenna programme to reduce weight on sky one. Unfortunately my wife was there before I could change channels, and I had to go through the whole program. My wife considers me a bit unhealthy, and wants me to loose a bit of weight. I would happily classify myself as being endowed with “extra muscles”. Later I found on the website that within 4 weeks of this plan, I could see how I have faired. Maybe the program is to “loose weight, become gora.”

Its stuck between nose and mouth. No not on the outside, from inside.

Its that time again, when one feels the futility of whole life. Life becomes totally suffocating and pointless. You begin to wonder how you are going to have a normal life again. The whole being seems to have let you down, and you just pathetically bide your time. You try to sleep, but you feel as if both the nose are blocked and you cant breath even a bit. You wonder how you are still alive.

Somehow you drift into sleep, and you wake up to find the same problems all over again. The agony seems eternal, you think about buddha, who said “life is full of dukkha” and wonder how truthful these words are. You feel like a prisoner from the childhood stories, fully chained tight, tight even to breathe. You shuffle in your bed trying to think some positive thoughts, how things could be better tomorrow, but the reality forces a sneeze out of you. Looking at your hand you realize the sticky stuff that has been holding you hostage.

Yes, the common cold, and that bit of pleghm thats stuck between the nose and the mouth. No, not on the outside, from inside, irritating you.

I will write about it in detail tomorrow.

I was driving home with my wife one evening, and cruising at around 40 mph, and suddenly a pigeon flew directly into our car. Its death was certain, but my super-hero senses reacted quickly and I swerved the car, nearly causing an accident. But I saved the pigeon’s life. Although the sudden events caused a shocked expression on my wife’s face, as I eventually explained the importance of saving life – one of the several prime directives of a super hero – she understood it. Similarly lives of several rabbits that jump in front of my car are saved -with superhero sense reaction-, while I drive early morning to office (which is close to a reserved green belt area).

I am a super hero in disguise, and I do save lives at will. From parrots to cats and rabbits to humans, I have seen them all and saved several of their lives. My story of being a super hero is not overnight, where I was bitten by a radiated bed-bug (imagine the plight of spiderman, had he been bitten by a bedbug than a spider) or came from another planet. The comic book superheroes are good in the books they are in… comic books. Real superheroes are very much unlike that. I know because I am a trained one. It was gradual process of discovery and training, till I became a fully qualified superhero. Being one is not easy, you have to take lessons to be one and the lessons are tough. The first lesson itself was not easy to begin with.

It all began several years ago. One evening, my brother brought home a parrot whose wings were clipped. The parrot was given by his friend who claimed to have caught it. That parrot looked miserable. The cage seemed too small for the parrot to be in. I sometimes do wonder if we brothers were brought up with wrong moral codes. Who else in this world will be brought up on an ideal of non-violence and compassion, that too, during the present time.

Either way, the caged parrot was too much for us. The super-hero element in us awakened that day. We need to save this parrot, make it free. We didnt cry out “freeedom… Libertyyyy…” like the great american hollywood heroes, but we did want to set the bird free, even though the bird’s wings were clipped. We took the cage to our neighbour’s fence, beyond which was this huge unkempt garden; nothing less than a jungle for us. It was unanimously decided that it was the place where we will set the bird free. I held the cage while my brother opened it to set it free into the wilderness. The only thing that we didn’t notice was the cat hiding behind the bushes watching us. As the parrot took the first hops of freedom, the cat leapt and within a flash caught the parrot and disappeared. We stood there shocked and looking stupid.

Super-hero lesson 1 : Don’t interfere with others lives. What you might think will be a good deed might turn out real bad.

The second lesson was even tougher. This happened later during my school days. Our school was around a mile and a half from our home, and mom used to hand over two 10 paise coins for our bus fare (in kerala the bus fares are lower for students). She very well knew that we will be pocketing that money to buy ice-sticks during lunch break, the plain ones which cost 10 paise and the semia-ice-stick cost 15 paise. The walk to the school will go through interior roads where I would meet my friend Manikandan half-way, who will be my company and bench-mate in the school. The return also inevitably took the same route.

It was one of the evening during the monsoon season while returning from school that I noticed it. This was long time after the parrot lesson. Manikandan had reached home and I was doing the last half mile lone stretch, when I found the little kitten alone and lost, drenched in rain on the road. Its meow itself got drowned in pitter-patter of the rain. It was cold and shivering. I had to help him. I picked him up, dried him using my school bag and carried him in one arm, the other arm holding the umbrella, walking with a bit of urgency back home.

