I think

To my credit

What I describe below, I swear to God, is a true event. No part of it is my imagination.

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Midmorning. The lady of the house is franctic.  How can a ten minute delay in waking up in the morning snowball into an hour's delay in everything else?    The domestic maid needs tea.   The garbage collectors ring the bell for their "Deepavali inaam", lunch is not even planned yet, let alone being made, the two reviews that are 2 days overdue have become mutant, the deadline that is fast approaching pricks her now and then, damp clothes lie all around the house, giving the entire house a typically monsoonish odour that will soon give her a headache, her husband, who has been working from home, wants some clarification on a document, she needs to leave a little earlier to school because it is raining and usually during rains, there is a traffic jam, and no place to park, which means that she needs to finish cooking lunch in another half an hour..and so on, until the stress threatens to explode somewhere.

trrrrrrinnnnnnnnngggg.

The cell phone rings announcing an unkown number. The lady is pretty paranoid when she gets an unknown number when the kid is away at school because she always imagines the worst - could it be the teacher calling to say that the kid is ill?  Did they leave school early because of the rains?Or is someone in the family ill and the doctor is trying to get to me? Or someone urgently needs A +.  

Lady (L): Hello

Male voice (MV): Am I speaking to L?

L: Yes.

MV: I am so-and-so calling from XYZ Bank.  We believe you have a credit card with our bank, and in view of your stellar performance, we want to upgrade you to our premium membership.

The lady is taken aback.  This is big.  She switches off all four burners - sits on the dining chair comfortably, and says "yeah go ahead".

MV: You have been our member for a year now, and we want to to show our appreciation by upgrading you.

L: How would you do that?

MV: If you pay us Rs,. 6500, we will upgrade your account, give you a couple of free tickets to fly to Mumbai, and membership in a membership club at half the cost.  We will also send you a gift package with two watches made by some international brand. 

L: About this membership, what club membership would that be?

MV: We will give you membership in club A, club B, club C, and in addition the option of styaing in fivestar hotels in all major cities in India at discounted rates.

L: So, what are the cities that I can stay in?

MV: City A, City B, City C, City D, City E, City F

L: What about city G and City H?

MV: You can stay in City I, which is close to city G. We don't have city H in our membership now, but it will come soon.

L: So, what kind of hotels can I stay in city B and city C?

MV: You can stay in hotel M Hotel N and O in city B and Hotel Z in Hotel C.

L: Can I also use the card for hotel L in city M?

MV: Sorry ma'am, I don't know that.  If you want I can find out.

L: Yes please do.

[[silly music]]

MV: I am sorry ma'am, that city is not covered.

L: Why is that?

MV: I am sorry ma'am I don't know.

L: So how long can I stay in these cities?

MV: You can stay for three days.

L: All my life?

MV: No, within the next seven months.

L: So what happens after seven months

MV: The offer expires.

L: OK, what is the watch like? Is it a digital watch or the regular one?

MV: Regular

L: And does it have a leather strap or metal strap?

MV: Metal

L: would that be gold plated or sliver?

MV: I am not sure, if you stay on hold, I can find out.

L: OK, find out.

[[Silly music]]

MV: Madam, it is gold plated

L: Fantastic.

MV: So, can I charge your card and send you the welcome package?

L: No, thank you.  I am not interested.

Stunned silence.

MV: I am sorry, I didn't hear you properly.

L: I said I am not interested in the upgrade.

MV: Are you sure ma'am.

L: Yes I am.

MV: Oh

L: Anything else?

MV: No ma'am.

[[Click]]

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Sure, the lady's work was delayed further.  But she dedicated the morning to the time she rushed out of the bathroom wrapped in a towel, with soap all over, because the darn cell wouldn't stop ringing and she wondered if it were an emergency, only to answer a marketing voice. The time when she was trying to break her head over a proposal and just when she thought she was seeing a thread somewhere, a customer service representative promised to deliver a song she does not even like on her mobile for Rs. 3/month. The many times she had to pull over while driving on the road, just because someone wanted to sell her something on the phone. 

Revenge can be sweet.

