Aravindante Athidhikal

Though the movie "Aravindante Athithikal" begins in sadness, it proceeds to humourous terrain quickly. Srinivasan, Vineeth Srinivasan, Aju Varghese, Urvashi, Premkumar and others make the middle portion of the movie funny. But the last half  an hour turned out to be a bore. I did not feel good about the feel good ending. Through the movie, the ending was hinted by many characters and I watched in dread as the movie went through the expected zones of twists and unsurprising surprises. The two high points in the movie are 

1. The song "Rasathi": I love this song and the way it is taken. I like Vineeth Srinivasan's singing in this song as in many other.

2. The "24 hour running hot water" sequence. I am not sure if this scene has already appeared in another movie but I found the interpretation of the phrase "24 hour running hot water" funny. I will watch the movie again just for the sequence.

Ēkaṭi rēla yātrā

Though I had slept late the previous night, I woke up earlier than I wanted to. Fortunately, it was later than my usual wake up time. I decided to get up and take care of the morning duties. The Indian style toilet resembled the Indian roads during monsoon. So I had no choice but to use the western style toilet. I stepped in with the mantra that I have repeatedly evoked while facing disgusting situations -  "disgust is nothing but a feeling". Composting has helped me assimilate this mantra by making me understand that the disgusting and smelly decomposing vegetables ultimately turn into beautiful manure. I walked into the toilet and did the job I had to do. There was the minor complexity of the mug being fixed to the wall using a small chain on my left hand side but I believe I handled the situation dexterously.

On getting back to my seat I realized everyone was asleep still. I went up to my berth and went back to sleep. I woke up when a fellow passenger's phone rang. From the previous night's events I had realised that the fellow was quite a fellow and he lived up to being a fellow by attending the call on the speaker. A young voice asked him what he was doing. The voice sounded shocked when he said that he was sleeping. She exclaimed "but it's 10 o clock".  He responded with a nonchalant "yes, we slept late last night". Now it was my turn to be shocked. I looked at my watch and found that the time was 9:05 am.

I find it interesting that I write these words about the fellow sitting right next to him. 

In a few minutes, every one got up and the middle berths came down. Everyone sat down and started staring and meddling with their mobiles. I took out my headphones and started listening to songs as I looked through my Facebook wall. Ian Gillian was struggling to sing "Black Knight" to a bunch of screaming audience. I started watching the aisle at intervals for breakfast. The choice for breakfast was limited - bread omelette, bread cutlet and upma-vada. The pantry car was manned by people from the north of the country, who found it difficult to pronounce upma and vada let alone make it. Bread and cutlet seemed an awful combination. Years of eating cutlet has helped me realize that the quality of a cutlet can either be good or bad and in most cases it is bad. So I waited for "braidomlate" to arrive.

Opeth's Blackwater park came on and suddenly and quite unexpectedly a feeling of bliss came over me. It was raining outside and most lights within the compartment were off. Water droplets ran down the window drawing zigzag lines; fortunately on the outside. The bleakness of the song matched the bleakness around. I decided to listen to the whole album. As the songs came on, a chaiwallah came by. The co-passenger ordered for "two teas". When he received the cups, he looked at it with disdain. He asked the chaiwallah "why only half a cup? Why don't you fill it up?" He did not get a response. He gave back one of the cups and said "this is too little; fill it up". I too got a cup of tea. As I sipped the tea, I realized that it was not tea but masala chai. As is usually the case, the masala chai tasted like everything other than tea. But I was happy to let the warm liquid travel to my gut. 

