Calling 1-800-GRANDMAS

It is possibly a truth universally acknowledged, that the offspring of a youngest child on one side,  and  middle child (only child resident in India)  on the other, would be subject to greatly indulgent and torrential doses of grand parental attention. 

A grandchild in the family after a long break, and he could do no wrong. 


 Birthdays were celebrated with great planning, kindergaarten annual days were attended by grandparents travelling in from other cities,  and there came a time when he graduated from tricycles to bicycles. Living as I do, in something that resembles a park, he soon learnt to ride the bicycle thanks to either parent desperately  running behind him, and other folks on the road making way for him, seeing the expressions on his parent's faces. 

His maternal grandma, the younger of his two grandmas, lived in Pune, climbed the Parvati Hill temple everyday, and took him with her when he visited. She played badminton with him on her  terrace. He treated her like an equal; or maybe she did. I dont know.

 When she visited  him in  Mumbai, he often visited the Devi Temple on campus , with her, and he wanted to ride his bicycle there now. He discovered that grandma had ridden a bike when she was younger, and so he convinced her to ride his mother's bike, and they both went off. At high noon. 

On the way back, he had a brilliant idea. Of exchanging the bikes. The only thing was  his bike was an Easy Rider style fancy thing with high handles.

But grandma agreed. :-)

And so they rode, amidst the trees, and amidst stunned folks who saw a little chap riding ahead , on a bike where his feet didn't reach the pedals, turning back, calling out to someone,  and an old lady in a saree , with great effort, riding a terribly hip bicycle (totally flummoxed with the odd design) and pushing on nonetheless. 

Till her chappal broke. 


They stopped. Things were examined. The road was too hot, and her feet would get burned. So he removed his shoes, took out his socks, and right there on the road, made his grandma wear them. The shoes would be a bit small, but socks were manageable. So he wore the shoes, she wore his socks with the one working chappal.

 A whole bunch of people known to his parents were witness to all this drama, and by and by, they returned, he, a few paces ahead, pedalling , seat less, on his mother's old style bike with a high level seat, and his grandma, wearing his socks, chappals in the basket, desperately trying to manage the low-seat Easy Rider style bike.  Both returned, red in the sun,  and his grandma a bit breathless, because she wasn't used to such fancy bikes. 

He didn't think anything unusual was happening. That's how grandmothers were. And she probably agreed. 


Several years later , his other older grandma who was staying with them  after he lost his grandpa, had an amazing experience tangling with third standard history.

His parents both worked, and came home for lunch. School got over at 1:30 pm , and his mother would check the day's lessons, give him some quizzes for the afternoon, and then leave.

After some rest, and chitchat, he would attend to homework/quizzes et al, with his grandma's help , and one day, he was a bit preoccupied.  The fellow was doing some "filling in the blanks", and he suddenly looked up , caught her arm and said ,"Aji, you are lucky, it is now, and not Raja Ram Mohun Roy's time. ".


She was a bit bewildered. Yes, they were learning about the pre independence days,  but why Raja Ram Mohun Roy suddenly ?


"Aji, if you had lived around then, they would have made you do "sati" when Aba passed away !"  . He looked at her, with large eyes, bewildered at the prospect. His textbook had drastic pictures. I mean dinosaurs, phantom, superman, batman etc were manageable, but this stuff about making people sit on funeral pyres, on the death of a husband,  was just too  serious. 


She  was stunned. Went off to the kitchen, saying it was time to have his cocoa, and she would heat the milk, but really because she didn't want him to see her tears. Came back and explained to him how these were different times, things had changed, and there were laws. And such things didn't happen any more.

Little minds worked in complicated ways, and sometimes, imagination was frightening.

She recounted this story to us when we came home in the evening.


We all possibly studied the same history. But didn't live it. He learned to apply it to his environment and came to conclusions.

Like he did , when Ramayana was a hit on Sunday morning Doordarshan television, the only choice we had then.   Hanuman was a huge favourite because he flew around with entire mountains when he couldn't find a required medicinal tree .  His Pune grandpa had a birthday coming up, and he designed a card with Hanuman in full flow, flying through the clouds, holding aloft a chocolate cake (with lit candles)  with grandpa's name on it. It was framed and stood proudly in their living room, for almost 25 years.


 Albert Einstein , who talked about many things besides science, supposedly said, "You do not really understand something until you can explain it to your grandmother."  


Notice, how grandmothers always understand.  Notice how fathers and mothers kind of fade away into the wings, and are nowhere in the picture.


Today, the grandparents are no more, the little boy is not little any more,  but he observes,  he learns, he studies, analyzes. and when he needs to communicate and seriously explain things, he does something else. 


He blogs.  Here. :-)

This entry is a part of the contest at BlogAdda.com in association with imlee.com

'Fair' is just a four lettered word.....

They say , time is a dressmaker specializing in alterations.

And it has occurred to me after half a century of observing the alterations, that  we as insensitive, undisciplined people,  force these alterations, much against the  suggestions of the dressmaker. 

All people are different. In origin, language, physical, mental, and genetic traits. 

All people are curious , and question things.  But the answers differ.

There was something in life 40-50 years ago, when as a child, one understood why someone could have a dark complexion, but didn't have a public discourse on it.  There were things you paid great attention to at certain ages, and you didn't get obsessed with skin color as a child.  Of course as you grew up you noticed tendencies in society, but you were taught never to comment on physical characteristics of people.

Today, we are so blatant about this concept of "fairness" , that it gives "being fair" to someone a bad name, thanks to the unfortunate nomenclature.    

The concept of fairness.  Nothing to do with bending backwards to be fair to someone. But the  unending struggle to appear "fair" to the world. In complexion, and not in spirit.

