Coffee,College,Office,Auto and many more.....

Time has rolled out endlessly before I decided to put these thoughts onto the blogosphere realm.Much more waters have flown down the Periyar and more chuckles, nudges and guffaws have been an inspiration .I came upon this book titled"Moth Smoke" a coupla days before and exclaimed to my friend "Ohh your reading Moth Smoke?"Much to my chagrin ,that the title came out as "Moth(as in both) Smock." Voila!!I realised that I do have a mutant strain of a Mallu phonetic gene encrypted in my DNA.


Well,we Mallus are of course an indispensable lot on planet earth.(referrring to the famous quip of Neil Armstrong meeting a chai seller on moon).From chai sellers,to restaurenteers,from scallywags to enlightened, from intelligentsia to fraudsters and swindlers.. we are spawned all over the globe along with our atrocious phonetic artistry.Many a jokes have been cracked at the expense of an undoubting Appukuttan or Bijimol,let alone the fact that it escalates to the situation where anything that falls out of a Mallu mouth is immediately lapped up by aficionados and smirked at.I wonder,where does the problem lie in?We are a race who walks around with the 100 percent literacy tag on our foreheads and yet sadly theres something wrong somewhere.The chink in the armour being the dreaded "O".This seemingly innocent vowel lurks around trying to ambush many a Malayali.Those who fall prey to it architects the famous "ooto,cooffee,coollege" troika.Not just them..you can chip in with your own morbid collections.Thanks to these uncanny bevy of phonetics and acoustics swirled around by a Mallu mouth, I believe its easy for us to get the hang of any language in any cranny of the world.From rolling the French Rs to trilling the Spanish ones and maybe chat up with a Bushman from Kalahari,is never a daunting task.I always find secret pleasures in torturing my non-mallu friends into pronouncing "vazhapazham","palli"(church) , "palli"(lizard) and hoot mercilessly at their ramblings.V for vendetta!!!

At this stage I must also remark about another curious notoriety claimed by the Malayali.If you meet Sini ,Binu,Tinu,Liny or Jiju you can bet spot on they are from the Mallu clan.The four lettered names which remind u of pets are not the end of it.I know of Clever(who failed every year at school),Korea,Bright,Sweety to name a few.I have always thanked all the Gods Pagan and other that my parents had the commonsense to give me a normal name.I am positive Shitty Vargheses and Booby Mathews of Kerala would have shamefully died many a deaths in their lifetimes.

All this and more, I am sure most of us are going to be stuck with this mutant strain of mallu genome.With that right I may as well as proclaim "I am a zimble Mallu without an yem bee yay degree from coollege and not from the bissi gelf,but I go in an oto to my office and louuves to listen to pope and drink cooffee!!!"

Remembering Jonas Thomas

New buds blossom, the old leaves shrivel and fall to consummate the circle. The circle of life. They begin as tender buds. Whispering with the winds. Later they acquire the brightest green to shimmer in the sun; hurting the eyes. At last, they grow yellow, brown and tremble at the slightest breeze. Then they fall. That fall makes way for the new. It goes on, the circle of life. Each one of us falls behind this cycle. Blindly following its wake, knowing perfectly well that at the end of the long day we must retire. Submit ourselves to a dark unknown truth. Does the leaf know that the fall is near? Do we comprehend that death is near? Rather, do we wait for It.? I do not, but here is the story of somebody who I think was born to die.

I do not like to remember him the way I first saw him. I saw a full sleeve arm and a vague figure working behind some unknown strange machines, occasionally pelting out loud comments. I do not want to conjure that amorphous picture when I think of him. I would like to borrow a colleague’s left brain for a while and search for a certain memory. The memory of how he first saw him. A man in his ramshackled Lambretta scooter, flying into the rain with a cigarette between his lips. Drenched fully in the downpour. I have added colors to my borrowed vision. My minds palette sees it in a blue light. Undeterred, in the bluish night of downpour, drenched in the blue raindrops, in a blue full sleeved shirt. I like to remember him thus. Remembering Jonas Thomas.

Jonas or Jonasettan as I call him was the online editor with kairali Tv, in Kochi.A very creative person always game for innovative ideas. I have heard several tales about Jonas' creative outputs and toil during the glorious good old days of the television network.Tales told by many a tongue. I wish I could have met him then, basking in his crowning glory. All I could see and make out was a little less than the last two years of his life.