Finally, the food I was looking for arrived. My travels over the past few months have made me realize that bread-omelette is served differently in different trains. In one case, it contained two slices of bread and an omelette. During the onward journey, I was surprised to find three pieces of oily potato fries and a seven small green balls that looked like peas. On that occasion I had stuffed the omelet, potato and peas within the slices of bread and chomped them. This time they had thrown in a small pack of butter to the contents mentioned earlier. I looked at the butter pack suspiciously. It carried the name of a popular brand on it but the package looked suspiciously thin. It opened easily and I spread the butter on one of the slices. The butter looked surprisingly genuine. Asian paints could have used the yellow of the butter to represent "mera wallah yellow". I tasted the butter; it tastes genuine. I reached the conclusion that the butter was fake. The other items were not branded. Here I forget the packet of ketchup which is also usually provided too. I have never understood the Indians obsession with ketchup. We like to immerse everything in ketchup. Omlette - ketchup, bread - ketchup, Hakka noodles - ketchup, puffs - ketchup, pasta - ketchup, samosa - ketchup. Personally I can never forgive people for murdering the samosa in ketchup.

I placed the omelette on the slice of bread with butter spread over it. I placed sad pieces of potato and peas over the omlette and enclosed the mess with the remaining slice of bread. I bit a corner of the gruesome sandwich and enjoyed the different flavours running around my mouth. At that moment it did not matter to me that most of the ingredients could be adulterated or fake. I think we have to accept that human beings have moved to the next phase of evolution. We have now the ability to live on absolute crap. We eat crap, breathe crap and drink crap. This does not bother us for we can exercise and pop some pills into our mouths.

The man besides me asked a lady co-passenger "are you a Nepali?" She looked at him for a moment without answering. The man persisted. "Where are you from?" She hesitated for a moment before answering "from Jharkhand". The man seemed perplexed as he said "from Jharkhand!". By now, another lady co-passenger started sharing family gossip with someone over the phone. Her husband listened intently and occasionally provided information that she had missed. From time to time she said "we are Brahmans" or "at least the boy was a Brahman". The curious man's wife observed the conversation keenly and when her husband asked if she wanted fish for lunch, she refused by saying "I will not have fish in front of them. Did you not hear her speak?" She had eggs for lunch and complained to her husband about its tastelessness later.

The train's running late by three hours and it is refusing the make up the delay. The 27 hour journey promises to extend by another 4 hours. 

A rainy day

As the bus passed the group of shops a small board caught his attention. It announced "Best clinic wanted doctor". For a moment, he wondered if the best clinic had found the wanted doctor and the reason the doctor wanted for. The clinic did not seem much like a clinic and to top it it did not have a doctor; that too in the past tense. So how was it considered a best clinic? He let the silliness of the moment pass. He heard the little girl in pink call his name. He looked around and found her smiling at him. She pointed at her friend and said "In the mornings, I sleep on her lap and in the afternoons she sleeps on my lap". He smiled and said "That's nice! There is no better place to rest your head than on a friend's lap." The little one changed the topic abruptly by saying "Look! Her bag's pink and so is mine." She and her friend spent the next few minutes identifying every pink object near them. He listened to them with a smile on his lips and provided the concluding remark "So much pink! I think we should call this bus 'the pink bus'". The two of them giggled with happiness and repeated "pink bus" a number of times. He smiled and looked out of the window at the wet landscape crawling past.

That afternoon, he sat in a corner of the classroom and looked at the centre of the campus through the windows. The centre being the centre was the lowest point of the campus and hence rain water from different parts of the campus congregated there. Two sequences of stones, each perpendicular to the other peeped out of the water. These small islands provided limited amount of safety from water for the human feet and the slippers that adorned them. The children had been warned of the ill effects of rain. They were reminded to wear rain gears and to keep themselves off the outside. But as researchers have found some of the children possess a complementary circuit between their ears. So they indulged in the exact opposite. 

A set of seven years old walked up through the water before turning around and walking right back. They turned right, walked a bit, turned around and came back. They, then turned left, walked a few steps, turned around and came back. They continued such maneuvers for many minutes. At all times, they took care to keep their feet submerged in water and when they took a foot off the water, they ensured if re-entered the water with some force. They squealed and screamed as the water splashed about. The rain fell on their heads at a steady drizzle. A girl, unlike the boys, used the stones to walk across the stones. She took care that that the water did not wet her red shoes. When she reached the last stone she stopped and looked at the water-less ground for a moment. The ground was just out of reach for her. She took the longest stride she could but could not cross the water. Her red shoes landed on the water with a sploch. She waved her right hand in annoyance and walked looking at her wet red shoes.

