Snakes

Having seen photographs of couple of my college-mates playing with live snakes at some snake sanctuary, I used to wonder how they could play with such hideous creatures. proximity of snakes always gave me the chills..

On a recent trip to Global Village shopping carnival in Dubai, me and my (far)better half decided to visit their reptiles pavilion. Inspired by my above mentioned friends, on spotting a young guy holding a python and taking pictures, i had this unusual urge to take a similar photograph. Being very generous and remembering the marriage vows, i offered the chance to my relatively adventurous better half who was perhaps torn between 2 conflicting malayalam thoughts;

1. Snake on fence...wear on shoulder ????
2. it is not even 4 months since wedding.....!!!

The custodian solved the dilemma and it was decided that we both would hold the snake together and he agreed to take our picture.

The python was heavy and it had a silky texture. All the while i tried to be cool about it, but was cautious to keep the head of the thing far away....ഒരു ദുര്‍ബല നിമിഷത്തില്‍ അതിനു എന്തെങ്കിലും ആഗ്രഹം തോന്നി പോയാലോ???

I was some 12 year old or so when i had my first casual interaction with a live snake. It was during one of my adventure strolls to the compound of the radio transmitting tower in my neighborhood. The purpose was to spend a summer vacation afternoon time in the wilderness plucking edible wild berries, (having no computers, video games or TV channels to keep us entertained, venturing outdoors was the remaining best option those days. That particular day fortunately there were no usual buddies to accompany me.

The compound was densely forested and shady even in that mid afternoon. One could hear the dry leaves and twigs crackling under the feet and i was busy clearing the bushes and wines making my way through uncharted territory.  Having explored enough distance, the barbed wire fencing from where i had infiltrated now disappeared from my view. It was then that I heard a rustling sound. And at the base of a cashew tree i spotted this horrendous large shining snake slithering near my feet.

A fuse went off in my head...every hair on my body shot up in ecstacy, and thankfully at that tender age, the video replay of my relatively uneventful short 12 or so years saved me much time. Next thing i remember was bolting, breaking all my previous (perhaps future as well) athletic records and later sliding down the barbed wires at another end of the compound some 100 meters away, bruising myself in the process.

Upon reaching safe zone with pounding heart, i could not stop verifying if the sweet heart was still pursuing me...she fondly visited me often in my dreams thenceforth although i never liked her much... so after all these years, finally she had a chance to redeem her self esteem and unrequited infatuation.

Looks can be deceiving :)

Kids come in different shapes, sizes and attitudes but one thing is common - they are cute. Yesterday evening i had a funny experience. Few of us friends had planned to watch the new Jayaram movie "Rahasya police" (if u havent watched that yet, please dont watch) - So I went to Mahesh's flat to leave the car there and go together in one car. Rang the doorbell and after a pause the door opened - to my surprise it was a stranger 2 year old who stood at the door and the moment he saw me, all his enthusiasm of opening the door vanished and despite the laughter and repeated reassuarances from his mother and Mahesh's mother, the baby chose to walk out to the empty corridoor towards the lift, with an expression of shock (as if in a psycho movie) - paavam pedichu poyee.

After few minutes he was captured and brought back on his amma's shoulder - he was staring at me incessantly without regard for all the other audience present there. So i talked bit chinese and offered him to hold my little finger - he grasped it without hesitation...well, surprise - uncle is a human being - a big smile blossomed and as if an old buddy, he laughed and a gave a friendly hard slap on my shoulder...his expression then was too funny ....

hmph...neighbourhood of our Mahesh...:D - അവനും പിള്ളാരുടെ മനസ്സാണ്...ചില _______പിള്ളാരുടെ (Fill in the Blanks) :D

Lost and Found

Ever thought of having a search engine that would search in real life and help you to locate lost keys and stuff like that? I was desperate for one today morning.

I am supposed to present 3 cheques to my would-be landlord today evening. As usual I woke up from a nightmare and the fello in my head was reassuring me that the cheque book is lost. How could that be? I always keep all the important documents in my special suitcase - but convinced with my past intuitions, i sleepwalked to the suitcase and did a preliminary search - hehe its missing.

After about 6 or 7 meticulous attempts in searching through every bit of stuff in that suitcase i was even more glad - all my car loan and purchase documents too are gone. (lightning hit - simultaneously snake bit) - nice start for a Wednesday morning- i dint have to worry over which side of the bed i woke up, as i had slept on the floor the previous night.

Now the tension was building - i was already late and had to leave for office, and i needed the cheques if i had to leave. Since i stay at my sisters place, and my sister is on vacation back in India, i was not quite sure where to start.

i called up chechi in India to identify potential safe places the missing stuff could be found - and after half an hour on phone searching in different cupboards and bags the truth sank in - its missing...

Last week i had the sad opportunity to read an article about "how to order around your subconscious mind" and it claimed that, if you give your sub conscious mind a unique name, you can call it to aid you in such difficuilt situations, as it is the curator of our mental memory archives...but unfortunately I had not named my subconscious mind then...

Perhaps under the prompting of my anonymous subconscious mind, i had this silly feeling to check inside the empty carton of the PC stuffed under the computer table - magic - gladly the envelope with all the documents were inside that - i have no idea how it got there!!!


Moral of the story : "കുന്തം പോയാല്‍ കുടത്തിലും തപ്പെണം"

Dolls

It was long time since i met Jiju. We plan to meet up often, but he (responsible family man as he proclaims) will find some excuse by the due date :P. Anyway, yesterday we had a common interest - Checking out the new MIDI rig at the Apple stores in festival city ( A MIDI rig is a little piano that can be plugged to your computers USB port and if you enjoy fiddling with MIDI and mixing music, its a cool device - Jiju was our batches MIDI pro, and being a novice, i have amateur interests in this field).

Image Courtesy : http://www.m-audio.com

We had a good workout effect after walking in the mall for almost half an hour non stop, as we were misdirected by at least 6 customer desks to the I-style stores. After being disappointed by the compatibility of the device in PC, we decided to leave the place and have dinner. On our way back we found this amusing doll exhibition - There were couple of talented doll artists from around the world, hand crafting beautiful dolls out of Clay and these elegant works have its own different moods and themes. I thought to share some photographs taken, as a tribute to the skills of those doll artists.

and then we met the perfect bride for Jiju :D

Below are few cool realistic works displayed in a store in Wafi Mall - these were taken sometime ago,




These artists really concentrate on the details and make sure they deliver excellent pieces of art. Quite impressive.

that's the magic of a BMW

I was randomly flipping through our good old Engineering college adventure snaps today evening, and this picture brought back a funny memory. The event dates back to a January in the year 2000, when our college was celebrating its diamond Jubilee. As part of the celebrations there was a grand exhibition : CETEX 2000.

