The 25 That Never Happened

Sometime in late 1987, I remember sitting in an APSRTC bus with my maternal grandmother, going to Gadwal. My grandma asked me to suggest a name for her newest grandson. I was 7 years old then and my the then best friend's name was Keerthi. So I said "Keerthi". I don’t remember anything else of this trip apart from this short bit of conversation. I don’t remember seeing the new born baby. I don’t remember Gadwal. I don’t even remember returning back to Bangalore. But in the months that followed I was told that my cousin was named "Pradyumna".

The next thing that I remember about Pradyumna was that he was one of the cutest little toddler-babies that I had ever set my eyes upon. We still have his photo with a hat on and he looks oh-so-adorable. Unable to resist his cuteness, my mother once got him to our home (South Bangalore) away from his parents (North Bangalore) for a night. Next day, my mother said Pradyumna never slept the whole night as he kept searching the house for "Mamma" and "Pappa". I felt sorry for having kept his parents away from him for one whole night.

Pradyumna's father - the same uncle who drives like an artist - had a job that made him stay in one city (or in some cases, village or a town) for only 3 years at a stretch. So the next thing I remember about Pradyumna is him being in Nagamangala. A small village with a handful of houses. All of us cousins used to go to Nagamangala during summer holidays and had so much fun playing so many newly invented games. I being the "oldest" among the lot used to take classes on Mathematics and act pompously as if "I-know-it-all".

During summer of 1993, I visited New Delhi for the first time with my mother and another uncle. It was the longest train journeys that I had ever been on - lasting over 40 hours. I got out of the train onto the platform and my uncle and Pradyumna were there waiting for us. The first thing Pradyu whispered in my ear as I met him was "There is a serial called Derrick that comes on DD Metro. We watch it daily. It is great!" I was amused that the first thing he told me was about a detective serial which he - I am sure - hardly understood. But it also showed how innocent a 6-year-old mind is. Sure enough we watched Derrick throughout the summer holidays and I went on to become a great fan of Derrick.

Pradyumna and his parents used to stay in a 3-storeyed building on the 2nd floor in New Delhi. The owner was a - if I remember correctly - garment merchantman who never seemed to work. Whenever we saw him, he was lying on a bed watching TV. His door was always open and the bed was right opposite the door. Sometimes Pradyumna used to go to his house, rather shyly and watch TV in his house. The only Hindi words he had learnt back then was 'Mein Chal' - a rough translation for 'I will leave now, bye' to the owner. Snippets such as these, for some reason, I never forgot.

There were million other moments that I remember sharing with him. During his upanayanam in Mulbagal Mutt (family was then in Srinivasapura), he cried like hell for cutting his hair short as part of religious custom. He was then a high-school-going boy and hence was becoming increasingly conscious of looks and fashion. I saw 'Hum Aapke Hain Kaun' with him and his family in a theatre in Secunderabad and absolutely loved the atmosphere. I remember going with him to the daily Sanskrit-sloka reciting classes in the nearby Mutt in Lingampally, Hyderabad and what fun we had trying to memorize those tongue-twisting God-praising words!

Then in 2003 he asked me to help him with a C program for his college assignment. Just because people work in a software company, there is always an impression amongst non-IT folks that IT folks will be able to solve any software program in any software language. I was able to save my face by successfully programming it although I was never into coding in C in my the then new IT job. I think on that same day his father asked him if he wanted to study his masters in US. I remember him clearly saying that he would go to US on his own account and not with his father's help.

As the years passed, we got busy and the interactions decreased. Once a while we used to meet in some family function or during festival gatherings. Brief though these meetings were, it was built on the warmth of the foundation years of our relationship.

I remembered all these on that fateful day on Jan 21, 2012. Sitting in my Nashua, NH, USA apartment, numb and helpless with what I had just heard, I continued staring out on the falling snow. Snow always makes the world look surreal. I realized that he had never seen snow in his life nor now ever would. There were so many things in this world that he could have seen and experienced and yet....