-And so what do you say to a young girl, swimming her heart off, in a day long swimmathon, among the top so-many,  emerging to change clothes in the evening, and encountering mothers of other swimmers, who audibly and to-her-face remark on how "black" she has become, and hurry to rub their kids down with some expensive soap, destroying her joy at having done well....

-And what do you say about a huge group at a picnic, a couple has joined in with their newly adopted slightly wheatish complexioned daughter, and an acquaintance, boasting of amazing education levels in the family, looks at the child, then at the parents, smirks, and asks, "I didn't know you liked the color black !"  (The parent is known to have stared at he little girl, looked up, smiled , and said, "Black ? What black?"...)

-And what do you say of some "well meaning" neighbors, who advise someone NOT to send the daughter for water sports, because she will turn dark; this despite they having a non-sporting but  extremely intelligent , "fair"ly wheatish daughter....   

-and what do you say to prospective nosy ladies who blatantly discuss and describe a girl of marriageable age  'as  a wonderful person "except", that she is a bit on the wheatish side....'

Something has to change. It is time. 

For a start,  ban all fairness advertisements on television. For a television system that turns a blind eye to liquor ads  moonlighting as sodas, cds and casettes , and winking about it,  you need to be tough. 

Go to court against the multinationals .  Bring in scientists to define what decides a person's skin color, melanin levels , what is changeable , what is not , etc. 

 Despite having a ministry to deal with and control this, we do not seem to have a "truth in advertising" clause anywhere. 

And so  watch and learn, that you can get jobs after 7 days of slathering some cream, twice daily,   and forget all the examinations you slogged over and practicals you did in college, and placement interviews you did. 

And you also watch as someone endlessly dabs on some cream, and suddenly becomes a heroine instead of an "extra"....

And you watch in even more amazement , as a fellow  , earlier snubbed by the village belles,  polishes his face with some fairness cream, and gets mobbed on the stairs, exiting his house.   Whatever happened, to  slogging chaps working in fields, riding tractors, lifting loads and the like ?

Anybody can tell that resultant fair faces on TV are more a product of camera overexposure. This may actually be,  for want of a better word, another scam.

Ban these ads. Penalize them for misleading.   Investigate the ingredients, and confirm that banned items are not being used. 

Realize, that we as a people, were doing perfectly fine beauty wise, even before all the multinationals came in to the country , bringing in makeup items with atrocious costs, and ran ads to make you feel insecure about your looks, filling the coffers of women's magazines with their ads.

Realize , that  we as a people , didn't hanker after designer body parts earlier and didn't do too badly with what we had.   We were comfortable , more so in mind, and did not go through all the mental trauma, young folks obsessed with looks go through today. 

Teach your children, to enjoy a clean face and skin, whether dark or fair. Encourage the use of  authentically herbal age old  mixtures, that function as antiseptics as well as cleansing agents. 

Teach your child, never to make fun of some one's   physical characteristics, whether it is shape,size, or color.  

Teach your child, that there could be dark minds in fair faces, and fair minds in dark faces, and the latter was to be infinitely preferred.  We don't talk about the remaining two options, dark minds in dark faces and fair minds in fair faces, simply because this kind of thinking is the problem we face today. 

I've seen brilliant smiles on dark faces, heartfelt laughs on fair faces, and I have seen both intermingling happily.  Dark and Light are what we live with day in and day out. Each has its own equal beauty.

And so if you ask me, I think it is really time to change the meaning of "Fair"......  

Like I said earlier , time is a dressmaker specializing in alterations.

Maybe, we can , for once , ignore all those catalogues with folks in poses and clotheshorses in action, and listen to what the dressmaker, with its life long experience,  has to say......  

This goes as an entry to http://facebook.com/sftimetochange (time to change)....

Simple recipe, complicated taste.....:-)

 I've often felt that a lot of stuff like flax seeds , which are recommended in the diet, by modern nutritionists because of their amazing quantities of  the good Omega-3 fats, were actually part of our diets , say 50 years ago.  I distinctly remember, in my childhood,  seasonal variations in dry chutneys, vegetables, methods of preparation and so on. Unlike today, when everything is available all the time , on a shelf, in a shop which sells 200 other varieties.

My household help "S" (hitherto blogged and filmed about)  introduced me to a perfect flax seed chutney, amazing in its simplicity.  It was something that was part of her traditional diet when she lived and tilled fields, and they occasionally made it even now.  Most chutneys go overboard on coconut and sesame seeds, two things with their own fat content,  different from the beneficial omega-3 fats.   This was a simple combination of roasted flax seeds ground together with dried roasted kadhipatta leaves, garlic and red chillies. Salt added as per taste. Folks went crazy over it, adding it to things like toast, curd-rice,  salads , and some even used it to bring taste to vegetables they abhorred,  like doodhi,  by sprinkling it there in copious quantities.

I knew these seeds contained oil and wondered if one could use it in baking.  And I decided to use the delicious flax seed dry chutney which I had in large quantity.  


Many years ago,  baking was all about sweet stuff , birthday cakes  and home made pizzas,  while you pretended to ignore the amount of ghee in nankhatais.  With the icing-licking members  now much older and into more exciting pursuits and sports,  one has been trying some tried and tested recipes from friends  in the blogging world and Facebook, like Monika Manchanda and Sangeeta Khanna, with amazing results.

 And I was looking for something which would have very little added fat, minimal or no sugar, and something savoury, utilising some of the less experienced tastes (As opposed to the sweet). Another motivation was that people were continuously looking for something to snack and nibble on.  And there needed to be a brake on bad fats and sugar.....

  Using a  whole wheat cookie recipe, from Monika,  and Sangeeta's experience with flax seeds in baking, I experimented with a recipe using whole wheat, oats, flax seed chutney (I have tons of it), various dry fruits/nuts, and spices.  And I came up with these crunchy, savoury, cookies with a sudden sweet raisin sensation as you chewed. Folks dipped them in tea, coffee, yogurt, and some are planning to try it with chutney, sauce and even mustard.  I thought next time I would add methi leaves.

