EYES ON STARS

• Once a poet said: I don't want to leave my shoes behind, for someone will try it on.
• It sounds arrogant that nobody should take his place. There are many who have what they do not deserve and many, who though having talent, slumber in the dark caves of oblivion, forgotten by a tasteless people. "Nallathor veenai seidhe, adhai nalamkeda puzhuthiyil yerivathundo" wrote Bharathi _ and how right he was. To be seen and to have one's talent recognised, self-projection is necessary.
• Old people suffer more from being ignored than from diseases. The world moves on and they stand trying to make sense out of fast-changing situations, and language also.
• Among the youth, self-confidence is sometimes seen as arrogance, but what can one do when one is struggling? To be laughed at is bad but to be scared to death is worse. In such cases they appear arrogant, to survive and win in a competitive world.
• As Oscar Wilde said: All of us are in the gutter, but some of us have our eyes fixed on stars."

BEEN AWAY, INTO DISH

• Am back again. Was away watching all my favourite channels on Dish TV, that's all. 6
• I was deprived of watching Star movies HBO, Animal Planet etc for over three years and when I got the connection, I went on a spree. This greatly cut into my reading and updating my blog. I have to steal time to do this now.
• Without relatives, I grew up on films, books and songs. Almost became addicted to films and books and introverted. I was isolated, because my reading took me far away from those who didn't pore over books and didn't watch my type of films.
• This included most of the people around me. I found I had walked past most people with my nose into books and had reached a place where there were none.
• Sometimes I try to be extroverted with the undesired result that I get branded as being moody.
• Then I stopped fighting my own image. Image is what people think of you: not what you want them to think about you. That is manipulation, a sin worse than being moody.

FOUR FILMS, A COMPARISION

• Two English films reminded me of two Manirathnam films.
• One was Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid which made me think of Thiruda Thiruda.
  Everything sounded similar, both films etching out the life of two robbers, their friendship and exploits. In the English version, Etta Place gets the attention of Paul Newman and Robert Redford. Though she is with Redford she goes bike-riding with Paul Newman. In Tamil, both Prashant and Anand love Heera.
• The other films are Kannathil Mutthamittaal and Made in America.
• In the Tamil film, a girl wants to find out who her real mother is and this search leads her to Sri Lanka where she finds out that her mother is a suicide bomber.
• In Made in America, a young woman discovers that her mother, Whoopi Goldberg, conceived her with donor sperm and wants to find out who her father is. Whoppi Goldberg wanted the sperm of a black where as the donor happens to be white. Eventually, the donor comes for the convocation of the girl, that's it.
• The films have much in common though they are not remakes. If the Tamil versions were inspired by their foreign cousins, I won't be surprised.
• But maybe I am making uncalled for comparisons, the thematic resemblences are too striking to miss. Anyway, all four films are great to watch.

WHERE IS RHYME?

• It is true that I don't rhyme when I write poems. Life itself is like that. A long period of pain and a brief moment of joy. And the reverse also is true. Broken lines and meaningless disorder. Incidents occur in a jumble and we sit and piece them together; order scattered, disorder rearranged. Five joyous occasions joined in twos (pentametric lines) do not occur in life.
• I am too lazy to rhyme but prefer to break the lines where-ever I like. I only hope there is reason though rhyme goes for a song

OOPS!!!

A prodigal master (Genius wandering)
Searing-in ceremony (For a hot seat probably)
Legal hair (Leads to tangles)
Bulk male (Has to delete to reduce weight)
Animated suspension (Hanging in action)

I SAID IT

• If there is heaven on Earth, you and I must stay away from it
• How many parents want their children to be Mahatma Gandhi or Mother Teresa?

WORDS UNSEEN

• I go about weaving
  A web of words
  To ensnare beauty.
  I hear the footprints
  Of sound on wind
  The pattern of the wings of birds,
  The footfall of moonlight
  On coconut trees .
  Beauty lost to common eyes,
  Beauty imagined and missed
  Are words Nature wrote for some to see.
  I see music and poetry everywhere;
  In the silent sky and in the lost looks of many
  And the madman's wailing in the still night.

CELLOPAIN

• Sometime back, I left my cellphone in my office. I remembered about it midday the next day. I desperately tried to get it back but in vain.
• Once my cellphone fell down in the seat in front of me when I sat down. I hadn't noticed this. But an old woman selling peanuts saw it and alerted me. I thanked her and pocketed it.
• When I compare these two incidents, I conclude that for every dishonest person there is an honest person.