I being a father of a year-old daughter can understand how the news would have hit my uncle. Only a parent will know about all those immeasurable sacrifices that are undertaken in bringing up one's child...

If only he was alive today, he would have been 25 years.

If only...

Where is the Mole?

Today we were showing moles to Paavani.
She has only one mole while both me and my wife have many.
She is fascinated by these black dots on the body and keeps asking to see them again and again.
In the process, she constructs her first three-word sentences:

"Elli Mamma mole?" Mamma shows the mole.
"Elli Pappa mole?" Pappa shows the mole.
"Elli Paani (read Paavani) mole?" She sees her own mole.
"Elli Barbie mole?" She searches for a mole on her doll! [PS: The doll was not actually a Barbie]

I was fascinated how a 19-month old mind caught an obvious natural feature missing on a man-made baby that would have been designed, implemented, tested and certified by numerous adults...

Sleeping Hours

When Paavani was born, she used to sleep intermittently; But totaling almost 20 hrs a day.
When relatives came in expecting to see the newborn, they were disappointed to see her sleeping.

But with each passing day and month, this total sleep duration decreased.
When relatives continued to pour in, they were happy to see the bundle of joy active and kicking.

Between 6 months and an year, she fell into a standard pattern of complete sleep during night and two naps during the day: one in the morning at about 11 and one at about 2 in the noon, each lasting about 2 hrs.
Relatives were no longer in the picture now but the mother was grateful for the naps!

After she turned one, she no longer felt sleepy in the morning anymore. So she slept only after lunch for about 2 to 3 hrs.
The mother was still grateful as it gave her enough time to get the house back in order and attend to personal needs.

This last Saturday, after 19 months and 1 day, Paavani was awake for the first time straight from 8 in the morning to 10 in the night; and followed up on Sunday with 9 in the morning to 9 in the night.
Now, its scary!

:-)

The Indian Water

In one of the skype sessions, my mom mentioned that there is a severe water scarcity in Bangalore. Municipality had not released water for many days and people were forced to pay exorbitant rates to purchase water privately. After a few minutes, like a news channel, she changed the topic to something she had heard over the TV or read in the news: that there are millions of Indians in US.

After the skype session, I did some googling to discover the below facts:
- There are roughly 2 million Indians in US.
- An average Indian uses 135 liters of water every day in India.

Now if the 2 million Indians headed back from US one fine day, then the country would be short by 270 million liters of water per day more than the current shortage.
One almost gets the wry feeling what a tremendous help these 2 million NRIs are to their home land…

‘Children change your lives…’

I am very much what is popularly called a person from “old school”. I don’t keep up with the technological advances happening all around me. I generally don’t try something new – but stick to what works for me. Its not that I don’t like it but its just that I refuse to get out my boundaries and I always give one reason or the other. But when there is a need, or if I feel the necessity, or if I am just in the mood on a particular day, lo and behold, I am out of the antiques and well within the technological miracles, accepting it completely and fully, as if it is the obvious way of life.

This has been so since many, many years. When there was this wave of having a gmail account, I was of the opinion that its not needed because I already had yahoo and Hotmail. But eventually I did get myself a gmail account. Then I heard about Orkut and social networking. It was quite some time before I became an active member. Then, when I heard about facebook, I was thinking why do I need to be part of another social networking site when I am already part of Orkut. Eventually I did get into FB.

Once on gmail, my yahoo and Hotmail accounts got sunset. Once on FB, my Orkut account is almost unused. Now (?) that Google+ has come up (again I am thinking why - when there is FB) I wonder if I will become more active on G+ and if my logins to FB become rarer eventually.

Same was the case with many other things but eventually I get there. It took quite a bit of coercing for me to finally open a blogger account. Now, I have over 1200 posts. I became familiar with Reader, Latitude, Google Voice, Chrome, Picasa, Google Docs – all of which I now use quite often.