An adult followed the girl. She walked briskly from stone to stone with an umbrella held above her head. When she reached the centre of the path, she paused abruptly and as a result nearly lost her balance. She turned unsteadily and decided to use the path perpendicular to her initial path. The stones of this path were placed at some distance from the stone on which she was standing. She stretched her right leg and managed to land her foot on one of the stones. Almost instantly she lifted her left leg off the stone and placed it on the stone ahead of the stone on which her right left was placed. She had changed her direction of motion successfully in a matter of two seconds. 

The boys continued playing in the water unaware of the complex maneuver attempted by the children and adults walking on the stone.

Dining hall dreams

"Today being last working day of the term we will have vada for breakfast and gulab Jamun during lunch".

An excited buzz passed through the crowd. The people on the periphery listened to and watched the crowd with smiles across their lips. The announced had to shout a few demands for silence before the crowd quietened down. Their voices went silent but their minds chatted quietly through eyes and smiles. It was not the vada that generated the excitement. Obviously! 

As they walked into the dining hall they were to shocked to find that the breakfast consisted only of vadas, They loved vadas but only when it was placed besides idly or pongal. Vada by itself did not seem like a breakfast. They stared at the plates consisting of three vadas being threatened by a growing pool of chutney. One of them said wryly "Whadda breakfast!" A little later, another voice raised a query tentatively "If breakfast consist only of vada, will the lunch only consist of gulab jamuns". The surrounding faces lighted up for a moment.

Am I old? Yes you are

A link to a news in Tamil appeared on the college mates Whatsapp group. The headlines said "Old woman dies in elephant attack". The Tamil word used for the old woman was moothatti. Underneath the news link, the sender had written "did you notice the moothatti's age? It is about time for you fellows to act your age". I opened the link and found that the moothatti was an year older than me. Though I proclaim valiantly to many that I am old, the reference to people of this age group as moothatti seems ridiculous. We have not touched half century yet. 

Change in identtity

He realized that he and I shared a common mother tongue. Every time, he saw me he called out to me regardless of the distance that separated us with his loud voice asking for my health in our mother tongue. I, in an attempt to hide my embarrassment, responded back to him in a equally loud voice. The people around looked from side to side at the two of us in amusement. This continued for an year. During the course of the year, a few of his friends, who did not share our mother tongue, also started asking for my health in my mother tongue. As embarrassing as the situation was, it was also sweet and I quite liked the attention. So I let it be.

I did not see him during the two months of vacation. I greeted him from some distance on the day he returned from vacation but he did not respond. He looked through me and walked away. This happened two more times. I did not bother to find the reason for this change in attitude. One day, I found him sitting with his friend. The friend asked something and I responded. He looked up at me shocked and said "oh! It's you. I thought you had left during the vacation. You have shaved your beard and I am unable to identify you".

He does not greet me anymore. The loss of my beard seems to have changed something within him. To his young eyes, I am no longer the person I was.

It is better for me to be me!

I wish I cared about things. I do care but unfortunately not consistently and definitely not long enough. By things, I don't mean people, I mean things. Damn! This morning my ability to say anything with clarity seems to be marred by the usage of the word things. Let me try once again - By things, I mean issues. By issues, I mean

"Save the World"

"Vote for the Walruses"

"Stop obliteration of our Ozone"

"Don't mar Mars with human exploitation"

"Treat Trees tremendously"

"Antarctica is for Penguins"

"My language is the mega language among all languages"

"Don't impose your language on my beautiful language"

"For creatures walking on four legs"

"To eat a fin is a sin"

"Let us not choke the world in smoke"

"Cows can camp in the centre of any road"
"Let's wow the whales"

So many movements! Millions passionate souls display their uncontrollable passion in these movements. Yet none of them interest me. I look at them with disinterested half closed eyes, make a sound that sounds like "Gnaaah" and move on. I am very disturbed that I am not interested in any of these. What disappoints me is that I am not even interested in declaring myself to be a staunch supporter of any of these issue even if I don't care about it.