Music « Valar's blog

In a magical music house, musicians (girls) collected music notes and stored them in a music store room. They used to make portions or music. The most important thing about the music house was a fantastic music box.

Read more here.

The Treatment

Despite growing up drinking kashayams and kanjis made by grandmom, I often forget that simple home/tribal treatments can be more effective for some ailments than purse-draining tests prescribed by specialists.  No, I don't have anything against doctors, I am a strong advocate of allopathy, but sometimes specialists can go overboard.  Take the time when, worried about a constant stomach pain , I saw my gynocologist, who after giving me a clean bill of gyn-health, directed me to a gastroentrologist (G.E).  The G.E. on hearing my symtoms and history of cancer in the family (my mother died of stomach cancer during my childhood), assumed the worst and wrote me a series of tests ranging from scan to colonoscopy and all in between.  In a fit of panic, I rushed to my family doctor for his opinion, the guy (who has treated me since I was two years old), threw the test requests into the bin, and prescribed a bunch of probiotics to cure an e-coli infection, and within three doses, I was fit as a fiddle.

But that is a digression from what I set out to narrate.

Perhaps it is too much computer time, or the move to dude's computer table, which technically although of the same height as my own is still a "change" from routine, or the slight change in sleeping arrangement, or some other genuine internal malfunction, the past week has not been kind on the back.  A pain that starts somewhere in the middle of the back travelled up and down, sometimes pulling at the calf, sometime numbing the lower back, sometime spreading to the front and in general, being a thorough nuisance.  While I seriously considered making another visit to the gyn, my domestic maid declared (sorry for the transliteration, I'll be damned if there were an English equivalent to this), "Kolamtham must have fallen.  Let me take it out" (கொளாத்தம் விழுந்திருக்கும், எடுத்துவிடறேன்).  Before the probability of catastrophe even entered my mind, she made me lie face down on the floor, gave me a quick 1 minute massage at the back, and, with her fingers smeared with ash (விபுதி) for grip, pinched up some flesh from above my spine near the hip and gave it a yank. I heard a crack, and believed that my spine just snapped into two.  But after that one microsecond panic, the birds chirruped, leaves rustled, bees hummed, my cooker hissed and  as Wodehouse would say (requoting Browning), god was in his heaven and all was well with the world.  She cracked a couple more places up my spine, ordered me to quickly get on my feet, and stop mopping around.

Next time I am close to sacking Vijaya for leaving a puddle of water near the sink or forgetting to throw out the garbage, remind me why I should not.

 

News and Views

News item in the local newspaper today:

[...]

Facebook has, well, virtually changed the way people connected.

[...]

 

Total population of the world today: 6.9 billion

Total people in the world with internet: 2 billion (=29%)

Total people with internet who are on facebook: 0.5 billion (=25% of internet users, 7.25% of entire population)

According to facebook, 50% of facebook users login daily - 0.25 billion login daily (=3.6% of entire population).

Facebook has, well, virtually changed the way 3.6% of world's people connected.

Just to put things in perspective,

Total number of people below poverty line (<$1.25/day):  1.4 billion (=20.3 % of world's population)

Number of people in the world that suffer from malnutrition: 0.5 billion (yes, the same number of people who use facebook) (=7.25%)

And here we are, writing 20 words about how social networking changed our life, to gain tickets to the premier show of "The Social Network", whose tag line apparently is "You don't get to 500 million friends without making a few enemies", which in plain speak translates to "It is ok to screw up a few people to win 500 million users".

Sigh. I wish I had a switch that turns off my brain the moment the word "facebook" comes into my line of vision.

 

Coraline | Valar's blog

Today, my father gave me the book “Coraline“.  My mother told me it was scary, but it wasn’t as my mother imagined it to be.

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Musings on Social Networking

This post is a reply to the overwhelming response (TWO people, one on facebook, and one here - thanks Karen and Rads) to my FB-closedown announcement.

As I muse more over my position in the grand scheme of social networking, I realise that "privacy" is not really my issue.  I blog about my life here - I don't even know who many of my readers are - how private can that be?  No. My problem is not (entirely) with privacy.