The exhibition involved the students plausibly explaining the working of the prestigious institutions labs, facilities and other exhibits to gullible visitors. For us Civil batch guys, it was another reason for coming to terms with our new found pastime activity, among other things, avoiding diabetes (Pun intended). We had to clean up sum spider infested fossilized geotech lab and had plenty of spare time which was creatively utilized for gossipping and playing cards etc...

The dedicated lot, especially the team of guys who called themselves "graduates" (Rajit, Amar, Dinu, Bibin, and few others under the guidance and concept of coordinator God Tenny) saved the name of our batch by constructing a floating bridge in the curing tank of our structural lab, which quite successfully managed to float till the end of the exhibition days, complete with its floating restaurant and tiny glowing red LED's and all.

Meanwhile there were few ancillary pavilions of Armed Forces, ISRO space research centre and automobiles, participating in the event at the indoor sports auditorium. So for the younger audience who were forced to admire Maruthi 800's and Ambassadors, the shiny blue BMW exhibit in the automobile pavilion was an eye candy experience and most of us listened to the young gentleman who owned this cool car with great reverence. And did he spare the opportunity? Not a bit...

This young guy, to our great pleasure, was explaining BMW-isms eloquently in heavy western accent. Most of the local audience tried their best to match his accent (but miserably failed to catch on). One curious fellow among the audience was quite amused with the low front bumper of this car, and let go of an innocent query - "sir how come this will manage the potholes on our roads?? - The US accented response was immediate - "that's the magic of a BMW" and he continued explaining the unique suspension mechanism which makes driving a BMW equivalent to gliding...

Later that night, few of us guys were busy with some important "political" discussion in the grand entrance gate of the college, and we heard a loud, heart wrenching scratching sound. The BMW, unaware of the pavement design of the sloping driveway from the main building, tried its best in gliding, but somehow failed to negotiate the royal hump near the gate towards the Ladies Hostel side. Poor guy might have had a heart ache, but nevertheless managed to rev the engine in compensation and screeched away in the direction of Chavadimukku.

Was it just the Bumper or .....?? the mystery continued....

Fond memories of Nachos

Nachos is a mexican snack popular at theatres in the UAE - it consists of fried tortilla chips garnished with slices of pickled jalapeno peppers - and is served with tomato sauce and melted cheese to dip. Yesterday, we had been to the Galleria theatre to watch the movie 'Passenger' & while ordering snacks, my "flexibly calorie conscious" friend Mahesh said NO to cheese, and the guy in the counter compensated by an extra large scoop of chillies...

The movie was gripping and we were bit hungry as well, so the spicy stuff was shovelled in involuntarily in no time...! Infact, if me and Mahesh share any spiritual connection, that is mostly over food...once food is served, we become exceptionally devotional & dedicated. Thus, by the time we had this nice feeling that the chillies were awfully hot, it was tooo late...

Today morning, Mahesh confessed on phone that he was heading home from office and dedicated the trip to yesterdays pepper fiesta ...Unfortunately, some cosmic force is prompting me also to do the same... :( :(

Chef Alen

Recently, due to certain unforeseen circumstances, on reaching home from office, i`m sometimes delegated to help my nephew with his alphabet homework's...

By the time he finishes the 15 or 20 reps of one alphabet, i will be seriously wondering whether or not to marry...hey, little alen is a cool chap and has a creative grasping power at this tender age of 3.5, but he uses this skill to expose all my weaknesses and has developed impossible schemes to test my patience ...

Today was 'C' - i used my latest working tactic of making a serious dumbfounded face and asking repeatedly "monu C ezhuthan ariyilla???" and the ordeal got over fast...hehe play with his pride ;) ..nammude adutha avante kali?..hmm...

I was relieved and returned back to my new found interest in Malayalam blogs - especially the classic funny blogs like thamanu, kodakarapuranam etc.

As an experienced uncle, I cannot ignore the activities happening behind me for long, and alen announced : "monu cookingaa" - i agreed...and continued reading karyamnissaram. Though i was busy, i noticed him shuttling to and fro from the kitchen...(this usually means trouble) and moreover the cooking was happening 'behind' me...out of instinct i did one random check : he had smuggled a plate full of tea powder and had poured water into it...announcement : "monu tee-undakkuva"

i took an evidence photograph in my cell and immediately made a distress call to chechi who was peacefully preparing the dinner. commotion : chechi runs from kitchen - surveys damage & gives few instructions in dramatic tones and returns.

in less than 3 minutes i heard some subtle splashing sound and it was one of the cutest stuff i had seen ...he was carefully balancing a plate full of brown coloured gooey liquid inching towards me......!!!!

kudos to my 6th sense - but the floor was a mess in a matter of micro seconds...

Waterfall & Fountains

Evening began with plans for a movie, and the three of us decided to head for metroplex in downtown. All the displayed movies seemed lousy and having endured the terminator salvation in the gone weekend, we agreed in chorus that we will scoot and instead visit the much hyped Dubai fountain.

The outdoor climate in Dubai is beyond description now a days, even after sunset you dont feel like stepping outside( betwee 50.2 degrees was the recorded maximum temperature yesterday and that too with 100 Percent relative humidity), so entering the cool air conditioned Dubai mall was really a relief thing. Mostly for the population in UAE, the choicest summer destinations/outings are these centrally air conditioned colossal malls.

Naturally, now we wanted to have another peek at the breath taking indoor aquarium, which is the grand attraction of this mall. This is a huge aquarium about 50m x 20m and almost three storey’s tall , filled up with about 10 million litres of water. Here you get to see a pristine deep blue aquarium with more than 33000 living marine animals and “finding nemo” ocean floor ambience. It has a 48 m long transparent tunnel at ground level running through its length and gives you a chance to be up close and personal with the romantic sharks and sting rays.

A little walk from here takes you to another soothing and mind blowing place – the indoor waterfalls - I was seeing this for the first time yesterday and was impressed. This artificial fall is about 3 storey’s high and the gurgling sounds of the water cascading down to the pool is truly relaxing and so natural.