At home, no questions were asked as I explained the whole story, and my mom and brother ensured that it had a home, with lot of dry jute bags and warm milk that mom gracefully provided. After watching over it for some time, we left it to rest. The next morning the cat had disappeared, it was not to be found anywhere. Frantic searches by myself and my brother yielded no results. “It might have gone back to its mother” our mom tried to console us. But still it was indeed mysterious that the small kitten could disappear and that too in the monsoon season.

We found the kitten eventually – well its lifeless body, to be precise, the next day. He had walked over the wall and probably fallen into our house well. We saw the brown side and the white underbelly of the kitten in the well floating still, while my dad and others were trying to get the body out. Pottassium permangenate was used to clean the well, but no one scolded us.

Super-hero lesson 2 : Don’t you understand thick head – Don’t interfere with others lives. What you might think will be a good deed might turn out real bad.

The third lesson also came soon. While I liked cats, my brother liked dogs. One day while he came back from school (we travelled separately with different groups of friends), he had brought a small pup. A very lovely and lively pup it was, as it played with us wagging its tiny tail. Mom was there with a saucer full of lukewarm milk, the only thing that was remaining was a name for the dog. Since my brother brought it home, he decided to name it after his favourite West Indies bowler – Micheal Holding. Our dog was since known as Holding.

We kept him tied in the mornings and let him free at nights, where he would go to the neighbour’s unkempt jungle-like garden and get some bones, dropped off either by birds or cats. We built it a big cage and our milkman – whom we all called kaakka – gave it a saucer full of milk every morning. Then one day he disappeared, our calls to Holding early in the morning didn’t bring a hyperactive-licking-the-face-jumping-all-over-you-dog, it just brought silence. He was never to be seen again. That was the third lesson.

Super-hero lesson 3 : Repeat of lesson 1 & 2 Don’t interfere with others lives. You have the right to delude yourself that you are helping others by doing something, but don’t delude yourself by thinking that it will always workout the way you want.

The story continues from there, several such lessons were given during the training. The ‘conditioning’ of the training is such that you start thinking and acting like a superhero naturally. I could go on and on about the lessons one by one, but it’s forbidden – as each one has to learn their own lessons. I am learning mine, being a full fledged superhero is just one part of that learning process, and the lessons continue. I would want to give you more of the training details, but I have to rush. There are some lives to be saved, you see. See you in a moment.

Interesting news.

A parasitic worm that makes the grasshopper it invades jump into water and commit suicide does so by chemically influencing its brain, a study of the insects’ proteins reveal.

If only they infected a few of our so called netas 😐

link from dinesh

They had just gone to get bread and tomatoes from the super market. He quickly went and picked up thick sliced white bread. She scowled at him, “do you want to hear a lecture again” she said. “why dont you keep it back and get brown bread instead”. He did the same quietly, and repeated in mind what would be her next statement, “Brown bread is much healthier than White Bread, you know”.

They walked back home after shopping. They both hadnt seen the car that was coming.

The story of a forgotten spy.

“As a boy, my name was Mani. We diligently listened to all the conversation the British officers had and later on, all five of us discussed the information we had collected, and then conveyed it to Netaji. Those were very exciting days,” said Rajamani, the excitement coming through even in her feeble voice.

Chakra was the person. He was the man in touch with most of the desi bloggers in UK. So no wonder we pushed him to organise a bloggers meet in London. The venue and the date was fixed quickly and the message was passed around. So came the date of the bloggers meet.

The blog meet was wonderful, it had to be because there were only two of us. Myself and my wife attending it. Or it seemed to be like that for the first 15-20 minutes of the meet. Chakra indeed had planned everything and Jag had booked the restaurant table for 12-16 people. The Blog meet was to start at 12.30 and we reached sharp on time to find all the tables empty. It was just us both and the restaurant staff.

Never to be let down, we both sat down and had a good chat for around 5 minutes, peering over to the entrance of the restaurant to see if anyone else was joining us or to go ahead with the main objective of the blog meet – ordering and eating the onion rava masala dosa. A sharp look from my ardhangini brought me back to the civilised world, and made me realize that it was not the main agenda. We had to wait for bloggers to arrive.

Another ten-fifteen minutes passed without the onion rava masala dosa, and suddenly there appeared a person with rucksack. Believe it or not, he was alive. Even after travellilng through the tube and running to catch the train, the police didnt shoot him! Maybe it has something to do with the fact that Jag was a really nice person. It was only later we found that his ruck-sack indeed contained some WMD’s (Wonderfully Made Delicacies).