SODABOTTLE SENTIMENT PART 1

• Recently there was a suggestion by NGOs and other right-thinking organisations that soda bottle should be banned as it was dangerous in many ways.
• Following this there was an all-party meeting where this topic was to be discussed. Our journalist friend was present at the meet. Here are some excerpts:
• Member 1: It is our birth right to protest against each other as is the precedent set by ....... (Here he names a few eminent names) Soda bottles and politicians are like twins, inseparable, conjoined at birth, connected by blood and thought as evinced by our great....
  There were claps all round at the mention of a great name.
• Member 2: I very much accept what our brother said.
  (Here a journalist was heard saying that only recently Member 1 and 2 were at each other's throat and they abused each other's family)
• M2: We may have differences but never should we forget that we are of the same blood which we have spilled mutually. We have every right to throw soda bottles at each other. They plan to replace soda bottles with plastic ones. I ask them, can plastic bottles split the head of our opponents? It's our right to protest which is ensured in our Constitution.
• M1: Who can forget our 'Soda bottle Simon', 'Vattulodu vasu' , Cyanide Subbu
• M2: I would like to remind my brother that Cyanide Subbu does not use soda bottle.
• M1: Very sorry brother. I got carried away at the sweet rhyming names of the stars that dot our endless, blue sky which we look up at. Nevertheless Cyanide Subbu is a great tireless worker, a martyr.
• M2: No doubt, please continue brother
• M1: Our tireless workers do great deeds for us. If there are no sodabottles, they will be jobless. Their families will be on streets. What will they do. Women will cry, children will also cry.
  (A few members were seen wiping their tears)
  Here they take a break to drink soda

End of part 1

SODA BOTTLE SENTIMENT: PART 2

• M1: (Continues with renewed vigour) I ask them. Will they feed the families of our great workers? What other material can we use? Bricks?
• M2: Bricks are costly brother (and quotes the latest price).
• M1: And are bricks as effective as bottles?
• M2: According to my personal experience, bottles are matchless, like gold.
• M1: I remember once you threw a bottle at my head.
• M2: But you caught it expertly and threw it back at me and broke my head.
• M1: See. you can always catch it and throw it back. Reuse value. Which is not there in bricks.
• M2: Correct.
• M1. Past is past brother. Now I ask them. Have they fought with us in the streets, have they torn each others 'waistis', threw punches, abused each other in unprintable vocabulary in our very ancient language? Then what right do they have to ban bottles.
• M2. Bottles are freely available. We can always borrow them from our shopkeepers who won't mind losing them for the sake of our esteemed party, yours or mine.
• M3. I suspect this sudden friendship between you two.
• M1. We are like brothers, fighting is our birth right. Right from birth we fight.
• M2. M3 always suspects everything. if everybody is happy, M3 is not.
• M3. I see it as friendship between wolves and foxes.
• M1. Why not flowers and strings?
• M4. M3 is always jealous. M1 and M2 please go on.
• M1. Also children make 'maanjha' for strings to fly kites. For this they need glass pieces. Will not children be deprived of their pleasure if they ban bottles.
• M2. Well said. Even I would have forgotten this point.
• M1. Now it is bottle, next it will be cycle chain, what do they think of themselves?
• M1. There are film songs about soda bottle:
• (Starts singing)
  "Vethala potta shokkula
  naan gapunnu kuthunna mookula
  ada vandhudhu paaru ratham
  indha amaran manasu sutham
  vaaravadhi erakkam amaran
  vandhu ninna sarakkum
  amaran pera sonna thaane
  SODA BOTTLE parakkum"

(Widespread whistles and catcalls)

• M2: "SODA BOTTLE kaiyila cycle chainu paiyila
  dhoda varan paaruda aarumugam
  vaada vaada maapuLLa podaindhiruvaen gappula
  meiyaalumae enakku noorumogam"
  
• At this juncture, all of them start dancing and hugging each other. Finding it unbearable our journalist source leaked out like soda out of a broken bottle, plugging our narrative.
  