We wanted to enjoy this relaxing atmosphere for a while and chose to try out the Entrecote Café de Paris – which is snugly located at the base of this waterfall phenomenon – the name of the café sure did sound trouble. The friendly steward placed a 2 tiered metal apparatus on the table and tried to explain their wonderful custom of serving some odd salad - strangely this did not excite us much – we enquired if we can have some hot beverages alone. The guy was sorry and mentioned that they don’t allow that. We ended up ordering brownies aux noix and three types of coffee, the names of which would instantly make the reader skip to the next guys blog (ഈശ്വരാ …...പുട്ടും കടലയും കഴിച്ചു നടന്ന പിള്ളാരൊക്കെ ഇപ്പോള്‍ ബ്രൌണീസ് aux noix-e കഴിക്കു ...).

Soon after the Italian adventure we headed to see another inspiring Dubai wonder – the Dubai fountain which is located in the compound of this mall itself. By the way, Dubai mall is located at the foot of the tallest tower Burj Dubai, and this happens to be the prime location of downtown.

The Burj dubai lake was silent with soft music in the open air. To our left side is the beautifully lit up Burj lake hotel and to the right is the still under construction Burj Dubai sky scraper. Some time in the past, I had been to the Burj lake hotel couple times, during its construction and then these neighbourhood were of a typical dusty construction site, but now it has transformed to an adorable place. We waited and waited....no fountains - by the time we had doubts whether the fountains were no more operated for the unpaid electricity bills, the show started.

The lights went dim and music went up – boy, it was one of the most fascinating spectacles I had seen in a long time. It is said that the fountain shoots water to heights of over 150 metres ( about the height of a 50 storey building). And once the fountain is operational, at any given moment about 22000 gallons of water is in the air! The water jets illuminated by terrific lighting, dances in all possible intricate eyecandy 3D patterns you could ever imagine, to the music being played - and you will crave for more once the music stops. We waited for a second round and this time the music changed from western classical to Arabic – once again words fail – you have to see it to believe it.

Being close to the lake, we were soaked in the spray and that was when Mahesh mentioned about the pending sewage analysis of the lakes water. The lakes water had turned greenish recently due to some contamination...it did taste good...well lets find out in the coming days :D

Wonders apart its sickening to think about the huge energy consumption for the maintanence of these stuff and the consequent environmental effects. Well swim on... I offer my hollow apologies to the ecology.

Roads & Radars

For people like me who spent most of their lives in India, there is a period of awe after setting our foot in a highly developed country like UAE – and one such awe-inspiring aspect is its excellent road networks and the wonderful cars speeding on these freeways.

During my initial days in DXB, I once had the opportunity of standing under a road bridge near Jebel Ali, and by being a stationary observer near the highway, i experienced the real momentum of the cars zipping by.. This particular road which connects Dubai and Abu Dhabi is known as Sheikh Zayed Road and is notorious for its fatal collisions (if you are a new driver, the only way to survive this road is to assume that you are cool with speeding) - In fact you feel nothing particular inside a car cruising at 120 or 140 kmph, and this is further damped with the increase in size and power of the car. Dreadful DXB!

I never figured out why Dubai is referred to as DXB, its the international airport code for Dubai - well, googling shows that Dublin airport has the code DUB, may be Dubai was late in setting up her airports - and had to settle for X instead of U, (hmm..as per high school math, X could be anything) or is it because of the X factor of DXB? i rest my case.

Back to roads : Few years back, it was just a matter of few journeys and one would get acquainted with the exact location of radars installed on way, just brake and slow down near a waiting radar and enjoy the remaining stretches at desired speed levels. Bejourn, a German engineer in my previous site used to claim that, by driving above 300kmph on the extreme left or right track, one could puzzle the camera and escape being clicked, useful piece of info, but the current radars and traffic fine system will make you think thrice...the fine multiplies in proportion to the variance from the maximum posted speed limit. The traffic department have recently implemented a new speed radar network in dangerous roads – these sleek networked radars spaced roughly at a kilometer has overlapping detection zones…the driver is forced to keep cool and this also caters for those radar-early-warning detectors some people install in their vehicles. The rumour mills even claimed that these advanced gadgets could identify if the driver is wearing a seat belt!!

Anyway the good news is that the crazy driving and consequentely fatal accidents are on a notable decline & bad news is that poor Mahesh had two violations on same day worth Dirhams 1200 this weekend.

TIP : if you want to be a celebrity, cross a red signal and park in the intersection, one driver of my previous company had this wish list item crossed during a rainy day, the coaster bus he was driving skidded while braking, and turned 180 degrees around, in the middle of a signalized intersection in Abu dhabi, and he had the rare opportunity to face the opposite direction of the road he was supposed to be driving. And the cameras never stopped clicking. Poor guy had a bad time pleading with the traffic police.

hmph… perhaps one of the reason for the speedy recovery of Dubai from the grips of financial crisis could be the revenue generated through traffic fines.

Food festival, Astrology

Wednesday evening me anlal n mahesh planned to meet up and decided to check out the food fiesta-09 in Lulu hypermarket - we couldnt find anything particularly interesting there, other than a couple of ladies cooking frantically in the wide corridor, participating in some cookery competition and a by and large bored audience...

We had food from Salkara - a real nice restaurant that treats you with delicious kerala dishes in Gods own country flavours. Intrigued by the guys in the next table having this mysterious looking beverage, we tried the "special tea"- you get a transparent glass with about 40% black tea topped up with thick milk froth. But unfortunately, after the ritual of stirring it, you are left with normal tea, anyway, i loved the flavour (yummy...for some strange reason i dont like this particular word, awesome is another, and there are lots more in my personal list of unpalatable english words).

Anlal then told us about an astrologer/palmistry expert visiting Dubai, who had predicted and read him precisely sometime in the past. Mostly I regard astrology/palmistry as a pseudo science and further, if it is all written beforehand, there is no point in holding on to the concept of free will. Anyways since our curiosity was stirred, me and Mahesh promptly decided to meet this astrologer in the weekend to have a glimpse of our future. Hope curiosity wont kill our cats...

We did bit of shopping and headed to our favorite hangout spot - the deserted parking lot in Qusais...we tried some fruits from the food festival sitting in the trunk of Mahesh's car, and he was threatening to close the door on us when ever we pulled his leg...mysteriously, mahesh found himself snugly tucked up in the dickey after a while...

