The Pedant

Last weekend, my son announced, Appa I’m inviting a friend of mine home for dinner on Sunday. Could I please be a little less sarcastic and little more courteous, definitely not in that order? Also, Amma, can you make some adai avial and Vaangi Baath, he is a big fan of both of those. Left with no choice, I grumbled a yes. I looked up at the year calendar with a small photo of Lord Ganesha and big bold typeface inscribed name of Lakshmana Groceries, their way of rewarding frequent shoppers and prayed that this new avataram not be one of those new generation mobile savvy, startup dreamy, torn tank top and low waist jeans flaunting hombre who would attempt to make me put down the remains of my provident fund into his application which would deliver me coriander leaves at the click of a button in twenty two and half minutes, ninety seven point eight percent of the time. So help me God.

“How do you know him? Is he working? Is he an engineer? Where did he go to college? Sarkaar college il a private college il a? Which caste does he belong to?” unleashing the barrage of questions, I found myself panting at the end of the monologue, I had forgotten to breathe in the middle.

Jr. Me stared at me, with his jaws wide open. With a shake of his head, he thrust his earphones back in his ears and started waving his hands in the air. Whatever he was listening to, it wasn’t Subbulakshmi’s Suprabhatam, the pace did not quite match with the violent gyrations of his body. Shiva Shiva!

On explicit orders of Ms. Me, my soulmate of this lifetime, I picked up a cloth bag and set out in the direction of Lakshmana Groceries. Unfortunately, the raw materials for adai avial, Vaangi Baath and a bunch of culinary delights Ms. Me and Jr. Me were planning didn’t grow on the trees lining my street. Lakshmana Groceries was going to turn a profit this year too, courtesy my family.

The day of reckoning came sooner than I’d have wanted it to and I found myself extending my hand out to shake hands with Jr. Me’s friend. Jr and he sat down and talked about topics in the world ranging from latest X Box releases to upcoming Formula One Grand Prix and Spanish La Liga all the while munching the savories Ms. Me was constantly doling out from the kitchen. I was left to wonder whether these poster kids of posterity were indeed talking about happenings on Planet Earth or some equivalent in a parallel universe.

I was relieved when Ms. Me announced dinner services and in the short span of a few seconds, found myself sitting at the head of the dining table, with the self-illusion that I was back in control.  I decided to strategically preempt the discussion in areas I considered myself to be pedantic and asked, “So do you follow state and national news?”

“Of course, I do!”

Eager to find a weak spot, I asked, “Are you aware of the recent skirmishes on the India Pakistan border?”

That, in hindsight, was the sentence I should not have uttered. I should have let the evening play out by itself, Jr would have handled it adeptly but I was keen to show who was the master in the house. Mistake. Big mistake.

It was as if someone turbo charged Jr’s friend. He launched into a tirade against the atrocities committed by Pakistan. He then proposed to blame Pakistan for all the ongoing problems in the world. Looking back I have no recollection of how he changed gears but his diatribe expanded and covered everything from Islamic State and Israel Palestine conflict to Chinese influences on North Korea and American imperialist aspirations in South East Asia. It was as if he had the solution to all the problems in the world, unfortunate part was that no one had thought to put him in charge! Thankfully, before the topics could expand any further, adai avial ran out. I used that as my opportunity to run to the wash basin. Golly, I needed a break! It was like I was listening to a speech in Klingon.

Finally, after a few more minutes, it was goodbye time. It couldn’t have come any sooner. As we all gathered at the door to see him off, he suddenly remembered something.

“Oh I forgot. My ammi had asked me to get a 10-kilo packet of idli rice from a grocery store on my way back. I only have Rs. 200 with me. Uncle, aunty, would you know how much a kilo might cost, so that I could decide if I need to stop at an ATM before purchasing?”

The Linguist

I was assigned to man the classifieds section of the newspaper that day. It was a peaceful setting, and one, where I thought I could work on some ideas for an Op-Ed piece that I had promised my editor I’d deliver within the week. As I was writing and striking off ideas that were popping in my mind, I was interrupted by a group of youngsters who appeared in front of my desk.

The guy in the center introduced himself and his friends to me and said to me that he wanted to post an obituary in the next day’s newspaper about his grandfather’s brother who passed away a few hours ago and he inquired if I could direct him to the right section.

“You are at the right place” I said. Pushing a pen and piece of paper towards him, I said, “Do write down the matter to be published and hand it over to me. You can pay the fees at the counter on the ground floor.”

No soon as I had pushed the pen and paper towards the group, their faces lost the ring of purpose with which they had come in. His face switched to reflect a confused state and his peers were looking at the ceiling and floor of the building with a new found esoteric interest.

“I do not know how to compose in Malayalam sir. I studied in an English medium establishment.”

Aah so this explained the tectonic behavioral shift of the group.

“Not a problem. You can compose it in English, I will translate it into Malayalam for you and give it inside.”

Now, the expression on their faces switched to chaos. One of his friends muttered from behind, “Hey man, do what they want and then come back down. We’ll wait outside, near the car park.”

Before the young man could open his mouth, his friends around him vanished. And he was back to staring at me, with a flushed look at my face. It was starting to dawn on me the reason for this unique group behavior. Neither himself nor any of his mates was confident enough to draft the same in English as well, the language over which they supposedly command over!

As he stood before me coyly, with his feet drawing imaginary circles on the floor below, my face betrayed no emotion. “What’s the matter?” I asked, feigning innocence.

“Please excuse me sir, I just remember I have an urgent chore to attend to. I’ll compose the matter from home and be back shortly.”

Saying this, he turned back and almost ran away from my presence.