(Disclaimer : I am the type who measures with handfuls, fistfuls, dollops and so on. Every time I make stuff , we enjoy different tastes, based on what I added more. More of an eater than a cooking person,  I just do things with a different perspective.  )

Here is how it happened.



The blue bowl holds 250cc of water. One such bowlful of whole wheat atta.







Same amount of flax seed chutney to be added.








Two fistfuls of ajwain (carom) seeds. Also called Trachyspermum ammi. Not that you need to know, but I thought the name was amusing.    (You could try using saunf, shahajeera, jeera etc instead. ) 







 Half the blue bowl full, oats







Handfuls of whatever dry fruits and nuts you have.Coarsely crushed. I used, raisins, walnuts,almonds, apricots, and the last of the manookas.





 Add 4 teaspoons of oil, and use milk to make a  semi stiff dough, the kind you can make balls out of and press easily into flat rounds. (I didn't want to add the oil, but that was the old conservative me taking over; and 4 teaspoons would mean very little in each cookie. ( made 35 cookies). Ah well !

Arrange in a non stick pan . Bake in a preheated oven (OTG)  at roughly 180 degrees.  About 15-20 minutes. Till nicely browned, looking dryish, and test with a knife to see if cooked in the centre of the cookie.

Remove from oven, let cool .  These are not chewy, but quite dry. Get nice and crunchy as they cool. Taste a bit like bajra puris. Great with chilly pickle,  or burnt fresh green chillies, coarsely crushed and mixed  with dahi....:-)


Immediately store when cool, in an airtight  bottle/container.

Eat.

One Day in the Examination Centre....

It's not a good time to be a Mumbai Varsity student today.

 In fact it's been some time, since the situation has become undesirable.  Examination woes,  leaking papers, students being distributed papers of a totally unexpected subject, instead of the planned one,  careless crashing of servers that handle examination entry paraphernalia like hall-tickets, last minute exam venue changes disregarding  geographical truths, and  I keep praising the Lord for being a student when I was and escaping from all this chaos.

While I myself never had occasion to be certified by the University of Mumbai, my experiences  with it may be a lesson of some kind.

For a person, professionally qualified  through a Mumbai University affiliated college, working and subsequently doing a postgrad in the US,  the university there insisted that the real degree certificate be submitted before one could register for the second semester, and the provisional certificate , an insignificant looking paper wouldn't do.  An SOS came to me in Mumbai. The application for receiving the degree certificate by post was more than six months old, nothing had moved, and  one needed to go shake things up.

The first day I went to the examination section at the University, I went through a bunch of metal mazes outside, to face a window, where a voice told me that I had come on the wrong day. Different days for even and odd numbered graduation years. I returned home in a blowing monsoon to return on another day.

This time, there was no one at the window, and I waited. Finally, was given a scrap of paper with a name on it. And asked to show it to the guard at the elevated platform where the main entrance was. Predictably , the guard said that people were still trickling in to work, and I needed to wait. For some reason he was unwilling to let me in.

Just when I was about to crib in a raised voice (it often works) , a gent pointed to an officer type coming out of the main door, and told me to ask him, as he was the head of the entire examination set up. Naturally I went up, identified myself as a member of another (highly regarded) educational institution and narrated my woes, and told him that some one's entire educational expenses in the US would be wasted  unless I  got hold of the degree certificate, which should have actually come ages ago. The gentleman asked me to walk right in and  see a Mr A, in some section.

I spent the next hour chasing Mr A, as he flitted from section to section, missing me by seconds.  I also realised that the offices were constructed around a central panel used for storage of paper records, and that I was literally and figuratively going round in circles. It so happened that Mr A finally took notice, spoke to me,  took hold of the reference paper (with application details) I was carrying, and disappeared after requesting me to sit in an office , where folks were still walking in to work, cribbing about train delays, rain et al. No one seemed to be any hurry to start work.

I was getting worried about losing my precious reference sheet detailing the earlier application for the degree certificate.  Someone suggested, that I go and come back. Maybe have a nice tea.  I sunk further in my folding metal chair .  In the meanwhile, a fellow with some flower garlands and a lit lamp came by,  left some wrapped stuff at the desk, distributed some tiny bits of coconut as prasad, and disappeared into the next office.

I was finally seeing some action. Somewhere. A young man pulled up a chair, removed his footwear,  and climbed on to the chair , just so he could reach out to some photos of Gods high up on one side of the office. He lit some incense sticks, garlanded the gods, moved the incense in circles in front , rotated around himself once on the chair, did namaskaar, and got down.

An hour later, Mr A  returned, and told me that he had managed to retrieve the details of my reference and yes, such an application for the degree certificate had been received, and nothing had been done. Would I like to go and return in a couple of hours, and collect it ?

I envisioned another tangle with the security at the gate, conversations with unseen voices at windows, and  sunk further into the chair telling them that I was sitting right there till I saw the degree certificate.  For two hours I saw folks opening thick registers, getting signatures, passing it to some desk , having someone carry it somewhere.

Suddenly a person came in with glasses of tea. There was a combined tea break. I was offered tea, which was gracefully refused.  There was a lot of extraneous conversation happening.  I joined in, playing my role as a minimally educated lady, overcome by the university portals, yet  fighting for some one's degree certificate, and pretended to be  unaware  but unduly impressed by  office procedures and pleased by the dedication to the divine in the room. (All this in the approved "old lady" manner)

Asked them if they celebrated the annual Ganpati festival for their section there; upon which , a superintendent type  smiled and gave me an indulgent  look similar to that given by a posh Mumbaikar, to a hilly billy provincial , say, from Kokan.  No, they didn't celebrate Ganpati in that section.  Then I made some calls, telling folks where I was, and my tentative arrival time at my next stop. Someone would suddenly come by and ask about the year of graduation, and the name , and I would repeat it again. I thought someone was doing calligraphy somewhere  on some preprinted  degree certificate template.

