patti sonna kadhai (grand ma tales...)

A farmer and a grocerer were involved in a barter trade. The farmer would give the grocerer one pound of butter and the grocerer would give the farmer one pound equivalent of bread. They were maintaining this arrangement for about a month. One fine morning, the farmer got a summon from the village judge and when he went there, found the grocerer sitting there too. The judge asked the farmer, "This grocerer here says that you have taken one pound of bread from him but have given him a lesser amount of butter. This is his complaint. Now you may give your justification for the same."

The farmer smiles and says to the judge, "Sir, i know not the trickery of the Grocerer. Everyday when the Grocerer's aid comes and gives me a pound of bread, i put it on one side of the scales and keep an equal weight of butter on the other scale. This is how i give him butter everyday."
The result of the case is obvious.

an inspiration

I read this inspiring story in a book whose name i donot remember. Neverthless, the story will always remain in my memory. Read on...

Rahul, a 14-year old school boy used to go to a football stadium everyday to get coached. He was an average player and he never figured in the playing eleven. On rare occasions, he used to be fielded in as a substitute. But inspite of this Rahul never missed one training session and came with his dad to the stadium everyday. His dad would go and sit at the far end of the stadium.

On the day of the club finals, Rahul went to the coach and said, "Sir, can i also play in the main team?". The coach said in a merciful voice, "Son, you know that there are many players who are more talented than you are. Play well the next season and i will surely put you in the team." But Rahul was adamant. He fought with the coach. The coach was taken aback but he gave in as he knew that Rahul was not a kind of kid who asked this way everyday. So with plenty of opposition from within his team, Rahul stepped into the field.

On the field, Rahul played like a house on fire. His coach and his team mates were amazed. The home team won the match. After the celebrations were over, the coach, a man with a keen eye asked him, "Son, frankly i have never seen you play so well. I felt a certain force inside you. What was it?"

Rahul answered, " Sir, today my dad watched me play". Confused, the coach looked in the direction where Rahul's dad used to sit everyday. But no one was there. The coach looked at Rahul for an explanation.

Rahul said, "Sir, my father was a blind man. He has never seen me play. Yesterday he died. So today is the first day that he is seeing me play. All the while he was watching me through God's eyes from heaven. I wanted to show him my best performance. That is what inspired me to play the way i did!"

another boring story...

Daring the weather, the thief crouched beneath the wooden bench on the side of the pebble strewn path. The dog's bark pierced through the night. She hated dogs. She didnt know why, but she had hated them from her childhood. She crouched lower out of sheer instinct, out of fear of being caught. With bated breadth she looked at the path for some signs of movement that would give her away. Five minutes.. it felt like an eternity.Thankfully for her, the cries of the dog had gone unnoticed. With a smirk on her face, the thief came out of her lair.

Like any good assaulter, she had scouted the place for days. The previous day she had seen the owner of the house place the valuables inside the room and lock it shut. She had immediately hatched a plan. The wheels were set in motion. And she was a born planner. She had been trained from childhood to do this. And today would be her day of crowning glory..

She glided along the wall, her black attire blending into the pitch dark night. Like a well practised gymnast she jumped on to the sunshade with one single sweeping jump. 'Thud!'. Any judge would have given her a perfect jump for the astounding performance. Recovering quickly from the fall, she moved from window to window checking on them. This was the first step. If she got through, she would be lucky. Otherwise she would have to resort to other means. It turned out that it was her lucky day. The bedroom window was open. She slipped in.

She slipped in, her shadow making eerie shapes in the moonlight. She crouched on to the carpeted floor and looked around. So far so good! She glanced at the door. It was locked as expected. She would have to wait now. She hid herself expertly below a large dining table. A couple of minutes passed.

Suddenly there were footsteps and a sharp cracking noise was followed by a light flickering on to life. Some one opened the door. A stream of light from the inside made the room glow brighter. Her eyes gleamed.

Pouncing on the meat kept for the next day's christmas feast, she sped away even as Harry shouted, "Momma! Greta has stolen from the fridge again!!'.