I caught the back side of his T shirt when he retreated out of sight. It read “I was born intelligent but education ruined me.”

The Krishna Conspiracy

Scene 1

Battlefield of Kurukshetra

The great battle of Kurukshetra is all set to begin. Arjuna makes his way to the middle of the battle field on his chariot with Krishna as his charioteer. Seeing all of his relatives on the other side of the battlefield, Arjuna becomes depressed and is confused if fighting them is indeed the right thing to do.

Arjuna tells Krishna, “Over the other side, I see Drona. He is my guru, the great warrior, he has taught me all I know about warfare. Next to him is Bhishma. His love and wisdom lies within myself, within my heart and my soul. How can I fight people who have helped me become what I am today?”

Krishna tells him about his dharma. Arjuna is still not convinced.

Then Krishna tells Arjuna. “Alright mate. You don’t want to fight, fine? You don’t care about adharma triumphing over dharma, fine. How about this, I’ll keep a condition for you. Go to an engineering college in India, complete four years of baccalaureate degree course. If you think you can do that, then forget Mahabharata, forget the kingdom you are rightfully supposed to inherit which you have been unethically denied. If you can complete that four year course successfully in due time, I’ll agree to your points of view and I’ll steer your retreat from this great Kurukshetra.”

Arjuna thought about the moral dilemma confronting him and decided that it would be much easier to go to an engineering college and earn a degree than to face his own relatives in a battlefield.

Scene 2

Entrance examination center

A puzzled expression dons the visage of Arjuna as he stands in queue before the mandatory frisking before the beginning of the engineering entrance examination. His face certainly belies his state of mind. He had come in his royale attire, donning the gold jerried dhoti and his customary bow-and-arrow.  He is puzzled that he is quite an object of attention of the entire chunk of young men and women around him. Arjuna was quite used to looks of admiration and obedience he used to get from his subjects but the looks he was getting now was none of that. None of them are wearing dresses that Arjuna could comprehend. And he was surprised he had to stand in queue, waiting for his turn. Back in Kuru kingdom, he was always privileged to skipping ahead of queues but people did not seem to recognize him. So he stood, in that sweltering heat wondering if he had indeed made the right decision.

The queue inched forward slowly till Arjuna finds himself standing in front of a gruff security officer. As soon as he set his eyes on him, the security officer unleashed a torrent of gaalis Arjuna had never even heard prior! His confusion is momentarily cleared when the officer shows him a memo from the examination board. It read, “Don’t bring any device or anything along with you which can create trouble for you better to avoid things like hair band, cap and scarp, nose pins, bracelet, earrings, bow and arrows, watches and mobile phones.” Silently, Arjuna hands over his bow and the quiver of arrows to the officer who then pushes him to another officer. He thrusts the same piece of memo in front of Arjuna, a different statement is highlighted. “As per the new rules the candidates are advised to wear light clothes shirts and T-shirts having half sleeves which do not have big buttons, generally avoid wearing fancy type clothes.” Arjuna, clad in his dhoti and not wearing anything equivalent to the modern day shirt or T shirt, is again left in the lurch. He silently curses Kali Yuga as he makes his way to the nearest garment store to find something that fits the requirements for appearing in the entrance examination. He made a mental note to ask Krishna next time, whatever the challenge, do not send him to undertake a task in Kali Yuga….

Scene 3

Engineering

Arjuna stands with pride in front of the gates of the engineering institute into which he got admitted into. Though the feat of appearing for the entrance examination seemed much tougher to Arjuna than clearing the examination itself, he is nonetheless proud of himself and is looking forward to show Krishna and the other Pandavas his entrance examination results card when he returns. Focusing on the task at hand, he pushes open the gates only to find a huge mob of youngsters charging towards him. “Good God,” he thinks, “This seems it is much more of a battlefield here than Kurukshetra itself.” As the mob appears closer to him, the faces of the individuals on the frontline belie their state of mind. If he had his bow and arrow, Arjuna could have taken down however large a mob with his arrows but he felt naked now without his bow. That darn flight journey to college, they didn’t allow weapons to be carried on the flight, he had to check those in with his check in baggage and in the true spirit of Kali Yuga, the airlines had misplaced his checked in bags. Arjuna was helpless and didn’t have Krishna to turn for advice. However, his survival instincts told him that the best way out in this predicament was to turn around and run as fast as he could. He attempted to do just that but he was a moment too late. The leader of the mob caught him quite effortlessly.

“Who are you?” he barked.

“I came to join this college for first year engineering,” a tame Arjuna replied.

Huge guffaws accompanied Arjuna’s answer. “Do you know who we are?” quizzed the leader of the mob.

“No, I don’t.”

Slap! Before Arjuna could react, a hand had reached up and slapped his cheek. “We are your seniors. From now on, you are our junior. And all juniors are our slaves.”

And thus began Arjuna’s life at an engineering college. He would be in the middle of completing his engineering drawing assignment due to be submitted tomorrow when he would get that dreaded call from a senior to withdraw money from the ATM. As per Murphy’s law (he realized that Mr. Murphy had simply renamed Kali Yuga after him, he planned to write a thesis about Mr. Murphy copying from India’s religious heritage sometime during the course of his degree), the nearest ATM would be out of cash and he often ended up travelling to the other end of the city to find an ATM that had enough cash. A day before the mid-term examination is when his seniors would feel the need to have their rooms cleaned before they started preparing for his exams and Arjuna was called upon for doing the cleansing. Arjuna’s number seemed to be on speed dial for all concerned. When any of the seniors ran out of money to pay the dhobi to wash the clothes, it was upon Arjuna to wash their clothes till their accounts were refilled by their parents the next month. Buying alcohol (absolutely against his beliefs, mind you!) or a smoke in the middle of the night, standing in queue bunking classes to reserve railway tickets for seniors, you name a menial task, Arjuna had done that in his first three months. The icings on the cake were when he went to a driving school, learnt driving a four wheeler and appeared and passed a driving test as a proxy for one of his seniors who was too lazy to do all that.