The first time I met him I was fresh from college into my first working environment and was feeling quite small in front of all the big sharks. I was assigned to help him in the PCR(production control room) and hiding my true nature, I tried to put up a very meek facade before him. It really worked because months later he told me “You were so sweet in those first weeks. Very cute and docile. I did not know that you were such a brat!" I think I got to know him more through our lunch sessions. We used to lunch together. A big group in a bigger circle and Jonas was mainly in limelight during these informal luncheons. Well...his soaring demand was only due to the awesome beef curry which was an indispensable part of his lunchbox. Myself being an ardent gourmet of the meat which most Hindus abhor, naturally was lured into the circle like how the moon draws the tide. Many such lunches and many a days later I think we fell into a close camaraderie. The nurturing hands also came in the form of another ritual, “going for a glass of lime juice from the nearby soda shack" which took place piously every evening. He was one of my close associates by then.Slowly he started revealing more about him. I realized as each day unfurled that he was one of the queerest persons I had ever met. He hadn't fallen in love till date (he was 33), he was on the lookout for a prospective bride who wouldn't want to work and who would bring him an enormous dowry (well, this was before the recession hit of course), he only wore full sleeve shirts, he always had to smother his countable number of hairs in some hair gel, and that he always reeked of alcohol and cigarette smoke.

He was addicted to alcohol. I do not know from when, but by the time I had met him a large part of his earnings were spent daily at the bar. A lot of people had warned him about this including me, but his reply was always nonchalant. He would say that anyhow one had to die at some point and hence why would one bother too much about life. This was always his attitude. Totally without a care in the world. Another fact of interest which I always noticed was his ego. A largely inflated pride which he only did put down in front of a very few people he really cared about. On one hand he was this "don't care”, slightly egoist, and in my words a partial MCP.But on the other hand he was this wonderful hard working, extremely talented technician. He was also a very caring generous person whose behavior I believe was misconstrued by many. He rarely praised anybody for the good efforts they did. His eyes were always for spotting errors. But once after I had hosted a show real bad and had to bear the brunt of others, he came up to a depressed me and said “You have it in you.Don't bother about what the others are telling you. Your first performance was simply brilliant.” That was him. Never ever heard him complement me on anything .But his words then was the best of them all.

Months passed. With me hogging his beef curry regularly and going for tea and snacks exercises. In the middle of all this I came to know about his fascination for many songs and movies. Most of them which talked about despair or some lost love. Out of them a particular song from the movie Aham which always haunted him. We also had our list of favorites among album songs. We had a song that we liked. It also told the tale of a long lost love. It had this beautiful violin piece and words which we used to sing.

Days passed and she came in. As an intern, again assigned like many interns to assist Jonas. She wasn't an exceptional beauty or charmer. A simple girl who brought the last nail down on his coffin. The nail of unrequieted love. The man who had never fallen in love till date was finally smitten by the bug that had caused many a big tree to fall. Maybe it was all because of us. All the harmless "pulling the leg” and making fun must have sowed romantically aligned ideas in his barren heart. And Jonas as he was, wasn’t human enough to accept that love cannot be bought. He could not scale the possibility of a person not loving him back. Months of reasoning, coaxing and persuation by colleagues and family could not douse the agony in him. She could not stand it as well. These ravings of love. She left without a trail. I still remember his tears as I told him that being loved back does not happen to everyone. He could never accept the fact that she could never love him. I still see his teary eyes and a weary face asking me quite innocently “but why can't she love me?”I never had an answer to that. It was beyond my human horizons to explain such a complex theory of the heart and soul. And he emerged a la Devdas.

I soon grew tired of these exercises. Trying hard to explain to him the pros and cons of this strange phenomenon called love. Trying to stop him from turning insane. I was never the angel who could stand his tantrums and stupours.Like all the others i started distancing him. Avoiding him to a certain extent. We all had our reasons. From the amount of unreturned money given to him from time to time, to the constant aura of alcohol he carried around with him, we were all irritated. Irritated at a man who was not human enough to worry about money or his future and move on with life.The final straw came with his hallucinations. He started hallucinating that the people in the office were plotting against him. He ranted like a madman in the middle of the night on the phone to stop the telecasts .Back from the hospital he still had doubts. One day as I was talking to him he asked me “Din't you sit with the other guys and connive against me.?” Aghast, I asked him,” Are you mad?" He said, “But I clearly saw you sitting with the others ,making plans to fire me from here." That was when I realized that he was slowly tight rope walking across that thin line. The thin line between sanity.The thin line between us and them.....