After a while, to my immense amazement, Mr A suddenly landed up, had me sign in some register, and showed me where the degree certificate was emerging slowly on a deskjet printer.  I was stumped. If the data was online, what stopped them from printing the certificate at some window right in the beginning, once they had the reference key ?   They could charge a fee, and do this in real time whenever anyone asked.  But no. The data was not online. If it was, they were not aware of it or linked to it.  They just had a simple degree certificate printing program, where you inputted the candidate details prior to the printing.

I had come in at 10 am. It was now 3 pm, and I  victoriously came out of the main entrance, clutching the aforesaid degree certificate,  to enjoy my first intake of fresh monsoon air, after a tension filled 5 hours.

Suffice to say that  this was my first, last, and final interaction with the University of Mumbai-examination section. 

But there is something that really has no explanation.

In my late in-law's house  there are assorted sepia photos on the wall , of serious looking gents in robes,collars and graduation headgear, holding a scroll of their degree certificate, looking in a dignified manner at the camera, and posing next to a small table with a flower pot and  curly legs.  This, in an age, with minimum mechanization, and big box cameras.But an age , where the University took pride in giving the degrees and certificates on time.

With there being such big gaps in applying for and acquiring the said degree certificate now,  there are no such photos in my house, of anyone celebrating their first life degree.

Another child attended another university in Mumbai, with a much similar experience; that is another story.

But we just do one University at a time on this blog..... :-)  

Oh My God !

Highlighted and translated by

One of Mumbai's temples, from the early part of the 19th century, in fact , consecrated in 1801.  Constructed by a contractor called Mr Patil, and financed completely by a rich Agri lady called Deobai. Such was the munificence of mind then that , although she herself, was,  and remained childless, she built this temple, because she was convinced that many other women would be granted their wish by the  Lord resident inside.  

A November night in 1975. It was then, from the outside, a very ordinary , managlore-tile-roofed  single storey set-up, situated in the heart, of what was then , solid middle-class-Mumbai,  on the main western thoroughfare of Mumbai that went from south to north.   Traffic was then  a delight , and it was still possible to make impromptu decisions to stop the car, park the car without tow-truck-trauma, and go visit the place .

There was one entrance, unguarded, but with a gate of sorts. You could walk right into the sanctum sanctorum, pray, acquire prasad , and leave leisurely after enjoying the ambiance.  Newly weds came there to pray, sometimes straight from a wedding reception, when the bride travelled to her new home with her newly acquired family. Folks came there with their newborn kids, to lay them at the feet of the deity, and the Lord always showered his blessings. Then there were the regulars, who came daily, some who came and recited stuff to one side, and some, who came to redeem a promise made to the lord.    

Times have changed.  For that matter, everything has changed.

The place is now a multistoreyed place, with offices et al, and priests travel up  and down in elevators to perform their assigned worship duties vis-a-vis the public.
There is a dome above all the floors, gold coated, that glistens far and wide on a sunny day.   The old entrance is now an exit. And in an adjoining road, named after one of India's greatest economists,  is a huge line of shops selling all kinds of things like flowers, sweets, souvenirs,  pooja items, and  some spurious services.

When we visited on a Saturday noon, we had to park at least 5 blocks away, and then walk through a road with police roadblocks,beeping doorways, folks in uniform peering into an xray machine, as your purses and bags tumbled by them on a conveyor belt, like at airports.  There were also some folks frisking visitors with some kind of probe.

There must have been at least 1000 visitors ahead of us as we continue walk towards what we thought was the end of the line. All the while, there were touts outside  the shops, offering to  store and look after your footwear,  advising you on specials deals by them which would allow you to skip the huge line, and or jump it. "VIP Darshan" as they called it was repeatedly on offer.  Then one enterprising guy took a look at the silver wisps of hair   predominant on our crowns, and  told us there was a special Senior Citizen's gate through which we could get in. Even accompanied by a junior citizen daughter. (I later looked for such a gate , but could not find it.)   All this while, our queue kept snaking ahead in the shape of a U, before we entered into what was a barricaded area, where you went up and down through  a maze.  At one end , we saw a gate festooned with official signs that announced priority entry for folks buying a 50Rs ticket, as well as thrilling entry facilities for folks choosing to buy a gold, or silver pass, like a season ticket.


The queue soon snaked around close to the road entrance from which folks were emerging after being frisked. Some folks develop selective vision at such points. They could not see the queue, and pretended to seamlessly merge with the queue, at a point, where at least 500 people were still in line.  The selective vision meant their feet moved surreptitiously while they looked at the temple in a dedicated manner. Fortunately, and much to their chagrin, some folks took the trouble of pointing out to them the end of the queue, and they went off trying to suppress a huff. Inching ahead, and we were soon inside, with the sanctum in sight, brilliantly lit up, profused with puja flowers and worship items.

Mumbai roads habituate us to adjusting suddenly from 6 lanes to 2, and something similar happened when it was suddenly a single line to the Lord.  True to reputation, folks simply pushed and changed lanes. I wondered what the Lord must have felt, day after day, month after month, year after year, this surge of humanity flowing in front. Several temple volunteers and folks in uniform, pleading with folks to keep moving, hold their children together, and after a quick darshan , we were out.  Collected our prasad at the exit gate, amidst assorted pushy folks, and proceeded on the final trudge home.

This particular deity, is known to grant wishes.  Its devotees are many, from all the religions.There are many stories on how people walk barefoot all night from far off places  to visit this deity, and ask for favours and blessings. I've even heard of someone who walked backward from a far flung suburb of Mumbai. Many prominent folks from the film fraternity, do this walk, followed by their security guards  and assorted cars  driving there to take them back . And millions of ordinary folks crowd there to see them. You see countless young folks in line, with families , friends, and many who make it a regular thing  as soon as examination time approaches.