It is not just everything on the web. Applies to gadgets as well. The camera that I bought satisfied the bare minimum necessity. There were newer versions available by the time I got my hands on iPod and GPS (took many, many years to convince myself on the usefulness of GPS). But I am still holding up on the smart phone, iPad, Kindle, LCD TV – the list goes on and on.

Just the other day in office I overheard an elderly gentleman saying how his wife still never used a cell phone. But apparently his 2-year old grandson was teaching granma how to use Kindle.

This alarmed me. Paavani is going to be 2 years very soon. With a parent like me and antiques all around, I wonder if she will lose her technological competitive edge with her peers. So…..

Just goes to show what it means when someone says ‘Children change your lives…’ If not for our sake, at least for their's…

Numbers

onn
tooo
fiee
ixxx
senn
TENN!!

The urge to reach the goal as early as possible - by whatever means - starts as early as 18 months!!

:-)

9 Years, 4 Months, 13 Days

Well, well, well and well. One blog topic less in November from now on!

Finally the saga comes to an end. My mind is scripting pages and pages of thoughts, but I guess it is sufficient to pen “Wooo hooo what a ride!"

Amen.

The Ripple Effect

Imagine a pond.

The water in the pond is still.

There is no wind.

There are small floating objects on the surface.

Serenity and peacefulness everywhere.

Now imagine an object falling in the midst of the pond.

The falling of the object causes concentric waves.

The ripple effect of the waves is felt all through the pond.

Some of the floating objects get displaced.

This causes agitation and anxiousness.

I was once a floating object that had got displaced.

But this time, I am that object that caused the waves.

I somehow feel sorry for causing all the brouhaha but yet,

As many people wisely informed me,

“You gotta do what you gotta do.”

And 3 years later...

32
69.5

:)

The Weighing Machine - II

Whenever my wife stands on the weighing machine and see the scale go lower than she expected, she grimaces.

Whenever I stand on the weighing machine and see the scale go lower than I expect, I smile.

It is strange how lives change in diametrically opposite directions.

Barbershops

The earliest memory of a barbershop that I have is a small posh rectangular shop in Jayanagar 8^th block, way back in mid 1980s. Posh because it was filled with grand mirrors on all the walls, and a visit once in a month was a much sought-after event. Usually I was accompanied by my father and since I was too small to be seated on the grand cushion chair, I was elevated to the mirror-level with the help of a wooden plank. I didn’t mind missing out on the cushion nor the wooden hardness as long as I was compensated by being able to see myself as well as the neighbourhood goings-on in the mirror.

When we moved to Jayanagar 4^th block in 1989, I guess I was tall enough to enjoy the cushion. It was a different barbershop though, the one closer to the new home. It was called “OK Hair Dressers”.  Funny name, and I never forgot it. Amongst its peers, it was considered to be the “poshest” of all. Very expensive too, I believe. Mainly attributed to the presence of a television set on the upper far left corner of the establishment. Considering that hair cut was a Sunday morning ritual (had school on Saturdays too), and the most popular cartoons and Chitrahaar being aired at the same time (whole of India had only one channel at that time), the extra bucks seemed worth it. Slowly, when the craze of the cartoons and Chitrahaar ebbed, the extra money seemed unnecessary, and I started experimenting with lower classed establishments.

Names of many of these establishments escape me but I distinctly remember their locations. There was one on the 18^th main street that I vividly recollect. Although there was no issue with the actual hair-cut, the crowd and the behavior within the shop was jarring. I felt as I was in the midst of rowdies. Added to this was the issue of door never being closed. This somewhat embarrassed me. Perhaps I was always used to the barbershop’s door being closed that an open-door barbershop never gelled well with me. I decided that it was my first and last. After experimenting in and around all the barbershops and complaining about the rates (which was more or less started at INR 20 and steeped up to INR 40 due to inflation) in deep detail with my grandfather every one Sunday of the month, I decided that time was now an important factor than money. So I decided to stick to the nearest, whatever be the rate. As it turned out the nearest was a decent establishment with moderate rate and I stuck to it loyally until a barbershop opened just a few yards from my home.