A whole lot of events followed, which I remember vaguely through a veil of misty memory. A group from the office slyly taking him to the de- addiction centre pretending they were going for a recce.His months there having no effect on him but an increased fervor of alcohol intake as he came out of it. Then I beleive came the jaundice part. The jaundice and the liver condition worsened.By then I had left my office and moved to Chennai without even telling him a proper goodbye. I have never called him after that.

On February 13th, 2009 he passed away. Once a long time ago, when we passed by his house for a shoot he had shown me his church and told me “This will be where i'll be laid when i die. You should come and see me then.” I flew on my vision and imagined him lying there in a coffin in his best suit, finally contented .His favorite violin piece from the album would play in the background, and through his unshed tears ill know that hes happy and sated. The lines went,"Do these dewdrops understand my agony? Do these tears understand my pain?"

I am sure now they will not have to know.Coz you are away. In another realm of the unknown. You live to be a profile in my friend's list, you live to be a song I hear, you live to be a memory I share...But you will never cease to live. You shall always remain with us.As the man in his full sleeved shirt with an ever lit cigarette between his lips ,that lived to cement the words of that famous Bard of Avon.

"Life's but a walking shadow, a poor player that struts and frets his hour upon the stage and then is heard no more. It is a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing. "

Just not ready yet........

I have always loved crosswords.The sheer human pleasure in finding the right answer which had eluded behind the squares for so long, is worth all the speculation.Specially the easy ones in newspaper supplements where you are sure that the person who has framed the questions is a silly damn fool.I love them even now..except for a small tag in some much tucked-away corner that states along with send in your entries.."Only for people below 20."Such harsh reminders of the grey age.

The old age was a horizon faaaar ahead of me until one sunny day a year ago when my sun flocked behind the grey clouds."The discovery of grey hairs" came as a bolt from the heavens and charred my young heart with flecks of grey! I tried to rub my eyes believing it to be a parallax error due to the combined efforts of a distressed pupil,retina,diaphragm and other less forgettable eye components.The result was a bloody red eye and not the clearing of vision and the vanishing grey .As i sank into the chair bewildered and dismal like mrs.varma of the old Godrej hair dye ad,i realised that the bug had bitten me as well.The sinister ,contagious,much-loathed old age bug.

In my young chirpy world, hair dyes were only for mothers and fathers. Unlike mrs.varma i don't have a consultant who can advice me to use the Godrej hair dye,but as i see the blossoming number of dyes in the market i see a day not too far ahead when i'll walk up to a store counter and miserable hearted ask for a hair dye.Also in relevance here is the horrendous expression i bear on my face when i realise the days of chechi/akka/didi is over and all the little nephews and nieces and stranger kids call u "AUNTY AUNTY".Happy days are exactly not here again. Each day i look at myself in the mirror to see if more silver strands appear in the black canvas.My close friends would definitely hold the narcissist tag against this but i cant help staring at the mirror looking for new wrinkles and crow lines under my eyes.To see if the turnstiles are opening .The turnstiles to the garden of brambles and nettles.The gate to wisdom and grey hair.

Each new year comes a rather late Santa in this rather sloppy mind of mine,with his sack full of..not gifts..but abominable resolutions.Each year they come and go, like unheeded advices.A chance to impress the teachers on the first day after Xmas hols.They range from age to age with the resolutions diminishing in number as i grew older.The schoolgirl days saw typically school girl stuff like "will not daydream in class,will top in class(if the first one works),will get over the then-crush(secretly praying to all pagan gods to make him fall in love with me.),and such cotton candy lacking in-wisdom tricks of the mind.As years tumbled down the lopsided drive of life, the number of resolutions went down from many to a prodigious yawn when somebody spoke of them.
For the past many days turning into weeks turning into months...there has been only one hard to crack one.To stop hogging like a pig.A pig will not be the ultimate.To stop eating like a pig number of pigs.(really forgot what the collective noun of pigs are...).The problem being that though the resolution sound rather rough n tough it resides in the sluice gates of my heart and melts like butter at the sight or smell of any food.From a young age i was fortunate enough to be on the thinner side of life.People around and i have collectively wondered why the ratio of flesh is inversely proportional to my diet.Those green eyed jealousies have ultimately paid off as i realise that flesh is slowly piling up and in plain terms" yes i am getting fatter."Yeww..."i just said it."
A reminder that metabolism is slow and again in plain terms-the growing old scenario.