Back in the courtyard Greta sat chwing the rewards of her campaign. "Meow!" she purred in juicy delight.

a short tale....

I drove along the causeway on a pleasant evening. I thought of the day that had gone by. A pleasant one. It seemed as if the world was made for me. Everything was so perfect including the bucolic environment through which i love to cruise. Suddenly there was a low rumble, a sound that i prayed not to hear. The engine was having choking. Soon after, my twin turbo engines came to an abrupt dismal halt. It was night by now. I realised that i had to pass the night somewhere nearby. A beautiful day had come to a bad end. Locking my car, i walked along the road. It was 1 AM now. I walked through a field. At the end of it i could see a small sodium vapor lamp glowing. Giving a sigh of relief, i made a bee-line towards the house.

Knock knock knock - i heard noises from inside. Then i heard what sounded like whispers. Naturally the inhabitants of this house hadn't expected a visitor this late at night. And the rickety door opened slowly and a meek little man put his head outside the door, straddling his body between the door and the bolt, as if preventing me from entering inside.
"What business may you have at my place at such an unworldly hour?"

"Sir, i had engine problems. My car stopped for reasons i could hardly fathom."

"Uh-Huh." he said.

"Would there be a place nearby where i could spend the nite" i asked.

After pleading with him for fifteen minutes he looked at me and said - do you see those benches over there? I stared in the direction he pointed. I could see some marble tables. Stuffing a blanket on my face he said "Go and sleep there." Before i could react he closed the door and bolted it.

I walked towards the marble with the piece of cloth he had so generously given me. I tripped all the way as the marble benches weren't arranged in any particular order. I chose the longest of the benches by feeling them. There was no light for me to discern anything. I laid down on one bench and shrouded myself in the blanket. I hung my coat in what seemed to be a pole. It was a breezy night. And i loved it. Such a nice place. The last thing i remember was trying to find patterns in the star strewn sky.

Some one was pushing me. I heard distant voices shouting "Who are you? Who are you". I got up and stared at the old puckered face staring from directly above me. It took me a few seconds to fathom where i was. And then it all came back to me. The car...the noise..the sodium vapor lamp.. the old man.. and the cloth. The cloth. It was missing. I saw the man and i stared around. The marble benches were graves. I had spent the last night in a cemetry...

Juvenile Delinquency!!

A small incident during Class 9.. Bhawan's Rajaji Vidyashram

There was a fast food joint outside the school. Evenings saw the place swarming with students from class 11 and 12 who got pocket money. We class 9’ers weren’t so fortunate. The only capital we had were our devilish minds. So we would walk-in, order what ever we want, eat it and scoot. The plan was simple but dangerous. Occasionally the storekeeper would produce the bills on time. So we would start making conversations with the class 11 guys while eating and leave before they did. This was to make the shopkeeper believe or assume that the class 11 guys were treating us or paying our bills. And we would leave before they left the shop. The fact that we wore the same uniform made us un-identifiable targets. This worked on well for almost a month. But then – all criminals are caught, no matter how sleek their means. One fine day, we were caught red-handed. We tried to run, but the shop boys out ran us. The shopkeeper was a Moslem, one with gray eyes, a white beard and a topi on his head (I am trying to make him the villain here). He smiled at us. For one moment, I thought that he might excuse us (I was too dumb struck at that point of time). But the man decided to walk us down to the police station after giving us a few whacks on the butt. We begged the rascal all the way to the police station. But he wouldn’t budge. I thought of my mother’s face when she would come to know that her kid was after all a juvenile delinquent (chuckles). Bile rose in my throat as we neared the station. Just a few feet from the police station, a 50-rupee note magically came out of my friends’ pocket. Quite honestly, that’s the most valuable piece of currency I have ever laid my eyes on. The shopkeeper gave my friend a raised eyebrow. My friend gave him a cool look and said, “You may keep the change”. My eyes bulged out. The shopkeeper seemed to consider it for a while. My heart raced like Michelin tires on a formula one tarmac. Looking at us as if we were moths on his bridal-bed, he said “OK. Now Run”. My heart was filled with gratitude. I ran all the way to school, picked up my bag and ran home. Only the next day, when I had fully recovered I asked my friend why he hadn’t remembered having money with him before we got the beating. “I forgot,” he mumbled.