This newbie opened the shop in a grandiose scale with respect to the art of haircutting. Although the establishment in itself was so tiny that only 2-3 people could wait on the sofa, the uniform of the barber, the exquisite dentist-like chair with elongated moving-leg-rest and the range of barber-paraphernalia were overwhelming. The AC was unheard of in Bangalore barbershop, although I knew that in other Indian metropolitan cities, an AC barbershop was a common thing due to the extreme heat. Rumour had it that this barber himself was from a 5-star hotel. When my turn came, he used a rummy tool on my head which stunned me. All these years I was used to the synchronized snip-snip of the comb and the scissors and now, for the first time, a machine was being used on my hair. That was it. I went back to my previous barber.

I guess that barber near my home never got on well with others in my neighbourhood too because soon he went off and someone else took over from him. This guy was an elderly gentleman with a dedicated teenage grandson, who learnt the art of “barberhood” and customer satisfaction very soon. The elderly gentleman just took over the finances, remodeled the hair salon to slightly bigger size, and made it much more common-man friendly whereas the teenager roped in some of his pals to perform the ‘Service-with-a-smile’ act. He encouraged friendly banter, spoke about recent Kannada movies and songs, offered coffee during breaks and returned change with both hands giving respect completely. He thanked profusely for the visit and spoke about how he wanted to expand this business.

This setting worked best for me. It was the nearest to my home – just a few steps. It was moderately charged (touched the INR 50 in late 2000s) and I was just a few years elder than the barber which added a twist to the barber-client relationship. This went on for a long time until it was time for me to travel to the United States.

Marlborough, USA. My first haircut in US was a disaster. She asked me to pick a number. Before I knew it, I said 3 and to my horror I realized later that lower the number, smaller will be the hair. I missed the snip-snip of the comb and the scissor. Instead it was a mix of the machine, of somewhat awkwardly holding the hair in a fist and then snipping. It was mildly irritating during the process but the end was even worse. It took many months for the hair to grow back and I always wondered why I had to tip a barber. It was a small establishment, near to my apt and for the first time in my life, my hair was cut by an opposite gender. It was a strange experience. To be fair to her though, she did her job well. Just that it was an unknown pitch to me. Once I realized my mistake, I changed gears accordingly.

Woburn, MA, USA, 2011. There was a barbershop right opposite my apartment but it was closed on Sundays and hence I could never visit it. But it just so happened that twenty feet here or there in Woburn Main Street, and one ends up with a barbershop. The one I chose was the one that was open on Sundays. The lady who attended to me was from Brazil, and her home was adjacent to the shop. In fact, to go to her house, one had to walk through the store! And then, there I was thinking about the variety of barbershops that I have experienced, when I met the best of the lot in Nashua, NH, USA, 2012.

As part of move-in mailers, I received a $4.99 coupon from a nearby barbershop called Great Clips. It was the first time I had heard of them. I never had had a hair-cut in US for less than $12, and I thought $4.99 was a very good deal. When I did more research, I found out they have a web-site, was franchised and also had online check-in, something that I thought was done only with respect to airlines! Anyways, when I entered, all the barbers exclaimed “Welcome to Great Clips!” Now, isn’t that a warm welcome or what! It is something that is done for each customer entering the store!

Anyways, the lady at the counter asked me to register (name, number, etc) and it was a pleasant experience all around, especially because when I checked out I was given another coupon (more than current but less than actual). Nice way of customer retention, I felt. So, there I go again. This time, even before I could specify how I need my hair cut, the barber (this lady was different from before) asked me if I wanted same way as the last time, and I said yes. Since this was a mystery, I asked her how she knew my previous choice. Apparently a record goes into each registered user on the user’s preferences so that the user need not specify each time what he wants. Only thing he needs to say or confirm if it is the same way as previous and the barber is all set. Wow. That’s all I could think. A simple thing as hair-cutting can be advanced to such heights of professionalism as Gift cards, Haircut reminders, etc. The first two times I had come to Great Clips due to the coupons but the third time – although Cost Cutters and Supercuts was nearer to my house – I still preferred GC because I needn’t had to specify how I wanted my hair cut! What an amazing way of holding onto new customers such as me! But if I thought that was the best of my experience with “barbership”, I was wrong.