I realise that the transition is happening.The transition from being a scot-free girl into a seemingly mature woman.Alas..the truth only rests in the eyes of the people who behold me.They see me as a girl in her mid twenties.The older generation wondering what deformities and dark secrets i possess,to remain unmarried .According to my grandmothers and grand aunts i am depreciating in value in the only economy the recession hasn't hit so far-"the wedding market." I do no care a hoot for all these conundrums.I am ecstatic that i have or i had such lovely times ,living my life to the fullest according to mine own devices. The main problem lies in the people around, who expect me to live and behave in a certain way favourable for them.As per their set standards. They see me through the semi darkness of my age..wondering how ill turn up.Albeit all that im still basking in the rays of a youthful sun.Apart from a sudden spurt of concern and curiosity as i scan the mirror for wrinkles ,flab and grey hair ,i dont care.I still very much am the girl who can climb trees and eat raw mangoes.I still am the girl who can play hide n seek with my friends.I still am the girl who can play pranks and giggle away to glory at silly jokes.I still am the girl who can sleep, hugging my mother.I still am the girl who can weep at the drop of a hat.


You can all just go away into oblivion-grey hairs,wrinkles and tyres.....I am just not ready for you yet!!!

Dandelions in the wind.....

I admit...I am so preoccupied by the present that my mind flees like a monkey.From thought to thought it jumps with the agility of a mountain goat.It does not mean that the past doesn't get hold of me.It does at times...when the mind is lulled by a seeking serenity,it decides to take a dip in the overclouding thoughtful deluge.I wish at times if i could have Dumbledore's pensieve. A large container in which you can store your memories.No..not just store, it should also serve me like how it served the master of Hogwarts.I should be able to see myself in it; a me .. a long time ago. Pick out on a particular memory and fly on the wings of remembrance.It would be simply an out of the world experience to delve into those years and live again in the folds of a lovely memory.

Well...my mind has just proved its mettle. I was trying to admit that i had neglected my blog for a certain considerate period of time albeit the ubiquitous truth that i have been jobless for the past 5 months. I can certainly give vainglorious reasons of accustoming to a new city,people and life and as vain the reasons are I'm still in search of an answer . An answer as to why i did not resort to the cathartic rejuvenation of my soul by penning out my thoughts. As i did admit earlier...

'yes...',my mind is completely immersed in the chaotic sea of present.. that my blog of the past took some time to crawl its way into my head. Life over the past months has been a hotch-potch of miscellaneous activities; joyous..pleasant..bland..unpleasant and sad. People ask me how i find my new life and the new city... I tell them i am happy. I would have had a myriad of occasions to fatten my bank balance if id stayed back and a consolation that I am closer to home. But i chose to get away. Away from a lot of prying ,pretense swabbed eyes of many they call society. I also got away(read not exactly) from being closer in proximity to a mother whose soul ambition in life, if i recall.. was to get me married off. Yes,that's true..i really believe my mother's very purpose of existence was to bring me up so that one day i can be a blushing garlanded bride ready to accept marriage vows and litter the human race with combined inputs. So..i just ran away from a whole life of somebody's dreams. Now the dreams have acquired crinkled edges and they are mouldy like an old once-lovely photograph. Yet here i am ..quite contented and happy.

Well...here it went again..the good old monkey...fleeting thoughts its prerogative. So..without much ado let me promise to myself that i shall begin to pen my thoughts more often. Let the oxymoron run his charades in my totally oxymoronic world. Do you know something...? One of the earliest memories of mine is me wishing to be locked up in the school library so that i could read throughout the night. Though the thought process eventually included a then-crush as i entered my teens ,the arena of the lock up never varied. It was still a romantic tryst in the middle of books. "Ooh so corny now"..But then, it was a fodder for a lot many dreams of starry love. The mother part was on the rampage even then by flicking my books and hiding them away behind motherly places (the cupboards,kitchen shelves,under the gas stove). The reason alluded to my staying up long into the night reading ,even after the lights were switched off and on an accusation of relative gravity ,that i hid books inside large text books when pledging allegiance to studies. I recall ..One night just as i was barely breathing ,gripped by the adventure that was enfolding before my eyes ..translating in my mind ...my books were lost in the sudden coup d'etat and curfew was declared by mommy General. Into the night,i was badly badgered by the thought of the five falling into the enemies trap..that i sought the help of a lonely firefly which had wandered its way into my room...Would you believe it...? I actually managed to read a few pages in the incandescence the glow worm spared.