Among all this, he had to manage studies as well. Although in terms of time and effort committed, studies lagged far behind multitude of other commitments (most happening of which are afore-mentioned), he managed to push along his coursework as well. He used to get so many redraws and repeats on his engineering drawing assignment that he strongly came to believe that his instructor of that subject was a descendant of the Kaurava clan. Engineering workshop was another highlight of the first semester. The T-joint which he had made as a part of his carpentry assignment, an elephant could pass through the wedge hole. Mathematics and Physics were all about derivatives and integrals. It started with first level derivatives and integrals but by second semester they had gone to double differentiation and surface integration. It seemed that every semester added one additional level of integration and differentiation, he shuddered at the very thought of what awaited him at the seventh and eighth semesters. After he added water to a huge beaker of sulphuric acid, there was a mini explosion of sorts in the Chemistry lab and he was given a damages bill that to him, didn’t seem much different from the semester fee bill. And to top it all, after a tiring day of classes and labs when he came back to the mess, they served him two rotis and a dal which had cooked of a healthy proportion of a dozen grams of dal in a liter of water or so. Staring into his katori of dal, which, if it was a lucky day, would contain couple of dozens of pieces dal, he reminisced about the royal food he used to get when he was with his siblings.

Scene 4

Battlefield of Kurukshetra

As in the first scene, Arjuna is sitting on the chariot behind Krishna. He has a sullen look on his face. Krishna smiles and asks Arjuna, “So, were you able to get the degree? Should I turn the chariot around?” Arjuna looks up to Krishna and says, “My Lord, please don’t taunt me. I confess I underestimated the challenge you threw upon me. I thought that it would have been much easier to get the engineering degree and that would have avoided the predicament wherein I would have had to face my uncles and relatives in this epic battle. But now, I realize, getting an engineering degree in Kali Yuga is much more impossible than fighting and winning this battle. Now I do not have an iota of doubt in my role in this world. Steer the chariot straight ahead my Lord. Let’s go get ‘em.”

And Krishna turned forward and the horses galloped to the center of the battlefield. And the rest, as they say, is history….

The Anatomy of a Code Review

This is the musing of a software developer. If you are or have not been in the profession, some of these might appear jargon to you. I have tried to write it in as simple a language as I can, but still you ought to be thankful to God Almighty for your absence of knowledge on some/all of these issues. Believe me, you are much better off NOT knowing all these than those unlucky ones like me who see lines of code floating around in dreams…..

Somewhere in the wee hours of the morning, long before the sun has risen over the horizon, in the dark alleys of a software company, an unfortunate soul sits away staring at his computer monitor, his hands deftly navigating the contours of a keyboard attached. That harangued soul, I wish, were my worst enemy, but unfortunately happens to be me. Myself.

The clacking of the keys is the only noise in the entire hallway, which is deserted sans a solitary me. I peck away at the keyboard incessantly, unaware of my surroundings. Completely focused on what I do. And finally, a few hours later, the beginnings of a smile begin to creep up on my face. At last, my code is working. An almost surreal feeling. Priceless, exactly the kind that my MasterCard cannot pay with. And finally, double checking everything, I send off my piece of code for reviewing by my peers. Also known in colloquial terminology as code review. That done, I head to the parking garage to pick up my car and head home. On the way down to garage, I try to remember whether I did have my dinner, or whether the last meal I had in the day was a piece of toast for breakfast.

Sometime after I reach home, I fall asleep on my sofa. And long after the sun has risen and the world around me is busy with its morning activities, my alarm chirps me to life. I brush my teeth, finish with my morning ablutions before I head to office. My first task - to check peer feedback on my code review. As I grab my morning coffee and head to my desk and open my computer hoping to see that my code has gotten the requisite sign offs. Or at least a few comments so that I have something to work on in the morning.

But alas, that is not to be. Indeed, I should have known. The very revered peers of mine were busily ensconced in their respective worlds, my request for reviewing of my code was nothing but a mere distraction. And so there I was, after toiling way past midnight, now at the mercy of my colleagues and seniors. If only they could give me some feedback. But fear not, it is not the first time that yours truly is facing this situation. With nothing better to do, I turn on the web browser. Social and anti-social media are the buzzwords as I delve into the pleasantries of life with friends and family from up close and afar. Cameth the lunch hour and I, having all the lavish time in the world, decide to skip the office cafeteria and entertain myself to a fabulous lunch outside in some restaurant.

I come back after a very sumptuous lunch and open my system. My mind is delving into the multiple possibilities of how to creatively spend my time in the afternoon in the office while appearing to my manager and the rest of the pack that I am, like a loyal servant, hard at work. No sooner has the computer opened up, I see my code review all lit up like the lights on a Christmas tree.

And there, after addressing the plethora of comments that flew in from left, right and center making me appear more of an idiot and less of a software developer, I finally manage to commit my code to the system. Feeling triumphant, like a warrior after a successful battle, I head to the kitchenette to celebrate my success with a cup of coffee. I stand near the machine while it splutters and cranks out the coffee I believe I so richly deserve. The mobile phone in my pocket vibrates. It is a new email, my change has caused a build break. Muttering all the expletives which I imbibed as a part of my collegiate education, I rush back to my office. The vicious cycle begins all over again…..