THE END

MY DAD

• If today, I can write English, am confident, have made sense out of my life and stay cool when things get sizzling hot, it's all because of my dad.
• Can't remember when he shouted at me, or anybody else for that matter.
• He introduced me to the world of words, giving me comics first, then Enid Blyton, James Hadley Chase and then Arthur Hailey and Sidney Sheldon. He too was an avid reader.
• Lost in the realm of imagination, I lived among created characters and always had a ready word for all situations.
• Shy and recluse, but still I let my hair down only in front of close ones. And my dad would always laugh at whatever I did and was proud of me. This was a great encouragement and made me sure of myself.
• More than everything, he introduced me to the world through various books. Such an experience still stands me in good stead.
• I thank him, though he is among those enjoying eternal life.

WHY I BLOG

• As a boy, I read a lot and watched films. I lived a lot in imagination. Everything has to be put in words or picturised mentally. I used to talk a lot to myself, even now I do. I would rewrite mentally a situation or dialgoue in real life or a scene in a film. Hence, my blog is helpful and a great companion.
• When we know someone is going to read, we become conscious of it. Maybe, we start colouring it so that others would accept it. We argue with ourselves as we would with others. But when I started a blog, I never knew who was going to read it. So it was more a personal diary or a jotting pad to give myself a pep talk.
• Sometimes I don't react in reality, but do so in the blog. It is like living inside a confined space, yet it horizons might expand with sudden reactions from some unknown person.
• Life means words for me or cinematic narration, that's the only way I can relate to actual life. Anything put well in words sounds appealing to me.
• I speak to myself and you are welcome to listen in.

SAAR AGAIN

• Poor Pope Benedict XVI. He got called 'Sir' by George Bush. I don't know how His Holiness reacted. Good thing he did not read my blog. Had he, he would have seen red. Anyway, I am sure the U.S. President has not read it. Hence the goof-up.

A COWARD'S RETREAT

• I had a friend in college. We used to together on his bicycle to evening college. We would discuss poetry and he used to write much.
• Suddenly one day, he told me that he had mental problems. It shook me, but I said "not to worry."
• After sometime he stopped coming to college. When I went to his home, his father told me he would relapse into strange behaviour and after medication he would be normal.
• I went to see him often. His father was grateful if I went to see him, as giving him drugs was easier in my presence.
• Then he would come to college and then stay away. This continued till I finished college.
• When I finished college, one day his father came with him to see me. His behaviour was strange. He imitated the train when he told me he went to his village by train.
• His father asked me to tell him we are going to a movie and to take him to his doctor. I agreed. And I took him in an auto with his father following.
• Once inside the hospital, his father told me "see now he'll scream." I asked why and he said "shock treatment". I had no hint of this.
• Later, when we met him, he was inside a cell. He looked me and said: "you said you would take me to a movie, you let me down." The look on his face was enough to kill my sleep for months.
• When he was discharged, he came to my house and said crows and chameleon were talking to him.
• After that I lost touch with him as we shifted residence. It must be about 25 years since then.
• I don't have the courage to find out what happemed to him. And like a coward, I write about him.

FRIENDSHIP ON ETHER

• I would like to acknowledge the frequent visit of three friends to my blog.
• Prabhakar is a friend who started visiting on invitation. The other two _ Valli and Anonymous _ must have stumbled on my blog.
• In many ways these three deserve mention. Appreciation, however small it may be, is well deserved and expected. Sometimes at least being noticed is just great, an acknowledgment that you are alive and that somebody does know and care that you can think.
• The daily mundane things we see and think find a shape here. Wrapped in words they do sound different _ the heart beat in vocabulary, the ECG of the mind.
• When I just read one word from these three, I feel alive and immediately I want to write one more.
• I could write more on this, but some other time.
• Thanks to this friendship on ether (web world can be called thus?).
  
  

LOST AND LOOKING

• it is dark
  the darkness and void of death,
  cannot see what lies ahead
  staring into nothing,
  fear colours and contaminates
  the air.
  where am i going?
  suddenly a strange hand touches
  my shoulder
  and that's relief
  it is nothing, being of no help,
  like me, lost and looking,
  a co-seeker
  but its doubtful, uncertain touch
  gives me strength
  to go on.
  