Ohh..There it jumped again...From stone to stone...The mind of mine...But here i am..After covering many a milestone...Quite changed..A lot different from that little girl who read with fireflies..Nevertheless...I still do have this disposition of a child's wherein my mind fleets from thought to thought. Owing to this...many a  grievance i have heard ..Many a remark. But i guess i am happy this way... To sojourn with a sorrow or happiness ...Not to be entirely depressed or gloat over a situation...I shall let them all pass...Skip from thought to thought until i find myself happy...I wait for a cool breeze to blow my thoughts into the air..And let them hover there....Like dandelions in the wind...For i have set my sails and I'm waiting for the wind to take me wherever it goes....

THE D(ooms)IWALI DAY

India has always glorified to be the land of celebrations ,cultures and a carnucopia of assortments that follow with each of those.I always loved em...these indian celebrations..whether it be holi,pooja,onam,diwali.... (thanks to the diversity we have no ends to this list).But as i pen these words my worlds been shaken by tumultous activists around me....

Nah...not terrorists or jihadis who have suddenly decided to have an onslaught upon this naive poor girl.Nooo.....Not our antique musuem piece politicians and their thugs.they certainly not include guerilla fighters.But the protagonists who r currently ripping my world apart and make me curse every bone in their body are a bunch of kids....and their goons named mummy daddy..pata patti..uncle aunty!!!What in the world..u may say...but thats the truthe..the truth alone and nothing but the truth.
I was woken up some n hrs back..in the wee hours of morning..to the sounds of warfare..is the world comin to an end...is it the so called hallowed doomsday thats finally arrived to take its rightful place??Earthquake...??yes the windows r shaking tooo.....The thoughts clouded in on a sleepy mind to obsure the reality....What the hell...Ishouted to the large form on the other side..
Its Diwali........ohh....ohhhhhhhh......ohhhhhhhhhhh nooooooooooooooooooooo!!!!!

Diwali in my part of the world was a nice red colored day on the calendar when you had no school no college,, absolutely fantastic day to laze around.. Sporadic farts of crackers to be heard in the distance..lil sparkling lamps lighted at homes n a day like any other .Welll,,,,...grass is never the same on both sides.
Here they go again...thunderous ear splitting roars of crackers .Sounds of a thousand machineguns ricochetingoff my walls....little boys and little gals reminiscent of the little boy and fat man .. oOOh..there it comes another loud series ...Bang Bang bang ....Bang bang into my house.. Bang bang into my ears.... Bang bang into my sleep.Ihave a half mind to wander down in this semi sane state, grab hold of a bunch and shove petrol down their mouths..well...now you realise its the situations that brings out the animal in you....you really cant blame these hard core cruel molestors then...maybe they burst crackers in his face tooo.......

Well..before i antrez into the ever bourgeoning world of child molestors let me throw light on the point to be stressed...festivals and occassions can be fun maximo..but not when you are being a huge pain in the arse...Live and Let live...Touche!!!!!!

No Nuke......

I am all alone and lonely.

My greenery has withered and died around me.

My dense foliage (canopy) once a refuge to several beautiful beings.

Now reduced to a mass of broken bony twigs.

A while ago, I was alive with the sounds of a thousand birds.

Mornings, they murmured into my ears, sweet awakening melodies.

Nights, they coaxed me to sleep with their lullabied sonatas

Reptiles, rodents and insects played their games on my robust hands

And happily I gave them the proud fruits I bore.

But today I am all alone and lonely.

Like the shining sun which disappears over the horizon, daily bringing
a blanket of darkness.

My little friends went away, shutting the happy light out of my life (eyes).

My life is not the same anymore.

I can feel the solitude creep into my core and making me weak.

My limbs which endured a many storm.

Now crack up at the cold red wind that blows.

But i know they will return, my dear friends.

Back to me and to my new green shoots of hope (life)

Till then here I wait...all alone and lonely.


little does the tree know that his friends have all long gone before him.

that the scalding rays will soon complete the circle of death

when our mother earths womb is bestowed with natural energy
why do we,her children err upon her!!!

say no to nuclear energy