Quote of the day...
Padh likh kar kya karna hai?
ek din to marna hi hai yaar...
char din ki zindagi hai jee le
agle janam nursery se hi shuru karna hai phir ek baar!
- courtesy: my exam afflicted brother of 13 years.
Sunday, April 27, 2008
Thursday, April 24, 2008
The origin'al' chain
The temperature at my current station today touched 42degrees Celsius. At jodhpur, this year, my vacation has been a warm one, warm in terms of the progressing summer and also the intimacy shared with one half of my family in the 8 days that have gone by.
Jodhpur is the place where my grandparents (mom’s folks) reside and where my mom has spent few significant long years before she got married to Dad. This is not my first visit to the suncity but never before has the visit meant so much to me, perhaps because my years were too few earlier, or because my successive visits were made at very short intervals. After an interval of close to 3 years this time, I have come to know things that I was merely acquaintances with previously and also made friends with new places and experiences.
I have learnt to read the newspaper in hindi, tried my hand at using the datun (neem stalk used as an economical one piece substitute for both the toothbrush and toothpaste by rural folksmen and also health conscious city dwellers of predominantly the previous generation) albeit with failure, savoured delicious marwari delicacies prepared by mamiji, dined south Indian style with the food served on freshly plucked banana leaves in the middle of the desert, explaining to the diners the formalities of eating on the leaf and the the correlation between the direction of folding the leaf post dinner and the non verbal communication of having/not having enjoyed the meal, much to their amusement (Ref- the folding of the lower half of the banana leaf up indicates a thumbs up for the cook and vice versa), put on a few kilograms thanks to a daily dose of the original desi icecream, the rabri malai kulfi (a thick milk preparation served in a conical shape on a stick) which is inaccessible in Hyderabad, learnt to decipher a few words of marwari and utter a badly accented greeting in ‘mujro sa! Katthe jaoo so? Mhare ghar aao so ‘, (Hi there! Where are you off to? Do come home sometime- and the people here pass a warm smile even to the stranger on the road) and many more of these trivial likes.
The significance of this visit, however, lies in that stroll I took with granny in the neighbourhood park yesterday that acquainted me with my roots.With every step that granny took towards the higher generation while she recanted the story of one half of my family to me, I realized how little I knew about my origins and just how I had come to be. Not only did I know very little of the generations that exist only in our family's history now, but I also knew very little of the surviving generations viz., my parents and my grandparents. The lives and history of five generations now lie before me and I am now trying to identify which parts of me trace back to these roots. Chances are they are but few. Roots often germinate in a place seldom traceable, travel far and wide, crossing regions, states and countries, and the tree, as it grows, gives out seeds that again seek abode in far off places giving birth to a new being. Some of us travel with the roots and some of us with the seeds. I think I grew out of the seed.
For new sprouts like me, origins are thus tricky affairs. People say that I am half a marwari because my mom hails from the marwar region. Its like saying to my kids a few years hence, that you are half a telugu because your mother hails from Andhra pradesh. Amusing!
Right now, however, I am getting geared up to discover the other family tree that I am part of when I visit the other set of my grandfolks ( Dad's parents) during the next week. To more discoveries!
Jodhpur is the place where my grandparents (mom’s folks) reside and where my mom has spent few significant long years before she got married to Dad. This is not my first visit to the suncity but never before has the visit meant so much to me, perhaps because my years were too few earlier, or because my successive visits were made at very short intervals. After an interval of close to 3 years this time, I have come to know things that I was merely acquaintances with previously and also made friends with new places and experiences.