It was time for the first haircut for my daughter who is almost a year and half old. Thanks to my wife who had done some research on the topic, we went to Snip-Its. This is a barbershop exclusively for kids, and the atmosphere is as if you are entering into a Disneyland. Cutting infants and toddlers’ hair is so difficult and hence the ambience is made conducive to kids to divert the attention from the actual snip-snip. Be it personalized robotic-looking PCs portraying cartoonic ads of Snip-its or a horde of toys and goodies at arm’s length, it seemed as if hair-cut was the last thing on the agenda! The icing on the top of the cake was a complete set of souvenir for the first hair cut: A bravery certificate, a comb, few strands of hair, a toy and a picture!

My, my! It just keeps getting better and better – Man continues to exceed Himself and it is this thing in Life that is enchanting and enriching! I only hope that that teenage barber near my home in Jayanagar also achieves such impressive feats in his chosen profession…

Natural Pattern

There is a guy

Who stays in the same apartment complex where I stay

And also works in the same office campus where I work.

I possess a silver Honda Civic

Whereas he a brown Honda Civic.

Today morning, the silver left the apartment complex first

Only to be followed by the brown

All the way to the office.

Today evening, the brown left the office campus first

Only to be followed by the silver

All the way to the home.

Neither he nor I spoke to one another

About leaving home or office.

And yet Nature created this nice little coincidental pattern

Which made me agog

And made me blog!

:-)

The Pink Honda Civic

There is a community college very close to my house. Each day on my way to office or on my back home from office (that’s four times a day considering I come home for lunch), I have to pass by this college in my car. There is no compound or partition that separates the parking lot from the road and hence there is complete visibility of all cars in the parking lot.

On couple of instances when I was passing through the college, I noticed a pink Honda Civic car entering into the college campus. The striking color boggled me because I had not seen a pink car before in my life. As can be guessed, there were few gals in the car and no doubt the car belonged to one of them. I was intrigued about the obsession of the color pink with gals. In fact, I happened to see this particular car enter the campus a couple of times at the same time I was passing through the college campus.

After this incident, perhaps because it was easy to distinguish it amongst 100 visible cars or perhaps because i wanted to humor myself daily, each time I passed through the college I gave a quick glance over all the cars in the parking lot and searched for that pink Honda civic. Usually I found it within a few seconds. This became a game of sorts. I would only get about 4-5 seconds for scanning through the parking lot, and I would be driving at about 25 mph on a single-lane two-way road. So, with these slight challenges, it was a quirky self-made game with no gain no loss, and yet this tiny desire to win. Something to make life interesting, that wee bit more.

As it happened, it was not this quest for pink Honda Civic that eventually gave me joy. This search for a vehicle-in-the-parking-lot, in fact, brought back memories from a distant past. During my college days, I had a crush on a girl. I was too shy to talk to her anyways but I knew the two-wheeler in which she used to come to college. She wasn’t in my class so the only way I knew if she had come to college or not was to quickly glance through the parking lot once a day to check if her two-wheeler was present. Seeing her vehicle in the parking lot was almost as good as seeing her, some kind of an assurance that the day might turn favorably so for me to get a glimpse of her. It was like a hope, daily. Something that made me look forward to in life. It was a special moment – this searching through the parking lot. It was a tense moment too. No vehicle meant she either hadn’t yet come to college or would not come. Which meant there was no hope of seeing her that day. Which meant, it was a boring day!

Now, when I search for this pink car, I am remembered of all this teenage emotions and how strange it all felt then. I don’t get all that excited now when my eyes finally latch on to the car in the parking lot but I surely feel nice remembering those good old days back in college when my eyes latched on to that two-wheeler!