Now as we started getting bored, we decided to test the anti theft security system of the altima by allowing mahesh to drive it while the key was outside, the display in the dash shows a "no key" warning, but the expected security feature was a total failure, the engine did not stall and mahesh drove the car around merrily without the key... Later i looked up in the user manual and figured out that, only if the car is switched off, the Vehicle Immobilizer System feature engages and only if all the doors and trunk are locked the anti theft alarm enters its armed phase...useful info...gulp!

(As usual), while mahesh was driving in zig zags thrilled for the failure of the security system, a white 4 wheel drive with an RTA sticker, pulled up, and the suspicious official asked mahesh to show his licence, he thought some friends were practicing driving lessons...the gentleman left the scene once we explained to him the importance of the anti theft testing procedure under progress, thankfully he did not notice the other two cars parked in the middle of the road haphazardly.

So the astrology appointment was before 8:00 PM on friday and we almost made it just before his office closed - we were infact delayed by our unplanned weekend road trip to Sweihan/Al-Ain. All three of us entered the office with the mindset of attending a job interview, and there was this palmist guy with a laptop, a lens and a counch shell. After an eloquent briefing on palmistry basics - he read our palms, one by one - inputs being our zodiac sign and age. Good news for me - Saturn's occlusion effect on Jupiter's blessing is almost going to cease by 10 September 2009.

Gadgets and Guys

Recently I happened to read a fun article in some magazine advising single women, on which type of men they should avoid marrying; much to my amusement, one of the categories was the guys who are obsessed with gadgets ;)

For justice sake we need to write an article on all those goofy article authors who have no other job than writing articles on such dangerous topics. I have temporarily made a decision to deny and refute all the so called 'proven-statistically' articles. Need of the hour is articles that could make life simpler and more realistic.

So our friend bought an Apple i-phone - and we appreciate this bold move promoting positive consumer outlook during the doomed world economic situation, especially as he had reluctantly cancelled his genuine requirement of a laptop couple days back due to mixed signals from stock markets...so let’s categorize this as obsessive impulsive purchasing (OIP) TM, another psychological term impending to be coined.

When asked about the above comparison chart, in particular item 2, which is a standard feature people reasonably would not mind when paying for a gadget worth a decent laptop, the i-phone enthusiast responded emotionally by pointing fingers at recent alarming rate of mobile phone scandals...

well well well....thats a valid cause...not bad, but still an i-phone is a sought after gadget...cool user interface, easy to read screen, and touch screen at its best...Last day the waiter in Rolla Sharavana Bhavan restaurant was staring at me curiously while I was practicing firing a flame torch in this i-phone by blowing air on the touch screen. Little does the waiter know about the fun of creating virtual fire ;)

That evening turned bit dramatic once our i-phone owner stated that his class mate is now the general manager of a renown developer in India. And knowing that Company’s global presence and having watched one of the funniest movies "to harihar nagar" just before that dinner, none of us would agree with the statement, so the whole evening was dedicated to him for we started relating everything to "appukuttan" (the funny character portrayed by Jagdish in the movie). Appukuttan soon turned Thomaskutty and assumed a cold war for next 24 hours - we made up after two days during another dinner and that was when we had to deal with yet another gadget wielding friend of ours - Amal - he got an i-mate PDA - and since his wife is back in Kerala, he is 24/7 busy with a stylus pen scratching zigzags in that gadget.

There is a new genre of strain injury viz, "blackberry thumb" caused by the frequent use of the thumb(s) to press buttons on PDAs, smart phones, or other mobile devices, this condition is known as de Quervian tenosynovitis, said the authentic looking Doctor, in another thumb numbing internet article ( Disclaimer : I take no responsibility for wrong diagnosis of any thumb disease the reader might be having). The cure is relatively simple, stop texting in the device & take a break. Forward me the consultation fees, I accept PayPal, cash...you name it :)

Now having said so much about gadgets, my little nephew dismantled his favorite car and was buzzing around in the living room with the front wheels yesterday evening - and when I stopped him as police, and asked what the matter was - he testified it was his vacuum cleaner... did someone say kids have no idea about gadgets? He could login to the computer at age of 2, type his name as password, play games, change options in games, watch movies.......and furthermore, he could locate and open the desired applications in a symbian phone in a matter of seconds - (that reminds me of how I painstakingly created my yahoo email account during college days with the aid of our then internet savvy friend Abhilash Vijayan. Internet was apparently at its infancy in kerala households those days).

Poor little nephew...

ignorance is a bliss !

as per our article he is going to have a tough time dating & matchmaking!!!

More movie reviews

Red chillies :

Here Mohanlal is the all knowing intelligent underworld phenomenon, who kills cold bloodedly, but has a good soul (as usual). The movie features a gang of deranged girls (the red chillies), running an all girls FM radio (sponsored by hero) and there is this song “mala peyyanu” sung by them in a pub which fused my cranium… now whenever I see that song in TV, it goes mute. Thanks to the director – no romance for Mohan lal this time – what if he danced again? Anyways the movie was mysterious and the mystery still continues – why did they make such a movie? Why did we watch it?

Ayan :

Here our hero Surya is the pet of his mom as well as the street he lives (as usual) – an educated young man who don’t want to pursue a normal government job, but does international smuggling for the kicks – he does impress us by the tricks deployed to smuggle stuff through the air port screening. Naturally parents might be tempted to ask whether smuggling is a good message for the younger audience – all the philistines please understand that our hero smuggles only harmless stuff like pirated movie CDs, diamonds etc... and whenever he gets free time, he helps customs/narcotic guys to bust illegal drug trafficking. Now the movie has some good action sequences, gory drug trafficking methods, and of course love at first sight – One interesting change we noted is that now-a –days the romance song locales have shifted to Africa. The movie has some really really funny scenes, provided you know Tamil :( - When we asked Rajumon why he was laughing uncontrollably, he could not provide a convincing answer most of the time – sadly none of us are proficient in Tamil. Hero kills villain in the final scenes and gets a government job in narcotics department on special recommendation for his genuine skills and lives happily ever after with our heroine Tamanna – may be its okay to kill bad guys.