Social networking like facebook and twitter are built on the basic premise that its users like to chit chat.  Make small talk.  During my childhood, my mother who was in her thirties, as I and most of my friends are now, would take me to our neighbour's house every evening. While I played with the kids, she chatted with the "Aduthaathu maami", cutting vegetables, rolling appalams and in general, bonding estrogenically - a practice that many psychology experts claim to be therapeutic.   Yes, gossiping was certainly a part of it, but that was not all. They swapped recipes, child care worries, music talk, movie talk, family woes and everything else, with no judgments attached.

Now, we don't sit over the cutting board in the veranda of our neighbour's house, chatting. From the comfort of our homes, we facebook. We twitter. Apparently "bonding", although it seems there is a lot more testosterone thrown into what used to be predominantly  female activity.  Only, now, vegetables don't get cut during the process, appalams don't get rolled, and it is a group activity, where, everybody seems to be talking, and no one paying any more attention to it than the quick 2-second cursory glance and 1-second reply.

This is ok for most people. But some of us have a rather sensitive attention span.  Momentary sound bits cannot penetrate the thicker skull.  Most often, when I open up my fb or twitter (that I closed down some months ago, for the same reason),  I am of a reasonably tranquil state of mind. As I spend more and more time, the ripples become larger and larger until the wave of too much disjoint information, too briefly delivered, threaten to engulf me.  And for a long time after I close it down,  the waves lash about, making logical, coherent thoughts impossible.

Is it my job requirement, or my own mental deficiency that my thoughts have to be linear? Multi-tasking the brain is not my forte.  I am not as good as, say, my dude, in holding on to a thread of thought for a very long time; my threads are shorter, but they ARE threads, nevertheless, not knots.  Perhaps that is why I find blogging easy, for I am able to take a thought through a certain length of time so that it makes some sense to me.  My friends will tell you that even my mails are long; they have to be because that is the only way my brain can even identify a thought or a fact.  So, when I open my FB, and discover that A has had his second baby, before the thought is registered (it didn't, I read the news yesterday, but I have forgotten the baby's name already), I read that B and C from another era of my life met over coffee, and by the time I can react to it, I find that D has a question on entrepreneurship that I can answer, and E has sent me a message filling me on details of her life so far and asking for mine. Yes, A, B, C, D and E are all dear to me.  I want to address each one of them, but by now, my mind is not even thinking clearly and I am jumpy already.

Now what would have happened if I had gotten all these messages by email?  I'd read an email, address it, take necessary action and go on to the next.  I'd remember A's second baby's name because I spent more than the customary 2 second that I did on FB. Why can't I do it for my FB or twitter?  I don't know. Maybe it is all there in the open, enticing me, shouting for my attention.  Picture yourself sitting in the middle of the room, there is M.S. Subbulakshmi singing "Rangapura Vihara" on one side,  John Lenon with his Imagine on the other, P.G.Wodehouse in your hands, and Friends is on T.V.  Just thinking about such a scenario gives me a headache.

Perhaps I have ADD. 

But that is not all (Read the part above that says my thoughts are threads).  I find social networking bordering rudeness.  No, I am not the self-centered, mal-adjusted, egomaniac that can't handle rejection.  But I need to know that I am rejected, not kept in a limbo, not knowing what my status with people is.  Just because X accepted my invitation, am I part of his life now, even though he hasn't really commented on any of my entries yet?   Y, who was my close friend in school, would not accept my invitation, although she has accepted Z's AFTER I had sent her mine - didn't she see mine? Or did I do something to offend or alienate her?  So, why does she not just reject my invitation? At least there would be closure.   Q sent me an invitation, who on earth is Q?  She seems to be in the neighbourhood of all my friends, so, she must be someone I knew.   Why does E write to F and not to me ?  

If you get the image of me constantly obsessing over such matters, you are wrong.  But in the course of my FB time, such fleeting thoughts do whizz past along with the seventy nine 2-sec thought bytes that cruise in and out.  And I don't like it.  I would much rather have fleeting thoughts such as "this would be a good blog post topic" or "I need to file this thought for later proposal use", or "graphene is such a cool discovery worth the nobel" if at all I don't mind thoughts that fleet, which I do, by the way.