Sharing

Paavani was in great hunger. She kept repeating 'Mommom, mommom'. So, my wife got some snacks for all three of us. We all sat down. Paavani was in utter excitement. She kept reaching towards the snacks, and not taking her eyes off it. My wife and I asked her to wait till the snacks were placed in the plate. She waited impatiently, all through jumping and trying to grab the eateries. Finally, we gave her the plate.

First thing she did was to take what she could in her tiny fingers and put it in my mouth.
My wife and I realized that she has already grown enough to reciprocate feelings such as love and sharing.
We were speechless. 

Valentine's Day Thought

A spouse can either make a life or break a life.
I am glad my valentine made my life.

More or Less...

I got my first salary over nine years ago.

I could not figure out what to do with so much money suddenly.

It covered up an entire year of my four-year Engineering course fees.

It amazed me that within a year of employment,

I could repay back my parents financially whatever they had spent on me for 22 years of my life.

My salary gave me immense happiness and amazement.

My salary now is pretty much the same as my first salary,

But in a currency that is almost fifty times more than my first salary’s currency.

But after filling in the EMI, family maintenance and other expenses,

I ponder if my savings can satisfy my child’s complete education and

If I can lead a comfortable post-retirement life with growing inflation.

My salary now makes me think and ponder.

Less was More then...

More is Less now...

Strange, more or less!

"Universal" Relationships

Astrophysics explains Big Bang and Metric expansion of space in clearer detail (but wiki will do for now!). The concept, anyways, if I understand correctly, is that each particle in the universe is moving away from one another constantly. The phrase ‘moving away from one another’ somehow struck me as something that can be related to our lives too.

When we are infants, we are so close to our parents. So much so that they are our everything. Then there are siblings with whom we start sharing. Right then, our universe has expanded. Couple of years later when we start going to school, we make new relationships. We get to know our teachers, we make friends. Our universe has further expanded. We share secrets with our friends and hence parents have got distanced. When we change schools or when our friends change schools, that’s when our universe expands further. True, we are still friends, but the common ground (school, in this case) is no longer common. We go to college and make more new friends. The ‘school’ friends became a past while the ‘college’ friends became closer. Then we go to work. Our day-to-day interaction with colleagues makes them as our new friends and the ‘college’ friends are now a past. Colleagues quit, people join other companies, more and more new relationships, at the cost of old relationships distancing itself – very much like the Universe and its expansion theory.

What starts as physical distance becomes inherently a cosmic distance too. Well, I guess, nothing can be done about it, and it’s the way of life. The Universe is just mirroring our relationships. However, thanks to the onset of Social Networks, everyone whom we know (or knew in the past) has come a tad mentally closer. Surprisingly, there is a hypothesis about Universe shrinking too – and its called Big Crunch. 

Jun 16, 1987 - Jan 21, 2012

My cousin Pradyumna.

:'-(

Ajji - Paavani - Suprabhatam

My maternal grandma was a big devotee of Lord Venkateshwara. One of the celebrated slokas on His Highness is Shri Venkateshwara Suprabhatam. As I have already indicated in one of my previous posts, it was a daily ritual to hear this sloka in her house, while being busy with morning tasks.

As if by a strange cosmic connection, my daughter loves this sloka too. Although she is none too aware of the spirituality and divinity associated with the sloka, she is spellbound when she starts hearing it. Midway, the sloka changes its tone. At this, my daughter starts dancing in her own animated way.

I can’t help remembering ajji. If only she had lived a few more years, she would have been so happy seeing this spectacle. Perhaps she is seeing even now...

Blame it on 2012?

As 2011 neared its end,
Workload reduced,
Morale raised.

As 2012 started,
Workload increased,
Morale dipped.

Hope Workload and Morale
Stop trapezing between
Zenith and Nadir.

I want a better 2012
Than the way it has started.
Amen.