And finally the best of three : Sagar Alias Jacky

Only similarity we noted with Ayan is that our “Reloaded” hero Mohan lal also does not support smuggling of drugs or arms, only diamonds please!!! The plot was already familiar to all of us due to a funny email which was circulating among us friends in the past weeks – We knew it was a killer movie and watched only because Amal was paying for the tickets. The email had warned us that the whole movie is about Mohanlal walking from his car…then shooting…again walking from plane….stabbing…again walking…hitting goons...Jyothirmayi dancing…again walking…it rains….Lal continues walking under umbrella…. Bhavana and Lal performs a love duet (Thanks again - no dance)…walking…shooting…walking…slitting villains neck…walking….blast another villains boat (in between one can listen to upbeat techno background music and get to see all the latest luxury cars and four wheel drives). While leaving the theatre Cijo was laughing hard (infact the rest of us were crying hard) when he overheard the comment of a fellow victim, that the reason why Mohanlal is smiling at us smugly in the final stills (when the credits were scrolling) was because we had paid to watch this movie. sigh...

RTA never knew

All the aspirants giving a driving test in the UAE will have one to three stories to share (on an average) about their triumph - Its one of the most popular ice breaking topics between strangers meeting in the emirates. I really don’t want to narrate my sorry story here. My graduation from the transport authority was only after the 6th successful failure, spanning exactly one year from my first failed test. The waiting period for the forthcoming test is the most excruciating affair - rest all was a typical cycle - pay-fail-blame RTA(Roads and Transport Authority)!!!

Why would I blame RTA?? Well, I will share some interesting driving lessons I had undertaken in rural Andhra Pradesh - in a village called Ulavapadu. Ulavapadu is a coastal village in Ongole district, which falls in the Chennai-Hyderabad route. That was my first civil engineering job, with Simplex Concrete Piles (I) Ltd. I had a life changing exposure to a myriad of people & cultures during my short time in Simplex!

I and Bini had joined Simplex in August of 2002 and our project comprised construction of some 72 kilometer roads/bridges, as part of the prestigious Prime Ministers Golden Quadrilateral initiative, connecting the four metros of India.

That was the time of the year, when tropical cyclones attacked occasionally in the coastal areas where our road project was being executed. Within the first couple of weeks, I was notorious for bringing ill luck to the two new sites I was initially assigned to - both sites were temporarily closed due to rain and flooding. The highly superstitious elder men looked upon me as a harbinger of doom. The third site had an even dreadful fate! Heard they discovered the foundation pcc after the floods in an archaeological excavation under thick layers of sludge. This was a skew bridge over a twisted brook falling in the highway alignment. To my great solace, the site clearance had revealed remains of a lost cemetery (to be specific, skulls and bones) and great variety of snakes (so much for flaura and fauna) - I would be dropped in the site office every morning and will be picked up in the evening. The site office was a tent with few basic amenities like tables and chairs, overlooking a beautiful mango orchard and a semi dried up brook. I had to endure a whole day in the jungle all alone with one or two excavators to stare at. In a very short period, I developed heartfelt feelings for guys sentenced in jails. Though I sensed stagnation, I had made up my mind not to give up early, this stage was probably insignificant in the big scheme of things ;) - it was indeed.

I had plenty of time at hand and nothing to do then - In a bid to save my sanity, I indulged in doodling and designed car prototypes in my notepad - sadly no one in automobile industry knew about my existence then. Once I got bored with cars, I became friends with the Telugu Hitachi operator Ramu (Ramudu oka manchi baludu ?= Ramu is a good boy) - a slender fellow, hardly in his teens, and made a deal with him to teach me to operate the Hitachi. He was more than glad to educate his great site Engineer and soon I learned how to operate this complicated machine - actually it’s more like a video game - joystick for rotating the cabin/boom - another joystick for moving the stick and bucket and simple push-pull lever for moving forward or backward, but you need practice to use them all synchronously - I even loaded few tippers in the waves of enthusiasm. Thankfully no major accidents happened. After the foundation concrete was poured, the floods saved me from there and I ended up in a normal half a kilometer long bridge site (Paleru Bridge).

Unfortunately RTA examiners never knew about my versatile skills, and confused me with one of the ordinary. Each failed test made me more humble, humbler, humblest? After the tests, though one will be sure of the outcome intuitively, I never gave up hope and waited till the four letter word (fail or pass) was written on my assessment sheet. One of the test examiners wrote "fali" instead of "fail" in the sheet and how I yearned to point out the misspelling. I refrained from doing that only for being a firm believer of Murphy's Laws - God bless, somehow i didnt fali in my seventh test.

Emirates

The first face that comes to my head when I see an Emirates flight is ? Yeah most of you guessed wrong - it is not one of the sweet cabin crew the flight is famous for ;) ...but one of the gentlest persons I have ever met in my life - Mr. Sunil. We had interacted hardly for 4 months while I stayed in Qusais, but his great company helped a lot to endure the ‘hardships’ of those days in a composed manner. Hey, talking about cabin crew, once I flew with Emirates - Trivandrum>Dubai - it was so plush - excellent hospitality - in fact I take great care to avoid the forced hospitality in our motherly air India flights. Most of those aunties are so concerned with hospitality that, passengers often have a gut feeling to adopt all emergency precautions, including wearing life jackets and sit with a blank face! Phew... some of them are so serious - their way or runway!!!

Sunil deals with aircraft maintenance design issues - and so he always had cool anecdotes about one of my most adored inventions of mankind - air craft’s. And thanks for him in making me aware of how fragile an aircraft is ....sigh!!! Being an eloquent story spinner/teller Sunil always kept me entertained - for instance, one of the horror story I remember is about how the pilots of Air Transat Flight 236, glided and landed their air craft safely with an empty fuel tank and no power supply - the flight ran out of fuel over the Atlantic Ocean with more than 300 passengers aboard. (YouTube has a terrific video recreation of this accident - highly recommended). And Sunil also cleared most of my naive doubts like whether an air craft has a reverse gear etc...(Air craft has no such gear - for reverse maneuvers a towing vehicle is used). Okay I did not trust all the numbers he quoted, once I had a bad experience of sharing the number of pilots and flights in Emirates, with my two other genius friends who started arguing and later we had to negotiate and reach a settlement :P

Sunil having spent most of his life in Abu dhabi, was relatively new in Dubai and had a great fascination for car navigation (GPS) and soon introduced that to me, I was impressed at how the navigation system would instruct you to take which lane, which left and so on once the coordinates were fed into the system. Pretty cool! And one day we set off with the voice assisted satellite navigator, to book a flat for him in sharjah . Poor navigator was at a loss for words, once we recognized that most of the roundabouts in the old map were now bridges - but luckily I knew the place in Al Khan, and we made it to the destination. Fascinated by GPS and its ability to locate spots like nearby petrol pumps, theatres, parking, shopping etc.. I had that in mind when I finally decided to replace my old phone with an N82 - but I stopped using that feature in the phone soon - I had enough pleasant experiences, me and expert navigator Anish once had a tough night in Abu Dhabi, lost in unknown desert roads trying to reach one place called Al Raha for a get together - Anish never figured out how the GPS in N82 worked but kept on assuring me that we were going in the right direction!! I started relying heavily on route boards since then.