NAIL IN THE WALL

• Recently we went to our Uncle's village in Palakkad. Nice quiet place, looks hidden from the prying eyes of the crowd. Has its equal share of development (cable TVs, cars etc) and antiquity.
• Mom always wanted to go there were she was born (also my brother) and grew up. As we went, she showed me the school where she and her brother studied. As soon as she reached the house, she went inside and then later told us: "I went inside to see whether there was the nail on which I used to hang the school bag. It is still there."
  It evoked similar feelings in me; my school and college days came back to me.
• I think there is always a nail in the wall in all our lives. An old friend or enemy, a school teacher, a tree, a street, whatnot. Something we would like to visit really or in thoughts.
• How many of us have left our villages or shifted within a city or moved out?
• Oftentimes I have felt strange moments of sentimental silence when I visit villages where I have been as a boy.
• Before a person dies he/she feels like visiting the place where they spent their childhood. Coming a full circle.

SAAR EVERYWHERE

• Saaaar. One word that is omnipresent on all tongues. Tea maker and drinker, bus conductors and government officials.
• A typical conversation at a tea shop goes like this.
  Tea drinker: Saaar, 1 tea
  Shop owner: Aee, 1 tea for Saaar.
  SAME TD: Saaar, light tea
  SO: Aee light tea for Saaar
  STD: Saaar without Sugar
  Aeee without for Sugar.
• It goes on like this till you faint. (Then someone will say Saaar has fainted)
• Once I called a man Sir and he made a face and said "never use that cheap word.' That was 20 year ago.
• Now "Madam" has joined "Saaar". At least madam is restricted to some women unlike saar, which has percolated to all sections of society. Great leveller.
• If for one day I avoid using that word.... that's a big IF, YES SIR.

TWISTING IT

How to misunderstand when someone says:

• You are still the same:
• You mean there is no improvement?
• You are early:
• Am I late usually?
• You look smart today
• Did I look dumb yesterday?
• You passed
• Did you think I would fail ?

TOO HOT TO HANDLE

• I blame the scorching summer heat for my not posting anything. It really got me down, no matter how many juices I downed. I felt like sleeping most of the time and tired.
• It’s always summer in Chennai, except maybe December & January. So what’s there to grieve about?
• Earlier, when I was in college, I never complained about the heat but enjoyed the season relishing various juices and coconut water etc. But this summer got me down.
• [I thank the person who invented the air conditioner. I wish him a long life, if he has not already passed into the annals of memory.]
• Season has an effect on our mind, gives us energy or saps it, just like the time of the day. Ernest Hemingway was sceptical about what he wrote in the night as he thought he would feel different in the morning.


• A rain-drenched grass is past compare; the smell of rain and the new leaves in spring. How bright the leaves look after rain had washed away all the dust. It rained for a week last year and there was no sun. When it did appear, I went to the terrace and sunned myself like sun-hungry Westerner.


• Seasonal changes are to be enjoyed, I tell myself. Forget the curses I let out this year, next time I will remember.

FRAGMENTS

• I am in fragments;
  Future in my dreams
  Past in my subconscious
  Present torn apart by
  Past and future.
  The only time I was
  Complete
  Was when I was a child.

***

MELANCHOLY

• Why does the dark horizon
  Or a lonely water-drop on a grey leaf
  Remind me of a forgotten past.
  And why does the mind
  Inescapably visit those unvisited corners
  Just to check there is nothing,
  Though it knows there is nothing.
  Does melancholy hold an
  Inexplicable happiness the mind loves?

FARMERS' SUICIDE, IT'S NOT COOL

• I got up feeling sweaty. Must have been 34 degrees Celsius yesterday. Hot. Inside bathroom. It’s sauna. Impossible. Must find a small AC for my small bathroom. What is the world coming to when a man has to wilt like a plant. In Chennai, we must have only house cooling instead of house warming ceremony.
• I look outside and wince. It’s like Sahara. And it’s only early summer.
• Noon. I switch on the AC and go to sleep. Feel like I am in heaven. Dream of water in all forms… waterfalls, oceans, lakes, ponds, rain, and bottles of cool water.
• Now it’s time to go to office. Outside is hell, burning and tar is bubbling on the road.
  Reach office. It’s an ordeal, I tell you. Now I am inside. Ah! here they have centralised AC. Must find whether they can AC the bus. Lalu Prasad said he would AC the local trains. Good man he is.
• Now it’s cool. Work goes on at the newsdesk. Lots of shouting and instructions. Take this, take that.
• Hey. Somebody call maintenance and ask them to step up the AC, they want us to fry here?
• What story to take, asks someone. Try that farmers’ suicide, some damned place in Andhra or Maharashtra. Try. If you can’t fit it in see if Shilpa and Gere kissing thing will fit. Good news and picture too.
• What the hell I have to call home and ask them to put on the AC. Don’t have an AC car. Must have my room cool when I go home.
  Hey, that farmers thing is not fitting, Shilpa is fine.
  Go ahead, do it. Have to rush home. Don’t bother about the farmer thing. Go.