TSUNAMI :-(

tsunami terror




On December 19th 2004, i sat watching a program called "Earthquake" on the History channel. The program featured some of the worst earthquakes in history. It featured the great quakes and fires of San Francisco of the early 1900's and the giant San Andrears fault quakes of the western coast of America in the later part of the century. The "featured" quake was the great quake of 1964 in Alaska. Though the quake was a powerful one, it wasnt the biggest killer. The true killer of the quake turned out to be the Tsunami's. The tsunami's struck even as the tremor was still shaking the ground. While i sat watching this, little did i know that the same force would strike closer to my heart a week from then.

The morning of December 26 was a lazy one. I was still drowsy from the previous night's food. When i switched on the TV, the SUN Network news reader was shouting out to someone. Unruly behavior for someone who was supposed to read news with sobriety. "Building shake aguthu" (the building is shaking). For an instant, my body froze. The broadcaster was sitting in Chennai, my home town. After making frantic phone calls to Chennai and confirming that nothing had happened to my brethern, i sat before the TV still not fully aware of what had happened. News reporters said that tremors had been recorded all over the eastern coast of South India and the Andaman Isles. A few minutes later BBC reported that a quake measuring 8.6 on the richter scale had been recorded somewhere in Indonesia. At this time there was no news of the Tsunami.

It was well into the evening that we came to know of the tsunamis. NDTV news reporters were scampering all over the place, trying to find out about the affected areas. And several presentations were made about what Tsunami's are. Afterall the last tsunami in India was a minor one and had occured in 1941. Then the death count started :-(

It started with news reporters telling that the number of dead were around 3000. This kept on increasing...at one point i felt that these people were making a mistake with the zero's. Unfortunately, this wasnt true. The whole of next day, all our inboxes were flooded with mails containing an assortment of photos, stories of terror and appeals to contribute towards the relief fund. I read through all of them.

That evening, we at Wilson Manor made an effort to collect clothes and an assortment of other things to contribute towards the relief effort. The children did a wonderful job of going to the 300 odd houses and collecting the stuff. And we tried to arrange and sort out the mass of clothes. There were some truly marvellous people who contributed without hesitation. And ofcourse there are some black sheeps who contributed things like used soaps, tooth brushes, torn shirts - as if this were a "bhogi". It was evident that these people were lazy to drop whatever they did not need in the dust bin and instead decided to drop it into the relief boxes. After cursing them enough, we started with the packing. The next day we sent two truck loads of material to the affected areas. I strongly feel that in times like these, we get to glimpse at the true mental maturity of people...

New Year's was spent listening to news about the growing death toll. And amidst the devastation, there were stories of hope and of recovery. Like the little child that was born blind. She got money for her eye operation, thanks to NDTV. Like the German mother of two in Pucketh who was forced to decide which child she had to let go as she waded the waves. A situation that no mother should ever face. The "abandoned" child survived, clinging to a door. The little angel of the sea who saved a whole village, thanks to her recollection about her social sciences classes about tsunami's following quakes. Truly, these are the incidents that make an atheist like me wonder if there really is GOD...

Cheers

Koushik

"Faith and Belief begin where Reasoning ends..."

Back to Chennai Patnam!

me@home

I somehow missed Chennai. Having been here for the first 17 years of my life, i took it for granted. It always existed, i felt no attachment towards it. And now that i've been away from Chennai for four and a half years, i really really miss it. The food, the roads ( too good to zip on) and ofcouse my own home and the locale surrounding it..and more importantly the people!

After 7 really good months in Bangalore, am here in Chennai. For 7 days. Then the traveller moves to Hyderabad....i some how feel that its in my fate to keep moving from place to place...once every 6 months..

A New Year, a New Job, a New Place & i hope a New Beggining :-)

@ HOME SWEET HOME !!

Koushik