The Gym Saga

We’ve gone from being woken up by the rays of sun, to being woken up by the shrill ring of that darn alarm clock to the pleasant but snooze-able tone of one of those mobile phone alarm applications. They call it progress. Whatever.

I was somewhere in the hinterlands of my dream, happily under my blanket when I heard that sweet tone. At first I said to myself, that would be the mobile phone of my angelic princess who was riding pillion behind me on my white horse somewhere in a grassy and romantic savannah. When the ringing continued even after my princess attended the phone, the reasoning cells of my brain kicked into action and told me, “Idiot, there is no princess and no horse. That entire thing is a dream. And the so called sweet tone is your phone ringing beside your bed.”

With reasoning notching up her triumph over imagination, I open my eyes in slow motion and glance at the screen of my phone. The smiling face of my mother shows up on that. No doubt, all mothers are awesome and beautiful, and so is my mother. But she, like all mothers, seems to take a divine pleasure in waking me up when I am sound asleep and want that to continue forever. At the rate of angering the purists let me say that a mother looks lot less beautiful when she wakes me up when I so do not want to be waken up. Same logic applies when she forces me to go to bed when I want to watch TV for another hour.

With a great deal of reluctance, I take the call. With an even greater effort, I mumble the customary “Hello”. As if the floodgates have opened, she launches into her tirade. “You haven’t woken up yet? It is eight in the morning; the sun has been up for two hours. Hostel life has really spoiled your habits and it will spoil your health as well. Wake up and head to the gym. I told you to go to the gym every day at 7 in the morning.”

Okay okay. I know I had told that to her. Who the hell invented new year resolutions? And who on earth injected this idea into my mind to start going to gym from January 2 of the new year (Justifiably, January 1 is reserved for waking up late with a hangover. So I had decided that January 2 would be the D day). Hmm, half asleep me listens to the tirade from the other end. Somewhere in the middle of the tirade it starts sounding like a lullaby and before you know you are gently being guided to a pleasant sleep again courtesy the angry mother. Just when you think that you’ve conned her into believing you are listening with rapt attention word by word, she realizes the folly and notches up the volume a note higher. I swear that even if I were to mute my phone at that instant, I would still have heard her voice!

And so her relentless tirade spur me to action. I sit up in bed, my eyelids fighting against me when I try to open them. It is day sixteen of the new year and I had started regretting my new year resolution a week ago. While I’m trying to get my bearings, she is tirelessly giving sermons one after the other about the importance of dhann coming after thann and mann and so on. She quotes the “inspirational” stories about that aunty’s son who lost fifteen kilos in two months’ span courtesy some regular and systematic gym visits. About how everyone in family was staring at me and telling her that her beta is munching lots of junk food and becoming increasingly fat day by day, month by month. Uff Amma, I’ve already heard all these stories a hundred times. Can you please tell something else?

Mothers have a divine sense of measuring the pulse at the other end of a phone line. As soon as she senses that I’m slipping off again, she spawns a new thread of conversation. “Arre, do you know, I met our old Ayurvedic doctor the other day in market. You know, the one who we used to take you to when you were a kid and you used to fall ill so often?” Of course, I remember him. I was way too inexperienced then to know what was going on when I was in primary school but now that I’ve seen a little more of the world, I know that he is no doctor like he claims himself to be. All he does is boil some leaves and make a concoction and serve it to every Tom, Dick and Harry who come in for “consultation” as an all curing elixir. Hell, I’m reasonably certain half of my maladies have their root cause from some ingredient he mixed in when he was brewing his concoction but lack of scientific proof and refusal of my mother to believe scientific logic together prove it impossible for me to indict the “doctor”, at least in front of her. “So doctor ji told”, on she went, “that if you can have goat’s milk first thing in the morning after exercise that would be good for your body. Is there a place where you can get goat’s milk in the morning beta?” My hands involuntarily make way to my own head. I wish my mother could see my facepalm expression, but alas she cannot, on the other end of a voice call. I try to reason with her, “Amma I’m living in a metropolitan city and that too in an area that has a lot of software companies. This is not village where I can go and pick up fresh goat milk everyday in the morning” Quick is the reply, “What do you mean? No one in the city has goats? No one sells goat milk in city? Don’t lecture me about goat milk, I’ve seen the world enough to see through your lies!”

All the while when she’s on phone, I gargle some mouth wash. Brushing is an elaborate ritual, who’ll bother to do it? One mouth wash and couple of Tic Tacs should convince others around me that I’ve done due diligence on the brushing front. With reluctance, I search out some clean underwear (or what I think is clean enough) from among a scattered pile of washed and unwashed clothes and put on my track pants. My mother is still on the other end of the phone, all this while dropping pearls of wisdom every now and then. A lot of which sieve through my very porous and currently dysfunctional brain. At last before I step out of my apartment to head to the gym, I survey my bedroom and I find an empty bed with the blanket. Suddenly, out of nowhere the dysfunctional part of my brain decides to harbor the Satan. I tell my mother on phone, “Okay Amma, I’m heading out. I’ll talk to you later.” A contended mother who believes she has been successful in persuading her son to get up and go to gym, happily hangs up the phone wishing me a good day.  And me, the evil me, decides that an incomplete sleep is more harmful to my health than skipping gym today.

And so, I jump back into the bed, pull the blanket over my head. A few more minutes, I say to myself. I’ll sleep for 20 more minutes; I’ll wake up and straight head to the gym. Just 20 more minutes that’s it. So what I thought like this yesterday and missed gym because I didn’t wake up in the designated 20 minutes? So what if the same thing had happened the day before? I’ll sleep early tonight so that I can wake up this time tomorrow. Oh wait, did I intend to do that yesterday too? Aah hell, who cares. For now, let me go back to my sacerdotal crime under the blanket. The princess and the unicorn are waiting for me. Wait, was it a unicorn or a horse? 