I have learnt to read the newspaper in hindi, tried my hand at using the datun (neem stalk used as an economical one piece substitute for both the toothbrush and toothpaste by rural folksmen and also health conscious city dwellers of predominantly the previous generation) albeit with failure, savoured delicious marwari delicacies prepared by mamiji, dined south Indian style with the food served on freshly plucked banana leaves in the middle of the desert, explaining to the diners the formalities of eating on the leaf and the the correlation between the direction of folding the leaf post dinner and the non verbal communication of having/not having enjoyed the meal, much to their amusement (Ref- the folding of the lower half of the banana leaf up indicates a thumbs up for the cook and vice versa), put on a few kilograms thanks to a daily dose of the original desi icecream, the rabri malai kulfi (a thick milk preparation served in a conical shape on a stick) which is inaccessible in Hyderabad, learnt to decipher a few words of marwari and utter a badly accented greeting in ‘mujro sa! Katthe jaoo so? Mhare ghar aao so ‘, (Hi there! Where are you off to? Do come home sometime- and the people here pass a warm smile even to the stranger on the road) and many more of these trivial likes.
The significance of this visit, however, lies in that stroll I took with granny in the neighbourhood park yesterday that acquainted me with my roots.With every step that granny took towards the higher generation while she recanted the story of one half of my family to me, I realized how little I knew about my origins and just how I had come to be. Not only did I know very little of the generations that exist only in our family's history now, but I also knew very little of the surviving generations viz., my parents and my grandparents. The lives and history of five generations now lie before me and I am now trying to identify which parts of me trace back to these roots. Chances are they are but few. Roots often germinate in a place seldom traceable, travel far and wide, crossing regions, states and countries, and the tree, as it grows, gives out seeds that again seek abode in far off places giving birth to a new being. Some of us travel with the roots and some of us with the seeds. I think I grew out of the seed.
For new sprouts like me, origins are thus tricky affairs. People say that I am half a marwari because my mom hails from the marwar region. Its like saying to my kids a few years hence, that you are half a telugu because your mother hails from Andhra pradesh. Amusing!
Right now, however, I am getting geared up to discover the other family tree that I am part of when I visit the other set of my grandfolks ( Dad's parents) during the next week. To more discoveries!
Thursday, April 17, 2008
I can feel the sun
It had rained heavily last evening and spanned throughout the night, but as I stepped outside my house porch today, well into the morning, the weather was wornful and sultry. I foreboded the tan my brown skin would cruelly be subject to, despite having worn a full sleeved red and white striped cotton shirt, acclaimed to be the best sun tan protection by grandma. the sun's protracted glare was mockery towards my incessant attempts to attain snow white's complexion, even as I constantly tried to remind myself of the dichotomy of the Indian cliché with the west's fascination of the tanned skin that was, though I would but have got grade A if not higher in fairness by brown Indian skin standards. Just as I was contemplating discarding this thought for the time being, as i had graver issues to burden my seventeen year old Saturday morning mind with, I couldn’t help seeing the reflections of a more universal nature in this phenomenon, the Idolization, in whatever degree of introspective abstract, of the ruler, the powerful, and on the other hand the complex and successful seeking refuge with the simple, as the wise Wilde had put it," simplicity is the ultimate respite of the complex."
Invictus *
One of favorite poems goes:-
Out of the night that covers me,
BLack as the Pit from pole to pole,
I thank whatever gods may be
For my unconquerable soul
In the fell clutch of circumstance,
I have not winced or cried aloud;
under the bludgeonings of chance
My head is bloody, but unbowed.
Beyond this place of wrath and tears
Looms but the Horrors of the shade.
And yet the menace of the years
Finds, and shall find me, unafraid.
It matters not how strait the gate,
How charged with punishments the scroll,
I am the master of my fate;
I am the captain of my soul.
WILLIAM ERNEST HENLEY(1849-1903)
* Picked from The Prison Diary (Jeffrey Archer)
Out of the night that covers me,
BLack as the Pit from pole to pole,
I thank whatever gods may be
For my unconquerable soul
In the fell clutch of circumstance,
I have not winced or cried aloud;
under the bludgeonings of chance
My head is bloody, but unbowed.
Beyond this place of wrath and tears
Looms but the Horrors of the shade.
And yet the menace of the years
Finds, and shall find me, unafraid.
It matters not how strait the gate,
How charged with punishments the scroll,
I am the master of my fate;
I am the captain of my soul.
WILLIAM ERNEST HENLEY(1849-1903)
* Picked from The Prison Diary (Jeffrey Archer)
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