I grew up in another town , where too, there are several extremely well known temples, as old as this temple, and even dedicated to the same deity, and unique  in the style and rarity of form of the deity.

As a child , I lived  on the road leading to one such temple, and was witness to several old devotees , who had their own methods of paying obeisance to the lord.  And old gentleman, would , without fail, go by at 5:30 am every single morning,  doing suryanamaskars  instead of walking all the way, reciting the concerned prayers. Regardless of season and weather.  And unaccompanied by caretakers. On reaching, he would sit inobtrusively, recoup his energy for a bit, recite his prayers, prostrate himself  before the deity (even from a distance) , collect the prasaad, and then leave,  like any other devotee, walking.

This deity also had its share of folks who got desperate as exams approached. Close to the date of the board exams, you could see young fellows doing 108 rounds around the inner sanctum, muttering their prayers earnestly.

Somewhere in the late 80's , my mother was amongst and  a member of the board trustees appointed by the government for temples such as this one and some others , like the Parvati Hill temple,  associated with this one. Then (and till to-date), the only woman amidst the board of trustees, she had been a daily visitor to these temples for several decades and was known to many.  A very god fearing, knowledgeable, fearless, and  terribly down-to-earth person, she once stopped one of these students  to ask about them spending hours doing these 108 rounds.  Turns out that they were totally depending on this deity to see them through an exam when they had not bothered to study for it.

For someone who thought studies and sports were to be pursued with equal dedication by students, and prayers and worship was part of a daily short routine
she thought, this business of throwing the onus of passing exams on the Lord was like cheating the lord.

She took them aside, and urged them to actually go back and concentrate on their studying.  Advised them that the Lord would help anyone who made an honest effort at the exams,after putting in preparatory efforts at the highest level, and that just doing 108 rounds of the inner sanctum without studying was not going to work. Of course, some listened, some did not. But she tried.  I like to think some lives changed in the way they thought about things.


I don't know if she would have succeeded today. Everyone wants quick answers and solutions.  Some folks also think that money can be earned by dubious means, and then you can redeem yourself by worshipping the lord with some huge gift  and a special family puja session with all the trimmings. Elections fought with unaccounted money power, and wins celebrated by documenting your very public gifts to some temple.   What those at the top do, the folks at subordinate levels, emulate.  Gold passes, silver passes, special entries to visit the lord, and shower him with gifts. I doubt if any crooks ever come there to apologize for their crooked sins.

Somewhere in all these folks, are the old faithful. Who have immense faith, but whose resources are not so full.  Those who worry about savings being depleted, and how they are going to manage someone's school fees. Visiting temples , for them, is like having food, a simple meal. A daily affair.


But it gets more and more difficult. Some feel I shouldn't even be complaining.

A news item in today's Times of india, refers to  the fact that the waiting time to see the idol at the famous Hill Temple at Tirupati, is 21 hours. With close to 65,000 pilgrims on weekdays, a view of the deity for  0.80 to 1.5 seconds amidst a lot of shoving and pushing by temple guards and Srivari volunteers is defined as adequate.
   
    A time-motion study found that 2,000-2,200 pilgrims are able to ‘finish’ the darshan of the Moola Virat (main deity) in one hour when they are pushed around. If temple volunteers exercise restraint, the numbers come down to 1,400-1,600 and further down to 1,000-1,200 if they only say ‘move move’ inside the garbha griha.
    

With Arjitha sevas and other rituals taking up 8 hours and VIP pilgrims allowed darshan for 3-4 hours, common pilgrims are left with only 10-12 hours.
   

 In the Maha Laghu darshan (100 feet away from the Lord), the line moves at lightning pace as some 5,000-6,000 pilgrims are accommodated in 60 minutes. “Even a glimpse of the Lord is difficult as pilgrims are dragged away like players in a kabaddi match,” a temple insider said. .....

Just wondering. Why things have reached such a stage ?  Should money be the deciding factor in defining classes of worship ?  Is this like bringing in "reservations" ?

Are we as a people sinning more ?  Has it reached such proportions that a disgusted  God is feared  and placated  with limitless resources ?  Does anyone think an entity like a God  can be bought, like some folks in the corridors of power ?  

 What happened to thinking of God as a kind of benevolent monitor in our daily life, where we put in a lot of thought before responding  to some underhand, illegal or plain cheating stuff ?


Is God now an industry ?

      

Cerebrating Myself.....

(Winner of the "Celebrating Myself" competition, by Women's Web; 22-3-12)

There is all kinds of brain research happening  at cutting edge levels these days.

Folks do all kinds of experiments to figure out why we have left brains and right brains, and what each side is supposed to specialize in.  All these calculating, analytical scientists, immersed and shining, in a left brain neuronic ocean , glinting in the cerebral sun. And then there are the dreamers, the visionaries , artists and poets and ordinary intuitive folks,  who are convinced they are doing everything "right", and beaming about it.

I have a hypothesis  which is a function of time.

As a child,  in the 50's and early 60's, resplendent in the middle class, one lived by rules, in all aspects of life. Slogging ensured a degree of success. Things you celebrated about were universal. Success at school, sports, an honor in the society in which we lived. Standard festival celebrations.  And so I celebrated  along with the proud parents.  Birthdays were not "planned", but they happened, and were celebrated, without being unduly ecstatic about the fact that time never stopped, and you got a year older.  Terribly left brained, if you ask me.

College and University, was a time to celebrate a coming of age, a companionship with friends, occasional academic successes and the celebrations started to get a tinge of right brain madness.  Reverses and disagreements in life  were managed leaning on right brained folks,  while maintaining a left brained sense of "feet on the ground".  Celebrations were about uninhibited laughs, enjoying with friends,  whispers ,gossip,  treks and trips, while the left brain kept nudging about examinations, curfews, time and other then unpleasant concepts.