But there we were, three of us chatting away half an hour into the scheduled blog meet starting time, when Renga made the appearance. Soon after, Neha came as well. My eyes and her eyes met, the time stood still, An old tamil 60’s song record started playing in the back-ground “vadanamo chandrabimbamoooo…. malarndha sarojamooooooo” (sorry jag.. the traslation follows – “is it a face or a sculpture made of moon – oooooooooooo or a blossommed lotuss – ooooooo, you get the drift). Then Neha spoke and the spell broke. A resolution was passed, which suggested that the last blogger to arrive will foot the bill of the day.

There was no sign of Chakra still, though 45 minutes had past since we have been ordering and drinking only water from the restaurant. Maybe none of the restaurant staff noticed that table for around 16 people had been booked and for 45 minutes the only orders they had was 2 bottles of water. Oblivious to all that we were chatting, though in between my attention briefly went to the dosa’s and vada’s going to other tables, except ours.

Eventually after a long wait the organiser of the meet and others turned up. Our tables became the centre of attraction in the restaurant then onwards. It was like a tamil sangam was happening (everyone except jag were tamilians or knew tamil). Renga was taking picture after picture, which convinced me that he didnt have any film-roll in the camera, and he was just doing “flash-photography”. Guru also took several snaps with his unique looking digital camera. Twin Gemini Anand was very quiet during the blog meet as well, maybe trying to figure out why he came all the way from US for this. Shubha spent majority of the time picking up the cutlery thrown into the floor at regular intervals by her son and the youngest blogger in the meet – sriram kutty.

Mdeii Anand had this mystic looks and his long hair just added to that appeal. His eyes were really dreamy and different and his discussions almost was about movie making and related topics. I have already asked him for a big role in his movie, so please do stand in the queue, yes, behind me please. I wouldnt write more about him, till I sign the contract.

Chakra was in the middle of all this, enjoying the cacophony, munching away at the snacks, trying to be invisible when twin gemini anand and jag were having a discussion (he being seated in between those two). The discussion ranged between stanley kubrick’s use of music in his films to deepak chopra’s quantum entanglement of human destiny. Meanwhile my main objective of the blog meet – Onion Rava Masala Dosa – arrived. Sorry, I love my food and I dont remember anything that happened till I finished it. The bill came soon after and Chakra was absconding.

Jag did some quick arithmetic and we all footed the bill. Neha departed quickly and the rest of us strolled to Ravenscourt park. Before we parted jag gave each of us a box of lovely WMD that he carried all along. The first indi-uk bloggers meet was completed thus.

ps: read chakra’s version of the event here.

One of the careers that I thought of when I was growing up was becoming a scientist. My friend santosh at that time had a big trunk full of science books. For him it was a treasure box. Thats from where I first got to read Yakov Peralman’s “Physics can be fun”. It was a wonderful book indeed, the ideas and the way in which physics was explained did have a great influence on me.

Years have flown by and instead of becoming a scientist, I have been a typist, laborotary assistant, salesman, banker, software programmer and several things except becoming a scientist. The journey still goes on. But still whenever I call up santosh, we discuss several topics, and one of the topics always has been physics.

We had discussed the nuclear power and how it can be used to help India. It’s one of those discussions that we came up with this idea. As India is estimated to have several nuclear warheads, which over a period of time becomes useless – due to the decay of nuclear material – we thought of another method. It was making a design of nuclear warhead, so that while it will remain a warhead, it will be used to generate power when kept idle.

So it will have all the shebang for electricity genration at the base part which will be part of a power generation facility, and it will be ready to be deployed when needed, where the central part of the design will seperate and act as a missile when the need arises. In short it’s a sort of a missile design with the capabilities of generating electricity at its base and serves as a nuclear deterrent as well.

But I really find it pleasing that scientists in India are making real good progress, even without our “great” idea contribution 😉 [India unveils safest thorium reactor]

India on Thursday unveiled before the international community its revolutionary design of “A Thorium Breeder Reactor (ATBR)” that can produce 600 MW of electricity for two years “with no refuelling and practically no control manoeuvres.”

Designed by scientists of Mumbai-based Bhabha Atomic Research Centre (BARC), ATBR is claimed to be far more economical and safer than any power reactor in the world.

I wish we had these scientists as the poster boys than the bollywood heroes.