DESIRES NEVER DIE

• I died yesterday,
  As down went my desires
  Deathless Hydra-headed
  Desires,
  A Herculean effort
  Still puts no end to them
  And as a minute weds a minute
  A desire is born,
  (And the wish to vanquish them
  Is yet another).
  Jealousy, hatred all
  Have their seed in desire.
  And in ashes I lay defeated
  Only to rise Phoenix-like
  As a million other desires beckon
  Again and again.
  Defeat becomes a thought
  Defeated by desire

FAKE CREATORS

• A perfect moment,
  Always poised between
  The skeletal start
  To the flair-filled finish
  And oftentimes
  Lost midway,
  Is never to be.
  Sunrise, waterfall, rain,
  Rainbow, birdsong,
  …. all perfect,
  The creation of
  An unconscious genius,
  The unseen hand, the unexplored mind
  But can never be replicated
  By the ever-thinking mind.
  But try we do
  Like children scaling peaks
  With small imaginary fingers.
  Midnight hours lost in chiselling perfection
  And a morn paints us
  As mere fake creators

VANISHING MAGIC

• I remember Chennai only by its cinemas.
• Mount Road had all our favourite haunts. I remember watching Godfather and Jaws at Casino. Magnificient Seven, Bond movies Sathyam, Bridge Too Far, Battle of the Bulge, Safire, Wild Geese Pilot. Devi theatre once featured a Chaplin festival. Blue Diamond had continuous shows.
• After cutting classes, I would always go home, tell my mother I was going to a film and then go after changing the school uniform. We would go to one film watch it and reserve a ticket for another. Sometimes we would go for matinee and if we did not get tickets will wait and watch the evening show. English films were our favourites.
• With DVDs powering themselves into the scene, the mountain has come to Mohammed. The rare charm of waiting and watching the stars has faded. Their greatness has been robbed by the frequency with which we see them. The silver screen had a magic that made stars and stories appear far off and mysterious. Films used to dictate our life. We had to cut classes according to the show time and wait.
• But now, thanks to DVDs we can control all the stars, we can watch any film any number of times whenever we want.

NOT A STRANGER

• The morning breeze, brushes my face
  Where it comes from, there it goes; woes
  past, thoughts it has none
  Gathers it does as one
  Yours and mine
  Gives me yours and you mine,
  I look at you
  ‘cause, your thought came to me
  Why look at me like that
  No stranger am I,
  I touched you through the wind
  I spoke to you with it
  Not words ears hear
  Waves mind knows.
  I died your death, twitched in your trauma
  Died too in your love
  Not a stranger
  I know you —
  You, he, she, that child, and all of them
  From the past
  Not a stranger —
  Outside the hospital
  Waiting for father’s body
  That night flowers smelt of death
  It spared not your father
  I know your sad face,
  Visited my father, it did, next week
  Flowers smelt of death
  Not a stranger
  And you, broken in love, looking, waiting
  Waiting and looking
  The chill wind touched you
  And you knew somebody knows.
  That child there
  I was he
  He will be me.
  Here in the breeze
  You will find in the morrow
  Buried pain, joy and sorrow
  That was once mine
  Was once his
  And before that his
  And before that…..