Beerly Tales

Oh lord, forgive my soul. For I have sinned, for I have caused the greatest dishonor that can befall a family.

I have been taught that thou shalt earn thy bread with the sweat of thy brow. My family has always believed in that axiom and have always tried to follow it to the core as much as possible. Somewhere in the process of evolution, the great great great grandfather of my great great great grandfather’s great great great grandfather, Mr. Mattatuveetil Geeverghese Philipose Abraham George Punnoose Kuriachan Thomas or Thomachan as he was more commonly known in the mundane parlance added a rider to thee holy thought. He proclaimed that the future generations shall not only have bread from the sweat of thy brow but also beer. Earned from the sweat of thy brow. I’m still not a hundred percent on whether the process of brewing beer had been invented in those days. Going by the average age of the males in my family, I have strong reasons to surmise that brewing of beer might not have happened in those days and I would love to get a patent for the first use of the term beer. I have researched records available with Archeological Survey of India but they did not have any records regarding the origin of beer, they had only held records of the history of Indian-made Foreign Liquor. I even attempted to get access to the Papal library in the Vatican but it was denied citing the reason that they do not support research into the origin and history of beer. Wine was okay they said, not beer. That’s that.

But the point I was trying to make is not that. So this gentleman Mr. M. G. P. A. G. P. K. Thomas (oh hell, Thomachan it is! Sorry great….great….great….grandfather), he started this age old family tradition of having a bottle of beer on Sunday evening. Err, if you, as a reader have a doubt as to whether they had concept of selling beer in bottle in those days, don’t think too much. Just read this and go about your business! So yea, Sunday evening. Beer. That tradition has been carried on for ever since. Oh, there has been a couple of documented aberrations. The earliest known break in tradition came on a rainy June Sunday evening. Family records that I’ve had access to show that the place our tharavaadu (ancestral home) was, was inundated with flooding courtesy of incessant monsoon rains that season. The archives go on to say that Thomachan was actually able to get on a rescue boat, which was intended to evacuate the flood survivors from the area and direct it to the nearest beer selling outlet but the outlet had been closed. The records go on to say that Thomachan was heavily disappointed with this incident and continued to lament his misfortune till his death a few years later.

The second break in tradition occurred to my great grandfather who was serving as a sepoy in the British army and deputed to fight for the allied powers in World War Two. Mr. Mattathuveetil Alexander Jacob Paulose Sunnykutty Matthew or Mathaichan to his peers, was the first from our family to cross the ocean and to see a land outside of our country of birth but he also had the dubious distinction of being the second in line to cause a rupture in a centuries old tradition. In his case too, it was not him to blame it was more of circumstance that caused the accident. He was fighting for the Allied forces as a part of the British Army somewhere in Egypt when on a summer Sunday (Sunday of all days!), when he went to collect his “quota”, he was informed that they had run out of beer. He went ballistic and he is said to have search the camp from fence to fence, chain link to chain link, looking for at least a partially empty beer bottle so that he could keep the family tradition. Alas, as fate would have it, there was none to be found. He has even claimed in his memoir that he defied his commanding officer’s orders and walked to the German army camp a couple of miles away to check if he could borrow a bottle of beer for this one time. He was thrown out from there saying that German’s don’t drink beer, as Hitler hated beer, Hitler sanctioned only heavy liquor for his troops stationed outside Germany. (I highly doubt if this story is completely right. But hey, who am I to cross words with my great grandfather?) So there was the  second incident, more than half a century ago.

The tradition has carried on ever since. Following the footsteps of my great grandfather and my grandfather, my father has kept up this tradition. He has been such a stickler for tradition that the day my parents were married, which happened to be a Sunday, my father came back from the church after the marriage and popped open a bottle of beer first thing after entering the house that day. And that man, in the name of Father, Son and the Holy Spirit, had to endure the ignominy of the third in line to break the family tradition - the first one in over half a century to do so. And that, because of me, me the stupid brainless son.

This whole series of events shaped up yesterday (Sunday) evening. There was one full bottle of Kingfisher in its most pristine form, sitting inside our refrigerator. It was late in the night that me and appachan (father) came back to our house after a party at a neighbor’s place. There was no beer there, only whiskey, gin and tonic cocktail. Huh, as if beer is beneath his dignity! Why couldn’t he have stocked up some beer?! Appachan was mindful of the fact that he had to have a glass of beer after we get back home so he went easy on the liquor. But me, being as youthfully brash as ever, did tip over my regular capacity by a peg or two of neat whiskey shots. We came home and appachan asked me to get the bottle from the refrigerator.

The dutiful son I was, off I went and emerged victorious pulling out the beer from the fridge. With due reverence to the king of spirits, I placed it on the coffee table across appachan and plopped my holy figure onto the adjacent chair. No sooner had I got two glasses from the kitchen that appachan’s phone rang. Aww man, isn’t it too late to call? But call was a call and a friend was a friend so off went the brawny man with his phone and beefy guffaws. Now there is me, there is a beer bottle in front and two glasses. And a young gentleman, no scratch that, I wasn’t showing too much of the gentlemanly features with all that (free!!) alcohol inside me. So yeah, you get the picture.

