Never a dull moment

What is a trip and what is a journey ? Does going back home by train make a journey ? Does "experimental" travel on a narrow gauge train from a non descript place qualify as trip ? Let me leave that judgement to my friends. When I travel alone undertake personal travel, I travel sleeper class ( the three tier sleeper of yesteryears ). I am in the train right now about an hour away from Delhi having boarded the train last evening ( Thursday ) from Nagpur. Nagpur, being a in between station on the Delhi Chennai , Kolkata Mumbai routes with no express trains commencing fro m here to Delhi, Chennai, Kolkata etc, fact remains it is easier to get confirmed sleeper class tickets than being on tender hooks till last minutes with wait listed "vaathaanukoolith sreni" tickets. I was planning to proceed to Delhi on 05/09 evening and that was my intent as well. I had booked the ticket some days in advance. I had applied for couple of days off. As a matter of precaution...

An article in BBC News on line saying coconut is a wonder fruit  has brought up a lump in my throat. As kids, we used to love watching coconut climbers doing their job. I would say they were the early Nadian Comanecans.The global public had to wait till 1976 Montreal Olympics, to get an acrobat exhibit the coordination and aesthetic beauty of coconut tree climbing in the form of Nadia Comaneci. We tried to emulate the free style method of the climbers but ended up with bruise marks on our chests, calf muscles and inner thighs. The higher our freehand climb took us, deeper were the bruises as we used to "give up" in exhaustion and hug the tree dearly to slow down the  fall. The payment for the climbers was partly cash and partly in kind - it was related to the number of trees climbed and not related the yield. So in summer months, the cost per tree comes down as the yield is much more. In the lean months, it was a tug of war between grandma and the climbers as th...

A famous food company of Norway taking over MTR Foods tickled my funny bone. It could be that they wanted to add variety to the exotic Norwegian condiments what ever they might be ( what do they add to make reindeer meat taste better - Paste of Rhododendron flower ? Mashed paste of bark of conifers ? ) It would have been fun watching team of Chief Innovation officer and Business Manager for new products and markets of the Norwegian company inspecting machines grinding sambar powder and rasam powder wearing space suit like contraptions ( if these powders are third party sub contracted products of MTR, then they would have been at Seshadripuram inspecting the rickety machines operated in the homes of Krishna mama, Lakshmi mami etc ). They would have spent hours going to through SOPs and Quality Systems. The top brass would have spent days redefining Vision and Mission statements which would have been rendered hazy and blurred ( literally and figuratively ) by sambar and rasam powde...

I worked as Service Engineer in Chennai for a Mumbai based reputed for three years in Chennai after completing BE from College of Engineering Guindy in 1982. As a trainee , I was sent to Mumbai for a three month training after a few months of field work at Chennai. Nobody used to bother about us during training at Mumbai. My aim during training in Mumbai was to fill my stomach. I would report in the morning and hog the vada paav / bread omlette breakfast, would hang around till lunch at Vikhroli premises and scoot after lunch. I could not understand a word of Hindi though I could read well. I used to board buses going to city and used to buy ticket to the terminus. Not knowing where I am headed for, it was a safe thing to do so that ticket checkers would not create an issue ! The first such trip was on a double decker to Backbay Depot. After travelling for more than an hour on the top deck , I suddenly saw tall buildings to my right at a reasonable distance. I knew the clutch of bui...

We have been staying in the same colony for more than a decade. Though we have shifted residences within close proximity twice,the “service” providers continue to be the same , whether it be the newspaper vendor or the guy who cleans the car. Decade is a reasonable time span for assessing the progress of families who are providing the “services”. The newspaper vendor has not lost his throwing power. His assistants keep changing every now and then. Some do come back for a second innings of internship with the newspaper vendor. Nothing seems to have changed for the newspaper vendor as he has been using the same scooter. If he has a better vehicle, he must be using during broad light saving it from morning blues. The decade has been spent with the services of three servant maids…. All of them have one thing in common… all of them have more than five children…. All of them have husbands who drink and vanish for days together.. . The only progress witnessed is their daughters getting marrie...

Webster dictionary meaning for the word hirsute is “hairy”. I would call the week that went by “The week of hirsute”. There was this man with long beard and long shaggy hair who has made a name for himself by yoga instruction. He talks at breathless speed mixing up all medical terms for various illnesses and how various yoga asanas and pranayams could cure every ailment under the sun. He refers to most of the medical terms in English but wants everything to be taught in local language – a nationalist to the core in the linguistic front. He was a nobody two decades ago. He joined hands with Balkishan and the pair did not look back. Now between them , they manage a lot of wealth. They remind me of the Hindi movie “Bundy aur Bubbly”. He decided to fight black money and wants high denomination notes to be demonetized ( now that he has had his fill ! ). All those who follow his yoga instructions look upto him as spiritual guru and his saffron attire enhances the appeal. So we had this pe...

Yesterday ( 20/05/2011 ) Kanimozhi and Sarat Kumar turned up at Patiala Court at 10 am only to be told by the judge that the judgement would be ready only in the afternoon and that they may be at the court after 1 pm. Both were a bit relieved with the (unfounded ) feeling that their bail pleas would be accepted. But the bail plea was rejected and both were sent to the upcoming posh locality in Delhi- Tihar Jail. A bird tells me that judge had the judgement ready in the morning itself but was trying to master the "zhi" part of Kanimozhi so that he could read out her name properly and hence the delay ! This judge has informally sounded out perennial petitioners like Subramaniam Swamy, Swamy Agnivesh and Prashant Bhushan that if they were planning petitions against likes of Azhagiri and others with kuzha puzha Allapuzha sort of names ( Azhagappan, pynthamizhselvi, thenmozhi, kuzhandaivelu, ilam vazhuthi, pazhaniappan...)they should do it quickly before he lost his mastery over p...