ONE DAY WITH MR. CRIBBER

• He is the eternal chronic cribber, found everywhere ... in you and me too. ( Some of my write-ups may make you think I am one.) In some of us, he rears his head sometimes and in some he is there seated on the official throne.
• Here I have personified him as Mr. Cribber.
• He wakes up and curses the fan and some noise that would have woken him up. Next it is the corporation water, it has too much chlorine or none at all. Then the newspaper is always late (his much-haunted read might be Reader's Mail), the children do not listen to him as they have taken after their mother. Coffee is too light with lots of sugar, and if he is making it, no one is coming to get it.
• While shaving, he might curse his father for giving him such a face !
• Mr. Cribber goes to the bank and comments about the Reserve Bank of India, the clerk and everything imaginable. Lots of suggestion as to what should be done.
• In summer he wants winter and in winter he seeks summer.
• Bus service, traffic, price rise, government policies... nothing ever escapes his critical eye.
• He wills upon himself boredom and on others too. If he makes a list of things he liked and those he did not, the former one would be longer.
• If he learns to like everything he sees, maybe he will make his stay on planet Earth pleasant. He thinks he can change the world with his views, but he forgets it is somebody's views and ideas which have made the world what it is.
• If, for one day, he enjoys the bus coming late or the summer heat etc, .... he will not.

SPARE THEM A THOUGHT

• I must not write this. Good way to begin you think. But I never feel like speaking about the good things I have done or maybe I do not want to expose that sensitive side of my character. Whatever. Because I have a blog I am writing this, else I would prefer to remain silent.
• Some months ago, I went to an orphanage to distribute food to children. We went in a car and waited for the kids, who were looking at us warily and shyly, to get ready. Then they took a bath and put on the school uniform and took their plates and sat down in a row.
• Then they sang a prayer, and we started distributing food. For every idly or puri, they looked at me and rolled their eyes and said: "Thank you sir".
• Their dress, their discipline and their sad eyes and the thought that they did not have parents, even a childhood ... I do not know what shattered me. Somebody said they would hold hands and walk in a line to school and come back the same way. Every detail I gathered about them shook me.
• I am sangfroid, that's why I did not break down. But I wore a serious look for three days after that. Their faces never left my mind. Repeatedly, I heard their voice thanking me.
• Basically I never complain about food, eating what is put before me. That day only made my resolve to stay that way firm.
• Hardly we think of such children in our daily routine, though we know they exist. When we see them, believe me, it will leave a lasting impression.
• I realised what it is to feed the poor and that there are a thousand hungry mouths for every morsel we drop. And when people gloat about their achievements of gluttony _ This hotel is good, food is cheap here, I shouted at the waiter _ I slip away to a corner and think of children who are grateful to god for offering them food.
• It's good to hear that many people feed these children on their wedding anniversary, the death anniversary of parents and on birthdays.

LORD OF THE DRINKS

• He was writhing, twisting and turning in a corner of a bus stop. He was not a motor accident victim but one who worships Bacchus.
• People were standing unmindful of this specimen tossing and turning, lost in inebriation. The callousness of the people, particularly women who do not take kindly to cigarette smoke and drunkards, was appalling. Some did not even bother to give a second glance or wrinkle their face in contempt.
• Some among us check whether our zip is up or if we have combed our hair properly. And here lies one totally submerged in his own world were there is zero code for behaviour _ actually he was in non-behaviour, all possible voluntary animation suspended.
• One guy drunk as a fiddler was standing in a bus, tossing here and there like a ship caught in a storm. And one man got up and politely asked him to sit! When we don't have the basic humanitarian decency to provide a seat to old people, why this sanctimonious gesture to drunkards?
• I feel the first spirit lover should have been bodily lifted by some like-minded people and safely deposited in an Onyx garbage bin, where he could be left to mull over his bad old ways whenever consciousness returns.
• The second could have been given an unholy exit from the running bus.
• Well, I remember a joke: Once a drunk got into an autorickshaw and wanted to be taken to Central railway station. The driver protested: " We are standing right in front of the Central". Like all souls under the influence of alcohol, this one too was asininely assertive: "Don't I know Central, who are you trying to cheat." Our driver, who belongs to a tribe of people trained in taking people for ride, got into the auto, started the engine, kept it running for a minute and said: "We have arrived." The passenger was happy: "See I know, have not lost my senses to booze". He gave Rs. 20 as fare and waddled away.
• One solitary instance in my life when I really liked the much-despised auto driver. Right way to treat sozzled up souls who are sometimes treated like the Lord descended.