The dutiful son pours two beer into the two large glasses. He waits for appachan to get back to start the ritual. Tick tock tick tock. No sign of appachan. So he decides to take a sip from a glass to taste. Argh, the beer this time is strong. Appachan doesn’t like it strong, hence off I go and retrieve some Sprite from the refridgerator to dilute the concoction. Now here yours truly is faced with an engineering problem - how to add Sprite on top of a glass of beer that is filled to the brim. The pedantic part of me comes up with an idea. I take two gulps each from either of the glasses and now I have room to add the Sprite. What I don’t realize is that I’m now for all legal and official purposes drunk. And thus, after taking those gulps from the beer glasses to make some room for Sprite, I swear I saw there were four glasses on the table. And the pedantic part of me further applied his engineering brain to the problem and decided to pour out some beer from the existing glasses so as to load balance. Load balancing, aah what a wonderful concept. Muttering thanks to all those known and unknown gurus of engineering, I set about my task. Needless to say, after an inexplicable series of actions based purportedly on logical solutions to scientific problems, after a few minutes my appachan walks in to find two near empty glasses and four-fifth of beer spilled on the floor and a terrified logical problem solver in rapt attention. Hic.

Monday morning. The regrettable night has passed and the sun has shown up this Monday morning on the eastern horizon. I haven’t stepped out of my room yet. I’m dreading the moment I step out of the room today and encounter my distraught appachan sitting in the verandah. Oh Lord, forgive my soul. For I have sinned. 

Aey Tee Yem!

ATM. Automated Teller Machine a.k.a Any Time Money. Also known more affectionately as daddy in college parlance.

A decade ago, around this time of the year I left home in the southern corner of India for college to a place far north. There were many challenges someone joining college, leaving his home and native state to a different region in a country like India. But at least one of them was not quite a problem - sending money through a bank. Thankfully, ATMs had started to make their way into India some half decade ago and by the time I was going to college, there were more ATMs than chai-sutta stalls in a locality. I cannot imagine going through college in a distant land without access to ATMs. Scary! Like those little weirdos of posterity will tell to each other about how they can’t believe their parents grew up in an epoch of time where there was no Google and Facebook. Ugh, did they even grow up?

So, ATMs. As with a lot of engineering systems, an ATM has, at least as far as the end user is concerned, has an input and an output. No, I’m not talking about the power supply as input and cash dispensing unit as the output, dumb! I’m talking about account deposit as input and account withdrawal as output! Yes, the account deposit happening in one corner of India most probably around dad’s payday and the withdrawal happening in a different corner of India in most cases on the same day, within a few hours. For practical purposes, the withdrawal happening on dad’s payday as well.

ATM was this often criticized but indispensable part of college life. An ATM could test you and taunt you as much as physically possible. I’ve had to stand in line outside the ATMs for over half an hour. I’ve had to do that in midday on peak summer days and in the midnight hours in the wintry December nights. I’ve had Murphy’s law conspire against me in all possible ways including and not limited to, this day when I stood outside the ATM waiting patiently for my turn for some time and when my turn comes, the machine stops functioning or goes out of cash. Or in another instance when I assume the money has been credited by dad only to stand in realize and check your balance to realize things haven’t moved from status quo for the past thirty days and just as you step out of the ATM your dad messages you saying he is on his way to the bank to deposit some money in the account and you look back and see a line that guarantees you another half hour wait. Aah, Mr. Murphy.

The first couple of days of a month are the busiest in ATM queues. But since your dad is adamant he’ll credit the money only around then, you are left with no choice but to get in line. The lines of credit which started from around the tenth of previous month to yesterday at various shops and establishments in and around the college campus are running perilously deep and your whole well-being (physically at least) depends on your ability to get some cash this day. This is the day you will, like Cinderella (or an equivalent male version) transfer from a pauper to a prince, which ideally would last you for the next ten days or so. Before your equilibrium swing takes you back to the pauper side of the spectrum.

Withdrawing from ATMs are also essential because of the limitations of swiping cards. Make no mistake, cards were accepted at a lot of restaurants, but your account statement is something which your dad has access to (God, is there no privacy in this world anymore?!) and he would be least impressed if he saw your most common points of purchase was in some bar or some smoke shop. To avoid that peril meant standing in the line, no questions asked.

I’ll end this article with an anecdote, an ingenious scheme a batch mate and a good friend of mine devised which is simply brilliant. He, as was the case of most engineering students, never had “enough” money. ATM withdrawals are generally possible only in multiples of hundred and this gentleman occasionally had his balance ending as Rs. 70 or Rs. 80, which meant even after his maximum permissible withdrawal, he’d be left with Rs. 70 or Rs. 80 in the account “unutilized” Necessity as they say is indeed the mother of invention and improvise certainly he did. ATMs had the feature to do an account-to-account transfer using registered mobile number. So this gentleman ended up transferring a Rs. 20 or Rs. 30 from some friend of his using their registered mobile number, withdraw the amount as Rs. 100 and return the amount transferred to the lender. Talk about rigging the system very very legally!

Bride Seeing

Bride Seeing. Meh, that doesn’t evoke a feel. Maybe it is a the literal Anglicization of a term that goes just beyond the phrase itself. Hence stabbing the heart of all the English loving crowd of the populace, I’m borrowing the original Malayalam phrase for it – Pennu Kaanal. Pennu kaanal ceremony, and for those Malayalam skeptics out there, I’ll shorten it to PKC.

I’m certain the variations of this exist across the length and breadth of India, but the one I’m more familiar with happens in my home state of Kerala. PKC is the initial step in a guy losing all the carefreeness of his bachelor life and an admission of the girl losing all hopes of ending up with a George Clooney, Shah Rukh Khan or Virat Kohli and submits to pragmatic realities of life. Err correct that, PKC is a solemn ritual where a prospective groom meets up with a prospective bride at her place, with the decision of a lifetime resting on that singular visit and its told and untold connotations. On an “auspicious” date and time as predicted by a panchangam or an astrologer, discussed and iterated multiple times to suit the convenience of the prospective groom likely coming home on a vacation from a job in the Gulf (bear with me, I’m going by averages here! The average Malayalee still works somewhere in the Gulf) and the prospective bride’s family, the groom-to-be and family set out to head to the bride-to-be’s home. For the sake of this article I’ll skip the prospective bride/groom terminology and refer to them as bride/groom. Saves me some typing. Come on, I’m an engineer. Optimization, procrastination and lethargy (as much sweet sounding they seem) are the three things I learned in college. But that’s beside the point.