Like a car taking the on-ramp to the expressway, life accelerated, and stayed on course for many years, through work, marriage, children, extended family, and assorted events lighting up along the path.  My celebrations were all about  a child's birth,  the first words, the first step, the joy on the face of a grandparent of four score years, going for a walk with a 4 year old grandson,  fun events and  howlers at school  by the children.  Celebrations were the order of the day the princess arrived, born of the heart and not of the womb, and slowly proceeded to nullify the borders between the two organs, in a  flood of amazing life experiences.

Life has been a celebration of small steps by small folks, then big steps by small folks,  and occasionally , me hitting myself on the head in a right brained way, when I realized that successes to be celebrated in life were never all academic, but of myriads of types. Celebrating has been about facing difficulties in some one's education and overcoming them  day by day, it was about realizing that every human being has a different development plan, and the difference was to be celebrated.

Another  kind of celebration was about being there for so many when they looked for a shoulder and a mind  and a ear to lean on, in the evening of their life. A celebration of the honor, of being in the right place at the right time , for them as well as for yourself. Celebrations, slowly ceased to be about acquiring things,  like objects of leisure and the good life, and became more about giving  and participating  and not worrying about who thought or said what of you.

Slowly over the years, the "l" in my celebrations, has tended to become an "r" .  From "celebrating"  my life, it has slowly become a fun exercise in "cerebrating " it.  Thoughtfully, intuitively, and sometimes, even going against, what might have been considered, by someone, somewhere, the grain.

And so I "cerebrate" today,   giving my mind free reign,  enjoying forays into the world of words and art, unconcerned about accepted norms. Cerebrating has been all about joining in some one's fun on discovering an aptitude, possibly at an unexpected juncture; it has been a sense of peace and having tried, when doing something that went against a left brained norm;  and it has been a realization, that the more you give , the more you can both cerebrate and celebrate.

At the end of the day, its really about "l" and "r" ;  and how you move from one to the other , in time.

Clearly, as you might have noticed,  my path baking research on how a left brained  celebrating kid turns out into a right brained cerebrating geriatric soul, and can laugh about it....



Submitted for the "Celebrating Myself" contest at Women's Web.

Phillumwalli in Bloggywood

For someone who is not really a film buff, can emerge from a theatre, with feet nicely in touch with the terra firma, but feels a great sense of wonder about the different technologies that allow us to be creative today,  I should have anticipated this.

From writing prose and poetry as a child, playing the sitar,  fabric painting, paper towel flowers, decorating daughter's tees (when she was 11) with warli figures and nimbupani poetry, salvaging a long gone dining table plywood top by covering it with a fabric and doing a huge warli on it after hanging that up (the table got a new proper top), gifting folks with personalised warli art,   to blogging in prose and verse , and foisting comments in verse on unsuspecting individuals,  the ease with which new media is available to anyone today, has meant that one tries one's hand at so many more things.

Folks carry cameras today like we carried cloth bags in our childhood, to go to the corner market running errands for our parents. In fact today, people forget to carry bags , but never forget their phones and cameras.  Softwares have made it possible to sit in one place, with a nice cup of tea, and make films.

I tried my hand at one recently. And the subject  was my household help, "S" who I have blogged about frequently on this blog.  That one had a daughter, who fiddled with cameras helped.  "S" even wore headphones and recorded her story.

I tried putting it all together, and a film happened (if you can call it one).

I am in awe of the fact that we live at a time when someone like me,  can one fine day, sit down and make something like this.

I know it needs a lot more polish and slickness. But like the repairs of the Mumbai roads, it will happen in due time.

(Ye gads. I just realized, that like the Mumbai roads, folks can now point to potholes in the film . ....:-(....)

 Never mind.

The trouble is, "S" speaks in Marathi in the film.  Hopefully some folks will understand .   I haven't figured out how to do subtitles. Maybe you can't do that here. Who knows.

But have a look. At my new blog . "Phillumwalli".   

The Suitable Observers....

Sometimes you simply and inexplicably remember stuff from  from your student days 43 years ago.

One such, was  Schroedingers' Cat.  Erwin Schroedinger  won the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1933, for his formulation of Wave Equation in quantum mechanics. Unlike classical mechanics which swears by Newton's equations, and comes up with specific definitive answers about position and speed/velocity, in wave mechanics you deal in probabilities of an event, and the possibilities of varying perceptions of the event , depending on the observer of the event.

In 1935, Schroedinger explained this by a "virtual" Cat experiment. 

A living cat is placed into a steel chamber, near a device containing a vial of hydrocyanic acid. Also, in the chamber, is a very small amount of hydrocyanic acid, a radioactive substance. If even a single atom of the substance decays during the test period, a relay mechanism will trip a hammer, which will, in turn, break the vial and kill the cat. The observer outside, cannot know whether or not an atom of the substance has decayed, and consequently, cannot know whether the vial has been broken, the hydrocyanic acid released, and the cat killed. Since we cannot know, according to quantum law, the cat is both dead and alive, in what is called a superposition of states. Only when we break open the box and learn the condition of the cat we realize that the superposition is lost, and the cat becomes one or the other (dead or alive). This situation is sometimes called quantum indeterminacy or the observer's paradox: the observation or measurement itself affects an outcome, so that the outcome as such does not exist unless the measurement is made. (That is, there is no single outcome unless it is observed.)

Sometimes I think this is the age of quantum-mechanization of our country.  There were, earlier,  classical  constitutional rules and interpretations by which things happened. Then we got on to the wave aspect of things  and things became fuzzy.