GAMES LOST

• The games we played when we were children have disappeared into the mists of the ever-plodding time.
• During summer, we would step out at 8 a.m. and return home only at 9 p.m., of course darting in and out to sneak a snack. Cricket was the perennial favourite, but once we played baseball, with casuarina sticks and tennis ball.
• A range of games like gilli danda, marbles, top, seven stones, kabaddi, kings, apart from badminton, kept our spirits alive and our adrenaline flowing. That it shot up the blood pressure of people who watched us was not our concern. All the screaming, swearing, cursing was done while running at full tilt. I wish I could do that now to shed some extra (large) fat.
• We had a set of indoor games, like trade, cards, chess and carromboard. These were quieter and our parents loved us _ if we played at somebody else's house. Hide and seek would take us to places where lesser mortals would fear to tread. Riding a hired cycle during summer vacation became an obsession, with a scene of us taking a tough curve appearing and re-appearing in our dreams.
• When I look out now, I see not many boys playing. Most of them are in front of the computer, moving a mouse, wearing spectacles at a very young age and showing flab. The first sign of extra flesh on me appeared when I got a job.
• I don't want to sound like a pessimist, but can a computer provide the music that the ball makes when we strike a ball; the smack of a ball landing into save hands, the sweat, the wounds on our knees and hands, the joy of running and falling and a thousand other feelings that my mind has lost as years gobble up years.

GREAT INDIAN BABBLERS

• * Indians are unstoppable babblers, chin-wagging everywhere ... wherenot. Often you can see guys hanging on footboard in a bus, discussing most trivial matters oblivous to the fact that they are precariously hanging and only a misplaced foot is separating them and a hospital bed.
  * Another place where people indulge in this national obsession is the toilet. Yuck!!! Of all the improbable places. Guys standing side by side and exchanging views or whatever without being bothered by the nauseating odour leaves me tongue-tied. People talk everywhere except where there are supposed to, ie Parliament, from where they walk out at the slightest pretext or indulge in brickbatting.
• * Enter the cell phone, the mother of it all. As if we did not have trouble with our mandible movers.
  * One chap boarded a bus and started talking to a man to whose house he was anyway going to. By the time the orator finished he had almost reached his destination.
  * Another started dictating a letter to a fellow who was dismissed from his job. And no prizes for guessing who was sitting next to him listening to this tripe for half an hour. One way to escape from these strange characters let loose on civil society is to plug an earphone and lose oneself to music. But if you are listening to FM radio, that is a subject fit for another story.
• Got to go, can hear my cellphone ringing.

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COOL HOGENEKKAL

• * Last summer, plagued by sound, air pollution and subeditors alike, I went to Hogenekkal. Seeing so much of water for a Chennaiite, for whom a bottle of Bisleri is too much, was like the deluge. From hell in Chennai to high water. The trip itself was relaxing, but there water was king.
  * An old man took us in a parisal _ remember the Roja song 'chinna chinna asai' and that long shot from the top. Well the old chap who took us said that it was he who was on the parisal in that shot. (He was proud saying it as if he was Arvind Swamy himself. God knows whether he was taking us for a ride.)
  * The parisal went along a valley with water falling in some places. What a roar it made coming down. The water raised a spray which covered the rocks like a fog, hence the name Hogenekkal ('smoke rock').
  * All along boys were standing on top of the rocks ready to jump into the water from that height for 5 rupees. And they dived like a rock and swam like fish. You could see boys swimming along with the parisal beseeching you to throw money which they would retrieve from the depths. Poor ones, but at least they get money. Sometimes crocodiles can also be found in these waters. Some consolation this!
  * We went during the lean season and the water level was low. We saw the level the water had touched during the peak season, and it scared me. In some places there was yellow scum _ let's keep journalism out of it... industrial pollution, political collusion et al. There was a floating shop, with a guy selling junk food and the ubiquitous Coke.
• A paradise
  * Then we went to a place where the Cauvery enters Tamil Nadu in Dharmapuri. It's a personal paradise of sorts. I lay in the water very near the sandy bed since I cannot swim like fish but only like rock. With the water gushing all around me, I lay in the water with only my head sticking out resembling, maybe, a hippopotamus. Good thing we never took pictures of my taking to the water. Once or twice I lowered my head under water and remembered the film Jaws and preferred to stay above. Some lucky guys swam here and there.... show-offs.
  * Our next stop was the waterfall. The force of the water was such that it could cause you an injury if you were wearing a ring. My only apprehension was that it would wash away my underwear!
  * The cascading water washed away body heat accumulated in the city and cleansed my mind of all things mundane.
  * Finally when I boarded the bus back home, I could feel water all around me and when I closed my eyes the gurgling, gushing, roaring and murmuring water was calling me back.
  
  

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