It all starts from some nosy neighbor or *that* jeju ki cousin ka phuphaji ka didi ke saans bumping into your mother at some social gathering, all the more spectacular if it is a wedding. If you are passed out of college and employed for a year or two, any conversation between your mother and such a person will not bode well for you. Such a conversation will have its regional seasonings but a short transcript would be like this:

“Aur aapki beta kaise hai? Kaam dhaam kaise chal raha hai?”

“Bhagwan ki krupa se sab theek hai tai. Do saal ho gaya job mei, ab ladka keh raha hai ki usko higher studies karna hai.”

“Arre higher studies kaay ko? Engineer to hai hi who. Ab koi acchi ladki dhoodh lo aur shaadi kara lo.”

“Lekin tai, wo bade forcefully keh raha ki usko foreign me jaake higher studies karna hai. Aur koi charcha nahi ho raha ghar pe aajkal.”

“Kya karoge higher studies karke? Waise toh accha college mei padhke accha naukri kar raha hai ladka, wo bhi Bangalore mei. Ab Amreeka jaane ki kya zaroorat? Wo dekh apna Vivek,, Payal ka beta. Wo bhi yehi keh raha tha. Payal ne nahi maana, pakadke shaadi kara diya uska, aur dekho kitne khush naseeb zindagi hai unka. Meri baat suno, aajkal ke ladke aise bolte rahenge. Yeh Amreeka jaake kitne bacche bigad jaate hai tumhe pata hai? Uski baat math suno, tum ladki dhoondna shuru karo, wo accha bacha hai, apni maa ki baat wo maanenge.”

The next day your mother calls you. You awake from half slumber in the morning and your mother tells you, “I saw XYZ tai today…” The moment you hear that you know what has happened and what is going to happen. Mentally shouting all obscenities at that random tai (and making plans to booze off this pain if it is a weekend), the guy protests but in these life (-and-death?) situations, somehow taiji’s words carry much more weightage than yours!

And so starts the search. Malayalee mothers and fathers search from ends of the earth for a bride or groom as be the case. A decade ago, it used to be the classifieds section in vernacular newspapers. But not to be left behind by the tech innovations arising out from garages in Silicon Valley and dumps in Bengaluru, the “reputed Nair family” fathers and the “Latin Catholic Vishwakarma” mothers get new Android phones and install the matrimonial application recommended by their peers or jeju ki cousin ka…. The standards are high; the filters are in place. Often the guy or girl is shocked to read the description of themselves the parents have written about him/her. “Amma, I never knew you had such an awesome impression of me. Why didn’t you tell me earlier instead of beating and scolding me all the time? I’m such a perfect kid, thank you for telling me at least now. By the way you talk of us being from some reputed family, is that actually the case? When did that happen?!” The only thing that would be certainly true in a random profile picked online would be his/her date of birth and phone number.

Okay, okay. I’m rambling. I’m mixing up preambles with the actual title of the article. I’ll get back to PKC. There are bound to be ramblings but that is me the writer (mis?)using my author’s freedom to the extent granted. I’ll skip the stuff that happens from the groom or bride search, filtering till the setting up of PKC. Fast forward to the actual day of PKC. The groom is on vacation so he and his family set out on a fixed date and time in the biggest car they can find (“Oh come on, he is working in the Gulf. What will girl’s family think if we go in Maruti 800!”). So Matthew the groom would be accompanied by his achayan Thommichan, ammachi Lillikutty, George achaachan, Molly chechi. Or if it is Vishnu, it’d be his papa Narayanan Nair, amma Kunjulakshmi Amma, ettan and  ettathi. Meanwhile, preparations would be full swing at the bride’s place. As if the groom and family haven’t seen edible food for days, there will be a welcome drink (don’t perk up if you think it is that stuff you get, you know, you know, I mean…, not that!), a course of tea and snacks and some main course palaharam, depending on time of the day. It is like Rashtrapati Bhavan when a foreign head of state and an entourage is coming on a state visit. All this while, the bride would step into the kitchen every so few minutes, check up on how the culinary preparations are shaping up and upload a handful of pictures on Facebook and Instagram of those delicacies in multiple angles and with multiple image processing filters. “Oh man, I’ll break my previous high for number of likes in a single day!”

As a side note. There are multiple images that come to mind when I hear the term PKC. There is the tea offered, the accompanying sweets, the younger girls in the bride’s family crowding around some door or window to catch a glance of the groom with not-so-subtle giggles, the sound of the bride’s anklets, gajra (mullapoo) on her hair…and much more. But I think in terms of importance, Cuticura talcum powder probably trumps all. Let us admit, we Malayalees are not generally fair skinned but we are as obsessed with fair skin (“untanned” is a less racist term in a place where sun beats over our heads with all its fury 10 hours a day for 300 days a year) as any other Indian is and the short term solution to that is Cuticura. Cuticura probably makes and breaks more marriages than they care to acknowledge but credit must be given (and taken from) where it is rightfully due. Oh, and also Parachute Coconut oil. The father whose head is as bald as a field after crops have been reaped extols the virtue of regularly applying coconut oil at least five days a week for over five decades. The son is concerned whether his Brylcreem effect will be nullified by use of coconut oil. That is an ongoing debate, I’ll not delve into that.