Sunil has promised me and my wife a treat :) (of course once I get married). Yesterday me and Mahesh being chronic bachelors till day, were deriving inspiration from great men like Atal Bihari Vajpayee, Dr A.P.J. Abdul Kalam etc...who never married - and so guess you will have to wait for some more time Sunil ;). Mahesh (here in after called as Raju mon) plans to adopt an orphan baby and look after it.

Anish and some pranks

Another April 1st - Another Hero!

Let’s all give a standing ovation to......(pause)......one and only ..... Anish K Vijayan !!! The smiling dude in the picture above !!! (betwee the Kodak expression in the picture was when somebody asked him "ennaaalum nee itra valiya mandan aayirunnooda???"

This prank serves for payback as well.
I had once been to a 'matrimonial-meeting-the-girl-in-person-event' in Dubai - and it had turned a funny one. Few of us friends were on a weekend visit to meet old colleagues in Abu Dhabi - and I got these calls from home and from the girls relatives in UAE to arrange a meeting on the same day at their Dubai residence - By the time me and Anlal dropped all friends in their rooms, it was late night. Frankly i was not at all in a mindset for a pennukanal at that time as it was almost 11 pm and i was exhausted by the day - enduring a sandstorm in Marina and with all the driving that started from almost 2 o clock or so. Imagine, I even had to purchase new pair of dress and change inside the car itself for the ocassion...The whole episode turned funny with us becoming very friendly to the girls relatives too soon...and we were pretty sure about the doomed outcome :) - since Anlal had accompanied me and was witnessing all that happened, the story was in gulfnews on time...after 2-3 days i got a call from a strange number and the person introduced himself as "the girls uncle" - I was forced to speak to him with respect...only to find out later that, it was this very dude Anish - and from then on, whenever he used to call me, he introduces himself as this uncle.

Another time, for a dinner party, i had made another blunder at a valet parking - with all these trusty friends in a new car with its incredible push button start(read "naya system") , i made the mistake of attempting to explain the ignition 'naya system' to the experienced staff of the hotel. dangg!!!...the guy who parks Porsche's and BMW's on a daily basis smiled at me as i began my endeavor.........Anish never forgot this event and reminds me diligently whenever he gets a chance!!

So plan ke muthabik, I explained Anish yesterday about the (imaginary) prospective business oppurtunity available in my current project and asked him to meet in person today at my office - he had requested me to arrange some safety stuff for his sub contracting firm some time back - Today afternoon, poor Anish drove all the way from Jebel Ali to Al Twar(Opposite ends of Dubai).

I was just being God's instrument - cuz "ippolokke daivom appappo thirike kodukkum" - Morning Anish had played practical pranks with friends at his office - Worst was when he informed Naushad that another cable was broken in site! Naushad being in charge of the site has a tragic history of breaking five live cables despite the prevalent final warnings from department! He jolted to the site only to find a smug faced Anish there.

I did my role and did finishing touches by spreading the joy to his victims ( did some wise guy say - "happiness is for sharing??!!") ...But seeing his "laugh or cry ?? cry or laugh?? "face, I felt really sorry for him, though I was not able to suppress my laughter for a while. To appease my guilt I took him to the contractors store and lucky him - he got business in no time!!! But he has reduced the previously promised commission drastically, guess commission is no more a criteria here :P

Rain drops for thought

I reached office fairly early today : 6:20 AM - and the light drizzle had already transitioned to torrential scales...(when do I get to have my own office so that I could sleep all way up to 10....?? hmm.. need to seriously brainstorm on this one). My initial mood of accomplishing 2 particular tasks at work did not seem appealing any more and I was overwhelmed by the familiar cozy rainy day emotions.

The thunderstorms had started the previous day evening and we were all in the balcony watching kids freaking out in the rain, my sis almost got lucky when the chocolates she dropped from the third floor didn’t hit the kids below...boy, that could have been fatal (thanks to the wind shear :P ). She wanted to give the next door Pakistani kids some chocolates, but they were already down by the time the chocolates were procured - our Pakistani neighbor Sameena was leaving UAE due to the aftermath of financial crisis on their family business, her hubby decided to send the family back - they have 3 cute little kids, 1 boy n 2 girls - the 2 little sisters are really pretty with blue eyes n all and my little nephew Alen gets all shy n devotional when they occasionally show up at home :).

Sis was bit upset as her sweet friend next door was leaving - I hardly ever got to see this neighbour as she is an extremely traditional Muslim lady - she will run for life if she detects a stranger in an approximate radius of 500m. Since my sis does not grasp Urdu language and Sameena does not understand much of my sisters English, their shortlived friendship was pretty eventful :).

Back to rain - though I`m tempted to write about the romantic, nostalgic aspects of rainy days, I must temporarly annihilate those, read on -

Rain brings a refreshing mood to the residents blessed generously with harsh dusty summers here. The charm wears off pretty soon, once their cars struggle coping with the new responsibility of performing as boats - rain does cause havoc in the desert infrastructure - the drainage system usually will be clogged up with sand when nature randomly decides to send rains in this part of the world - causing large-scale flooding of roads and low lying terrains(read - flooding enough to drown the exhaust pipes of an average car). Last January people were stranded in major highways for almost a day - the morning journey to office ended up in flooded roads and the cars wont move, no matter what! Imagine this - no drinking water, no food and one cannot step out into the muddy water for a whole day - thankfully my boss allowed a day off that day. God bless him and his family ;).

But, that said, rain is so dear to me - a soothing reminder of that beautiful place I left back - the land of monsoons...missing all those rain clouds and associated memories :(

Convocation

Talk about generation gap.