So many suspect cats sitting in so many suspect chambers. So many courts waiting to hit  the hammer, once the  law-active particle is released. The cat here is never annihilated , but sits in splendorous anticipation in jails or house-arrests etc. 

But, at the end of the day, it simply depends on the perception of the "observer"  and defining this observer is what we are so excellent at. We also set up vague committees of observers who are supposed to investigate things.   These "observers" are multi talented and innovative and they can do several things like :

•   Co-opt a stronger "powerfully connected" observer
•   Recommend changing the hammer after suspecting it.
•   Appoint a committee to study the cat.
•   Have  the government labs check out the chemical in the vial, and find out if the vial was tampered with.  
•   Organize study tours (with MP's likely to oppose you in Parliament) to  other western countries to see how other cultures analyse cats hit by hammers in important  areas.
•   Find out why the CCTV in the chamber was not working although it was installed 4 years ago.
•   Have someone produce tapes of someone else telling someone else to mess with the hammer attachment.
•   Appoint another subcommittee to ascertain if there were other hidden cats also inside. 
•   Declare the the report will go to a standing committee, composed of fellows standing outside the chambers set up by you. 
•   Appoint a sub-committee to find out if the vials, if faulty, were manufactured in a facility owned by a relative of the cat, unless of course, it was owned by the cat himself in benami manner.
•   Subsequent to getting an anonymous letter suggesting that the  cat must have weakened the chamber wall, by vigorously scratching it with its claws, the committee  can suggest that stuff happening inside was  known to some specific observers  standing outside with ears to the wall. .

The whole fuzzy  action plan is designed  to ensure, that the chamber, the court-hammer, the law-active  substance  stands discredited.

Actually, according to Schroedinger, the superposition of states (the ability of the cat to be in any of the two states, and the effects of the interference of the observer),  put a big question mark on what we are calling reality . Sometimes of cats, and in quantum mechanics , of electrons. 

Rumor has it, that with the variety of solutions and arguments that came up after he suggested this so called thought experiment, Schroedinger actually mentioned that he wished he had never met the cat.

What he forgot was what we already know.

Our cats have 9 lives. 

In the steel chambers or out of it.  Grinning, Cheshire style .

And observers be damned.  
 

Potholes in the Brain ?

If evolution was a long road, let me just say that we are probably now at the biggest pothole.

Nestled and protected within  temporal lobes of our brain (situated low behind our temples), are two almond shaped structures, called the Amygdala(e). They are part of, what we might call, lower brain structures along with the brain stem, and are something we have in common with all animals, like pigs, cats and so on.  The amygdala(e) manage how we deal with fear, aggression and so on.  Remember the hissing, growling and teeth baring, of an animal when threatened?   The amygdalae help us produce rage, when required, as a reaction.

However, as humans, we also evolved what is called  neocortex,  situated higher up in the skull behind the eyes, which in simple terms, is called the higher brain; which is blessed with an ability to recognize, interpret, reason out, and take a balanced view of things, based on learnings . 

Recent happenings  have forced me to question the existence and development of this neocortex, in those who take pride in calling themselves evolved humans.

Saif Ali Khan , presumably blue of blood, behaving atrociously in a a restaurant, and along with some others, physically exhibiting his oversupply of brawn, and a confused neocortex, when he does more than fisticuffs, smashes someone's nose,  and hits and pushes down folks,  closer to his late father in age.  All because he was making a lot of noise and someone asked him to pipe down.

A gentleman in a village near Satara (a prosperous district in western Maharashtra), educates his daughter  , enables her to qualify as a medical social worker; she joins one of Pune's oldest hospital , a few hours away by bus,  shares a place with colleagues,  and returns home one day to visit her folks ,  only to be bludgeoned to death at night as she slept, by her own father, because she rejected a marriage alliance arranged for her by him.

Outside the gates of the area where I live, is a huge east west arterial road of 8 lanes, and a traffic signal.While people of all ages and carrying all kinds of stuff try and hot-foot it across when the cross traffic stops for  a red signal, two days ago, around 10 pm, a biker, almost rammed into a gentleman who was crossing, because he was getting impatient and started before the light turned green. The gentleman , slightly elderly, stopped ,  and pointed the red signal to him.   The biker shoved him aside, went a few metres ahead, stopped, parked, returned menacingly, and beat the elderly guy up.  All happened  in a blink of an eye, and then folks rushed in to stop the chaos.

I wonder why Saif Ali Khan, the Satara gentleman, or the biker, are such slaves to their amygdalae.  Are their neocortexes underdeveloped ? If so why ?  Is it education ? Is it bringing up ? Is it the environment ? Is it a faulty diet ?  Is it a lack of parental attachment as a young child ?

 Saif Ali Khan was a star kid (twice, over cricket and films), "studied" in England away from his home as a child. The period in which he entered Bollywood, the popular genre has been action films, full of violence, alcohol admiration, swear words, terrorising, and power. Obscene amounts of money being paid to actors has turned their heads.  

The gentleman from Satara hailed from the place that gave us the Champion of women's education in Maharashtra, Mahatma Jyotiba Phule; but I wonder if his childhood was all about being fawned over as a son, while his sisters bided their time before being married off and left to their fate ?  It would take generations for this mindset to disappear. This man simply couldn't tackle being disobeyed by a daughter.       

What do you say about the biker, at a time when it has become a sport to race these on Mumbai's roads  at night,  traffic rules are there to be bent, till they break or you break, and the general understanding is, that if you get caught, some fancy papers exchanged normally do the trick.  The stress of commuting, delays, work, personal social problems, inadequate housing    is immense, and they think it is therapeutic to blow their top, often at the cost of someone's life .

These guys may be representative , but newspapers are full off such news stories. Gang style retributions for perceived insults,  in middle class societies, senior citizens left to wither alone in houses, ordered honor killings , and everywhere, crass displays of money, possibly black.  Desperate, desolate and depressed women ending lives by jumping from upper floors of buildings.  Relatives and neighbors, once considered trustworthy, now secret molesters , keep making frequent headlines, while other lives are marginalised.  