For example, why can't I declare that I am a staunch supporter of secularism. I could throw some acidic statements at people who claim that something written in 20000 BC in India talked about Black holes and the General Theory of Relativity. That would be fun. But I am not even intelligent enough to hate our current Prime minister and his party. While I am surrounded by people who have no hesitation in shouting out from either sides of a microphone about the unfairness meted out by Indians (which probably includes them) on Kashmir and its people, I listen to them with disinterest. Sadly, I don't fit into the other end of the spectrum either. I am not a staunch right wing religious fanatic either. Actually, I am not even religious. I almost follow nothing that any religion recommends. I have no qualms about doing things that the religions prohibit. I make promises to God but do not keep them and when it seems that the respective God is punishing me for not having kept my promise, I look towards the sky and throw abuses at him/her. That said, I am not an atheist or satanist either. I don't go around the world announcing "God is phony". I actually love visiting temples - not all them but certain temples. So I don't fit there either.

Thus I feel I am a misfit in this society. Anytime I find myself stuck in the company of people who are passionate about some cause or the other I look at them in wonder and say "Why can't I be like him or her!" But as the discussion proceeds I invariably end up feeling "Why can't they be like me!"

Many years ago, I was having a dining table discussion with a person whom I considered a friend for three months. He thought he was expounding the value of vegetarianism. In reality he was busy abusing non-vegetarianism by talking for many minutes about the cruelty of being a non-vegetarian. I had no intention of becoming a vegetarian for I loved meat. I also loathed the saintliness projected by some of the vegetarians. This temporary friend was one of finest specimen belonging to this category. I humoured him for sometime by letting him recount the goodness of being a vegetarian before letting him know "I do not kill animals and I only eat animals that are dead. I give meaning for their death for they would continue to live through me". As stupid as that argument sounds, it was sufficient to quieten his vegetarian frenzy.

With the advent of vegans, vegetarians got a taste of how non-vegetarians felt when they preached about the cruelty of being a non-vegetarian. The vegans made the world believe that milking the cow is as cruel as killing it for through milking you are affecting the cow and its calf too. So consuming curd or paneer is as cruel as consuming meat. Ha ha ha!

Even now I feel amused when I remember that fellow who tried to convert me to a vegan! Ironically, he did not last being a vegan himself for much longer for within a few months he degraded his status by mixing ladles of curd with rice.

All this took place prior to 2014 when the party ruling the country decided to save the cows for they considered the cows to be more sacred than Gods themselves. At many places consuming meat in public was considered suicidal. It went to the extent that one had to be careful not to lick one's lips while uttering the word cow. Thus the life of the beef-lover became miserable. I was thrilled for I only had to consume beef to feel like a revolutionary. For the first time in my life I had an opportunity to be an anti-establishment person. All I had to do was walk into a thattukada and order "porottayum beef fryum" and imagine being surrounded by millions waving red flags while bellowing "inquilab zindabad". Che Guevara and Karl Marx showered flowers on me from their respective heavens.

The world is a funny place. In a matter of decades, vegetarianism and veganism has moved from being benevolent to being oppressive. Many are now trying to convince the world that beef eating represents the culture of real India for the tribes have always consumed beef. We are told that they have been oppressed by the powerful vegetarians. You cannot wave the flag of vegetarianism proudly and you better not preach its benefits to all and sundry for you will then be considered an oppressor. As Bob Dylan has prophesied in 1964.

For the loser now

Will be later to win

For the times they are a-changin'

Such is the whimsical nature of the world as far as passions and their related movements are concerned. So how can I even act passionate about an issue I don't really care when I would be considered an idiot for having supported a trivial or harmful issue within a few years? Should I not be thankful for being a cynic and look at the noise makers with benign tolerance as they scream throats out believing they are saving the world?

Pat,pat,pat....
Tchh, tchhh, tchhh,...