The little blue colored invitation on the table reads - 'Bluebells nursery, requests the pleasure of your company at the, BLUEBELLS 6TH BATCH GRADUATION CEREMONY 2009.'

hehe, now who is being sarcastic here? - My 3.5 year old nephew Alen stops at "con...." and looks at me with a cute face full of doubt and curiosity, when I tease him to pronounce 'convocation'. So we have "graduation" from playschool now - probably a kid will be graduated on or before birth, by the time Alens will have his own kids - as if, next generation does not have enough reasons for hoping. :P

Couple months back, they had a "mini Olympics" in the playschool, which still brings a grin. 3 kids were taking part in a race - the idea is to run about 20 meters in the demarcated courtyard to collect matching fruits, shapes etc, resembling the ones in their hands. Half way through the race, parents started clapping so as to encourage the kids, and on hearing the applause, one of the contestants aborted his mission, faced the crowd beaming with pride, and started clapping along with...:P – and lolz, most of the kids, while collecting their prizes, were wailing uncontrollably, unable to suppress their emotions!!!

I have asked my sis to maintain a diary for little Alen's playschool life, so that she could blackmail him when he is bigger. The kid accompanied with actions, narrates how Lavina Sreenivasan(class mate) saved his day from class bullies, how his teacher picked him and made him to sit along with her for being persistently naughty etc...& you should see how he blushes as he is interrogated about his crush Dabitha (school van mate).

hmm…by this pre KG training, he has picked up few skills viz, inventing his own language to fill gaps, loud bathroom singing, ensuring gifts from his mumma for going to school and above all, he has become more English language oriented. At home we all decide to talk to him in English from time to time, but find ourselves surrendering to the resistance from our all knowing mother tongue Malayalam in no time - perhaps there's some negative spell over the family.... :P

Police

The day started off very pleasant - me, mahesh n anlal (DAMn or MAD ?) as we fondly call the trio), had planned a weekend getaway to any place far from the sore buildings. Just after flinging stuff in the trunk and starting the engine - I was delighted to see the broken front windshield - something had fell on the glass from the flat above...nice...my daughter is hurt (my friend Jiju regards his car as his daughter, and you should listen to his melting voice as he says "ente mol"...well, I wouldn’t drive my daughter over a curb and turn her handicapped...Lol he did that couple months before - dad dozed off!

999 - Emergency no. nobody picks up - hmm...its weekend.
next practical idea is to visit nearest police station for reporting vandalism. In UAE if u need to mend any damage to your vehicle in a garage/service centre, you should have clearance paper from the traffic police - green paper ( not your mistake), red paper (your mistake). Our trip was now being delayed - dragged my friend Anlal and rushed to the station - the guy there asked us to show up in the afternoon.

After our trip we returned to the same police station. The customer service guy asked us to wait in the lobby - unlike police stations back in our land, here the ambience is like any other decent office. There were some snack-beverage vending machines to our side - so, we had coffee and like good citizens dropped the plastic cups in the nearby bin. A bit while later, a young Arabic speaking officer in uniform, almost in his teens came and used the vending machine adjacent to the beverage one, and that was when it struck us...!!!...we had mistaken the swing door of that vending machine as trash bin and had dropped the used coffee cups there - exactly where the guy would now probe his hands to collect his chips and chocolate........................................!

we looked at each other....heyy..no, no, no... the coffee cups wont be thaaat warm...and observed the guy, trying not to display the mixed feelings on our faces. We were giving live commentary in Malayalam, looking as innocent as possible. A casual onlooker would not doubt if we were worried more about who the next prime minister would be, in the 2009 general elections...in fact we were concerned only about one thing - would it be politically "safe" to laugh at a police officer inside a police station? or not to??? soon that poor guys surprise turned to disgust as he passionately discovered the evidence.....thankfully, he did not make a scene and instead made sure no one noticed and left the extra stuff where he found those, and walked off with an air of dignity...

probably this crime does not qualify for an arrest... ?

the interrogation by another officer regarding the broken wind shield did not take much long - he was very polite in asking me "shall I write your mistake?" - I was surprised, hey, I had been behaving so politely, opening all doors for him and stuff like that...so I looked in his eyes and said romantically - "please..." (as sweet as i could manage)...and he retorted rudely "shu please??" - aware of my fluent Arabic skills, I smiled at him :) - (all I can say in arabic with confidence is "ana fyahamtha aish thagoola!!!" - I`m not sure if this has the same meaning in Arabic as I understand it)

after the little drama, the gentleman gave me green paper - doesn’t make any difference cuz, be it red or green - insurance is going to pay...

Valentines day

Saturday, February 14, 2009 7:32 AM
From: mahesh@******ams.com

To: dee***@yahoo.com
Cc: anlalk****as@yahoo.co.in

Dear Deep,

My Hearty condolences for yet another unsuccessful Valentine's Day.Hope your next Valentine's Day will be different.

Regards,

Mahesh

I was split into laughter reading the first mail in my inbox today morning!! Instantly i expressed my deep concern for him in the reply mail, as we both can be considered as prospering non valentines (dis valentines? unvalentines?...whatever)...

I was never influenced by valentines day during my adolescence or my entire life (to be modest). ha...just another of those bloated commercialized days - having nothing to do with romance or love for that matter. hmm...mmm.. such acute rejection of valentines day by me as an insensible idea does not help much - as usual during the past couple of days, all newspapers, magazines & TV had their coercion tactics, to instil guilt for the shortage of romance in our boring lives. I was so impressed to watch the new ATLAS jewellery commercial in which the guy who says "jana kodikalude viswastha sthapanam" was wearing a romantic purple dress and proposed his inspiring bidding. This ad can be considered the second reason for not buying more gold for my imaginary valentine...first reason being the current market price - AED 106 per gram (converts to Rs 1397)...truly romantic...i would opt for a rose and a heartfelt kiss instead ;)

During engineering college days few of us guys (who scorned valentines day for unknown reasons) developed a new day to counter valentines day - The Jilted Lovers day - or JLUentines day...The fun fact remains that the ratio of guys to girls in our batch was 1:3 and still almost 80% of the guys were active members of this union.