Are we bringing up a generation with animal instincts ?  Inability to reason ?  Are people suffering from the use-it-or-lose-it thing where their neocortexes are concerned ?   

I've read stories bout cats crying.  I've heard about dogs who listen to doctors so well, you wonder if they have a secret neocortex. 

Maybe it is now time for scientists to do experiments with human folks.  

Make them run through mazes.  

Measure their reactions when stressed with something. 

 Ascertain which part of their brain neurons fire when they are shown pictures of say,  prison, police, weapons, fire , money , and even possibly, sometimes, their families.

 Maybe they will come up with a solution. Maybe they won't.

But we will learn something, about how to control these folks.

Like the Mumbai potholes. 

There has to be a solution. Sometimes they see it, sometimes they don't.

 But we learn how to live despite them.... :-(

Dark Optical Splendour....

Winner of the "My Sunglasses, My Style"  Contest at Blogadda 
 

Audrey Hepburn is supposed to have said ," My look is attainable. Women can look like Audrey Hepburn by flipping out their hair, buying the large sunglasses, and the little sleeveless dresses ..."


Hmmm. Excuse me.


That's because she never met someone like my late mother-in-law.  

There is nothing more impressive than a tall lady , with a shining translucent complexion, wearing a traditional earth colored kanjivaram saree, with a stubborn white cotton blouse, a long mangalsutra round her neck, diamonds in the ears, a decent size tikka on the forehead and a set of brown  black mafia style (the type Karunanidhi wears) sunglasses properly set on her eyes.  I have always loved these kind of sunglasses, and there was nothing more regal when she wore them, shortly after her cataract operation in her 70's , in the non-phaco-emulsification surgery days, when you emerged from the OT is sunglasses and kept them on for 10 days in hospital, while the stitches dried.

Perfect for hiding your eyes from visitors, one could simply take a nap, when faced with visitors you didn't like, and no one found out if you opened your eyes by mistake; you could be looking at the door and no one could see that you were not listening to them.  These glasses really suit everyone, right from the three year old grandson who wants to try them on, to the daughter and daughter-in-law wanting to protect their contact lenses. The frames never went out of fashion, and will always keep coming back if they do. 

 And GKB opticals has these !  Model  SUNDRIVE M-001 0 ! 

 You can even use them after the cataract has healed .  In alternate use, such glasses fit firmly behind, over the bun of your hair, and provide a firm basis for anchoring all the lovely jasmine gajras  on special occasions. 

  Naturally, carrying them in dabbas that click shut is passé.   Authentic heirloom white blouses, often had a pocket at the lower part of the blouse near your waist.  (Very thoughtful, and something all current designers need to note , busy as they are deleting shoulders etc from blouses....).  These glasses maybe smartly kept in these pockets, and pulled out at a moments notice to examine someone's new necklace or jari embroidery. Alternatively, they do set off a lovely Kanjeevaram when tucked in at the waist,  say, next to a bunch of keys. Highly recommended  especially for senior ladies, not obsessed or impressed with the current rimless mania.     


While these may be fine for everyday wear, it is imperative to have a special pair for special occasions,  like attending the afternoon bhishi of the colony ladies, Mrs. H's  daughter's engagement celebration  or, say,  a special meeting .   Mumbai being very dusty, thanks to the constant digging of roads, one must have adequate protection while zooming around in autos. You need sideways protection in glasses as the ricks are open on the sides.  

What better than these OAKLEY FatCat 03-358 model glasses  !  In a special wrap-around styling......

One has to change with the times . These glasses come, in what one may call, dainty ladies' colors.  They provide amazing protection around the sides of the eyes, preventing you from taking a sideways look at, say,  what Mrs so-and-so. next to you,  was looking at  in the jeweller's shop. It also keeps your eyes protected from all the dust coming in from the sides.  

These glasses, when combined with mangalsutra style holders that  attach   to the frame on the side, ensure that even the biggest pothole faced by you in a rickshaw, will not damage and dislodge your glasses. They will simply  slip down and rest on the leheriya border of your modern saree.  You may of course, have chains in pure gold and tiny pearls anchored to your glasses  for special occasions. Given our traditions in gems and jewellery,  really, I mean the sky is the limit then for using these fine set of glasses .  

 

These glasses have inbuilt decoration on the sides, which lends itself to further innovative applications . Since these are wrap-around glasses ,  it is natural that one may want to wear them around the neck, as a choker occasionally.  For those with daughters approaching size zero, a la Kareena Kapur ,  the possibility of using these amazing glasses as a cummerbund in the next Lakme India Fashion Week, cannot be denied. 

Of course, there are several other styles  that  would look good  too. There is a lot of variety today in clothes and hairdo's . Sometimes, the entire hairstyle consists of leaving the hair open, like we did after a head bath on Sundays in our childhood 50 years ago !.  In this fast life, all that flying hair, would really go well with Rayban aviator style glasses. You know, you may not fly, but your hair does, as you rush about. It always impresses the cops if they happen to catch you for going through a red signal.  Makes you look kind of corporate and busy. And maybe Page 3. 


 And yet, I believe in the here and now . In being yourself, and not giving in to fashion diktats. And having multiple uses of things like sunglasses.  

But I will let you in on a secret.  What I really hanker after are those clip-on type attachments that one may wear on ordinary prescription glasses. My late father had one of those, and I've always wanted to kind of turn them up (like a cap visor) , say while checking a bill or something, then click them down, and then leave in dark eyed splendor for the next appointment.


What to do ! We old folks are, as they say these days, like that only!

 

This entry is a part of the contest at BlogAdda.com brought to you by GKB Optical Sunglasses