The party of the groom reach the girl’s house. All those pleasantries are exchanged. “How was your flight from Gulf?” as if, if the flight were bad they could do something. “Did you travel business class? I don’t go economy class nowadays, the ACs don’t work in that class.” “Is your manager Arab?” Blah blah. The groom had bought new shirt and jeans for this day - specific instruction from the mother who thinks that’ll propel someone from cattle class looks to look like those guys who show up in advertisements. And since this is the first day wearing it, the groom now realizes that in his haste, his jeans are a waist size too small. The elasticity of jeans is in a very “pressing” war with the muscles lining his lower stomach and the stomach is dangerously bordering on winning the war, but the groom has to indeed put on the best smiley face. “And I thought the real war would begin after marriage!” And so on goes the show, till when everyone is exhausted about topics to talk. Job details, check. General Gulf news, check. Last monsoon and its stories, check. Condition of roads and traffic, check. There are only so many things two families who are complete strangers can talk about. And when the topics are dispersed with, the bride’s father turns to her mother and whispers something in her ear. She turns to some relative sitting next to her and does the same. The relative turns to the person next to her and the same process repeats. “Oh come on, I know what you are telling, you can as well tell it out loud instead of doing this silent murmur message passing thing.” After a few hops the message has reached the person closest to the door and he/she patiently waits even though everyone knows what is the whisper all about. And when it “officially” reaches the last person inside, he turns back and heads inside. Action time.

Aah the Noopura Dhwani. The mellow sound of anklets fill the air. Does it have a rhythm? A flow to it? Does it sound like “aishwaryathinte siren” to borrow from a popular Malayalam movie? He never really bothered to study Doppler effect but the groom knows enough to make out that as the source of sound comes nearer, the sound gets louder. Poor Mr. Doppler, after all that hard work, his theorem has been sidestepped. The clinking sounds of the anklet reaches its peak. And a girl makes her way to the door, snatches a peek at the groom, and with a giggle, stows herself behind the door. “Oh no, that is my cousin’s daughter, she is very naughty.” And that is when the bride makes her entrance. She’s in jeans and top, clutching a mobile phone in her hands, her phone emitting singular notification sounds of what are invariably messages asking for live updates. “Could you do a live stream on Periscope?!”

The awkwardness shows no sign of abating. The bride’s family stare at the groom, and the groom’s at the bride and they expect us to start talking like we were best friends who are seeing after a long time. All those rehearsals of watching YouTube clips of PKCs from movies have gone in vain. Both don’t know what to say - and neither of them wants to screw up bug time asking those random questions “Which college did you study?”, “Who was your favorite teacher?” Ugh. Finally, as the awkwardness reaches a crescendo, someone mercifully says “Why don’t they speak to each other privately?” Thank you uncle. Remind me to get you one of those Whiskeys from the duty free shop when I come next time.

So off they head off. Both are relieved, probably for different reason. The groom feels that with all the discomfiture his jeans are causing him, a walk even if ten steps it is, would be useful to “set things right” The girl has not checked her last Facebook photo upload for over twenty minutes now, not to mention about all those texts pinging her phone every few minutes. She’s eager to “get back to action”, online. And so they move to an adjacent room, and somewhere the ice is broken. They start speaking about random things - things that either of them really don’t care about and which neither of them would’ve spoken had they known each other prior, but hey, this situation warrants things happening differently! Eventually after some few minutes of random chit chat they are called back to the living room where everyone is. The parents of either parties cast furious glances at their wards to see if they can discern anything from their facial expressions or their body language and the bride and groom try their level best to mask their feelings. After all, he/she is right now the center point of attention among their relatives. Such occasions come rarely and who wants to move the spotlight out huh?

By now, quite a while has elapsed and multiple courses of food and drinks have been served. Certainly the groom (and for gender parity, the bride as well. Puritans, pardon thy for this unholy reference!) would much prefer a McDowell’s and a few pieces of Tandoori chicken for touchings but alas the occasion demands much gentler recourse and he has to wait till he gets back home, to tonight for “opening the bottles”  And so, with the topics of general discussions already stripped to a bare minimum courtesy over an hour of absolutely useless and unfruitful conversation, someone from the groom’s party, most likely his father initiates the process of gathering the crowd and making a move on. The apprehension is palpable in the air by the time the groom and his party get back into the car, for both the families are waiting for to hear THE word from their kids. The one word. Depending on that word, these trips in car by one family to another could be a regular theme for years to come or alternately would soon be forgotten in the annals of time. As with happens in Indian movies, since eventually the hero and heroine come together and live happily ever after, I’ll take a leaf from that book and say that it was a happy ending. Now, depending on where you come from, happy ending might mean different things for you and there is that..! Hence, I’ll sign off without a climax, for a change. That, my very unfortunate reader, is upto you to fill in!

Post Script: It would be incomplete without mentioning what is probably the precursor to all those Central Bureau of Investigation and Federal Bureau of Investigation. The pre marital investigation of groom/bride by the opposite party. According to the Six Degrees of Separation theory, any two people on planet are connected by no more than six degrees or steps. In other words, if we map from person A in continent A speaking language A to person B in continent B speaking language B, we can find a friend of friend of…(maximum six times) … of A who will be a friend of B as well. Malayalees have understood and assimilated this theory better than a lot of other species and as a result, whatever the circumstance, the bride’s family is indeed able to dig out information about personal and professional aspects of the groom and his family and vice versa. Someone should file a patent application for recognizing the pioneering efforts of Malayalee family (or Indian families in general) to the science of investigation and their contribution in making the field of personal and private investigation where it stands today….