Umesh won 1st prize in the poem writing competition. My poetry attempt turned bit complicated and failed to qualify as a poem :(. Umesh, who had an inclination to literature, was too romantic those days, I even remember his analogy of intense spiritual romance, which he revealed to few of us animatedly during a tea session in sallap restaurant near EBC "eda..its like consuming hot green chillies with boiling tea"... and not to mention someones admiration for the romance of two teenage lizards back in his room, which was one of the funniest anecdotes those days - (That reminds me of one awful commercial i saw sometime back in youtube - pretty sad one).

apologies, if i offended any of you valentine enthusiasts...
Have a cheerful valentines day :)

update : http://www.thesun.co.uk/sol/homepage/news/article2233878.ece - valentine surprise!!! No comments as I`m at a loss for words.

KV Pattom 1985-1997

Kendriya Vidyalaya, Pattom, Trivandrum – I spent twelve long years (Ist through XII th standards 1985 - 1997) in this school and little did I know then, that termites of time will eat up most of the specific details… some faces, events, voices, and so on...etched in the mental canvas though faded, should help…Let me add some music for effect..

The music takes me back to the assembly ground, girls and boys clad in the white and navy blue uniform, aligned in separate lines - classified into 4 houses - Raman, Tagore, Bapu and Vivekananda. Little Deep hated the torture of standing in the scorching sun and counted impatiently whenever the ordeal got extended. Instantly the embarrassing events I can recollect related to assembly are ...


(1). Being detained in the assembly ground with 2 other fellow criminals in 4th standard for making paper air craft’s 

(2). Singing one extra verse of "hum honge kamyaab ek din" in all its glory, when rest of the assembly had finished and there was pin drop silence - (pallavi padi kazhinjaal anu pallavi padenam ennu enikku nirbandam aayirunnu...) being a music enthusiast was never easy.

Nevertheless, if I get few goose bumps & a drop of tear welling up in my eyes listening to the national anthem, I can proudly give credits to the upbringing we had in Kendriya Vidyalaya. The prayer song of "Asathoma sadgamaya....daya kar daan vidya ka" would be followed by pledge, news, announcements, patriotic song, a demo speech by late Kurup sir and then national anthem on a standard day... on Mondays the navy blue part of the uniform was replaced by whites and we had to attend mass PT sessions...forced drill.


The best period, without doubt, was games period (i was not a great sports guy then, but loved enjoying the fresh air and roaming around and discovering stuff– and towards high school, all sports I can remember is being a football defender having chit chats with goalie Mani and may be Harish and some failed volleyball shoots ...

Next qualifier in leisure list can be Yoga (the slender Yoga sir coped our tantrums, probably by implementing his Yoga expertise - the funniest was when he would enquire "who is humming there??" as the boys in various asanas would abruptly stop their intentional high pitched group humming, without moving a brow...glancing innocently at each other in disbelief - who?? who??

I liked all Language subjects which took me to fantasy worlds (except Appukuttan sir`s Sanskrit - "Ekasmin vane ekaha crouncha mithunaha asthi??....".okies termite strikes...aham gachami....). Unlike most others I loved Art period, for that always seemed the long term career plan for little Deep...and so art sir Mr.Vasanthan was a role model then...No wonder I related well to some scenes in the movie "taare zameen par".


There were few teachers whom I remember with nostalgia - Shobha miss (Primary English), Shyamala madam (High school English), Gopalakrshnan sir (History), Cicy ma'm (Biology)...to name a few and then there were the ones who stirs mixed feelings (dominantly horror) - Rajamma teacher(Primary maths), Thankachi ma'm (High school math) who was soo sharp to pin point the restless lot esp. Roy Sebastians "viru viruppu" - & selected few of us got to sit adjacent to the teacher...honors for laughing at a pals joke :D…(incidentally all happen to be mathematics teachers, so do forgive my arrogance, ( I had an exclusive relationship with math - and this is beyond scope of this blog - I hated that subject, especially after primary – and see, my intuitions were right...I never found any use for integration, differentiation, complex numbers or series...etc in my entire career - thankfully we have calculators and excel for everything else)

As little kids, few of us used to make "sets" and I remember our set including Roy, Anand, Krishnakumar etc scurrying around the toilet block and the huge wild chiku tree near the primary Assembly ground after lunch break - some tom and jerry game. unit tests, half yearly exams, board exams all doesn’t create much feelings now, but it was not the case then...the relief of last day of exams and the ecstacy of embracing the anticipated holidays are beyond words - we used to play holi with the remaining ink in the fountain pens on the white shirts of buddies or have a game of cricket with the exam pad, a paper ball and 3 lines on some wall.


Hey so many events and faces are surfacing and this would get flooded - Namboodiri sirs tuitions (laughter club) & Apparao’s sirs IIT standard tuition's (guess Ayaskanth was the only guy who benefited), class bullies, sarcastic and instant jokes of Roy, Unnikrishnan, Prakash etc..ever enthusiastic sujith who used to cajole me to give touch ups to our raman house display stuff...the times with Roy, PP n Chethan in class - the guy sitting at the edge of the bench usually ended up as a projectile at unexpected moments...couple of unsaid crushes and the associated innocent romantic musings, Sports days, annual days, CCA meetings, the journey to and fro & times in Marian college, Kottayam for KV Youth festival, Fandango festivals at Kovalom, the journeys in crowded KSRTC buses or CISF buses, cartoon strips passed during class hours, The library ma’m and her books – tinkles, amar chitrakadhas, Enid blyton, Hardy boys.... Alice madams "say, whatever it is"...combined studies with Dennis, Vishak palan, Kiran, Hilarious times spent in making plaster of paris model of a volcano and some other thermocol model at Karthik's house. nausea inducing mice dissections in bio lab, unplanned experiments in Chemistry labs – burettes , pippetes, test tubes, H2SO4..the progress cards and the tensions of getting it signed...shared lunches..the nick names we called each others and teachers...The walks back to home with Rajesh & Vandana during primary days (will try to update from time to time to include all the missing characters...)


Dedicating this piece of blog to all the teachers who tried their best to help us understand the world better, tolerating our tantrums and struggles & to all the friendships made, mended, broken, forgotten during those innocuous days spent at KV Pattom....probably there were few painful and bitter events too, unjustified then - but smile inducing now...but then do I bother to spoil the euphoria of selective nostalgia :)...no ways...be it any mind numbing derivation, we always had dusters to clean up the black board!!!

Image Courtesy: Sanal Kumar - Facebook

Some class photographs :
http://picasaweb.google.com/domainDeep/GrowingUpInKendriyaVidyalaya#

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School Website :
http://www.kvpattom.nic.in/