And here is the last reason to close down. Social networking sites numb your perseverance and kill your patience.  I am going to cross-post this blog entry on facebook.  50% of my FB contacts will click and arrive.  But I am willing to bet that not more than two or three will actually read this post fully, once they see how long it is. Facebook and twitter have justified, even glorified laziness and delineated, incoherent thoughts. We would much rather spend five minutes jumping from person to person than the same time reading (or worse, creating) something that requires a certain amount of consistent effort and concentration.  It has reached a level where nothing ever registers any more.  When dude deleted his very active twitter account, none of his 580 twitter "followers" even realised he was gone and kept addressing him in their tweets for a while - goes to show you the level of sincerity and observation powers in social networking.

I sometimes get disillusioned that I don't get enough comments to justify my blogging. But at the moment, I'd much rather blog, even without encouraging response because I am spending some effort and time in it. That is a reward in itself. 

Perhaps my Alzheimer can thus be a delayed by a few hours.

(replace the television with Social Networking and it would still make a lot of sense)

I could, I would, I really should.

Almost a year back, I ceremoniously closed down Facebook because it was too distracting.  I reopened it last month to track down a long-lost teacher.

Despite my guard, it seems I am being sucked again into it. 

When Vox kicked me out, I was in a quandary about where to put photos of my family with restricted access. Right now I have them in picassa.  Would it be better to have it on Facebook?

Perhaps not.  When my friends comment on my album, it would show up in THEIR Friends' FB, and so, people I don't know directly may still be able to see my pictures.

I discovered that my entire (well, almost) class from school are on FB, it seems great to get back in touch with them. Strangely, as active as they are on FB, they don't seem inclined to e-mail. 

And yes, FB IS distracting. Right now, it is ok, I am on an adrenalin-free time frame.  But soon enough that would change, and I can't afford FB distractions.

So, for the second time, I think I will close down facebook.  This time, I will follow dude's footsteps and shut down totally - meaning I will not be able to resurrect it again, at least not with my regular email id.  I will give it a couple of days, so that I can collect the email details of all the newly rediscovered friends.  Please leave me a message here at typepad or at facebook if you don't have my email id and would like to have it (please humour me by asking....)

Lovely Video - Must watch

 

Convent School

There are days when you have a pressing deadline and the adrenalin pours out of your ears, making you work like a maniac.  And there are days (much rarer, I confess) when you don't  have a deadline, but are in the mood to do something and so drive everyone around you nuts. But worst are the days when you have deadlines (although not pressing), and the adrelalin rush is not heavy enough to make you work for it.  Those are the days when you'd open up your google reader and what do you know, you read TWO posts by two different people that sets off a avalanche of memories.

First, Jane wrote about the marching practice in her school during her childhood. And I thought it was an Indian thing - left behind by the departing British.  Jane, I gather, grew up in Australia (singing God save the Queen, thankfully, we were spared that by a few decades), so the Brit influence has to be common. Our March Past practice would begin a couple of months before the annual sports day, and it was a matter of honour for us (at least some of us, some couldn't care less) to march past the judges and make our house the winning house.   We'd practice marching around our HUGE playground (which sadly has been usurped for more classrooms since we graduated), to the beats on a drum carried by our sports teacher.  When I say "to the beats of the drum", it is of loose context only. The beats would go on the side, the parade leader and a few other vociferous kids would yell "Left..left..left right left..." in some random order, and we would swing our arms, imagining to be in sync, but sadly out of, as evidenced by the numerous times we would bump into the hands of the girls behind and ahead of us (and sometimes to the side of us too..our swings were wild).  This would be during the last period of school, when the sun was at its hottest best. Just remembering the practice sessions makes me need an IV glucose infusion - I wonder where all that energy came from. I wonder if HAC still has march pasts.

Famingo Dancer's post on her convent-run school brought back a different set of memories about school. Before a separate convent was built inside the school campus for the nuns, they lived in one wing of the classroom sections ,surrounding the chapel, which was out of bounds for the  kids.  But the kitchen was in the primary block. Every morning, around ten, a butcher would bring meat and chop it on a wooden table, and soon after, the smell of cooking meat would pervade the entire block.  Now, don't get me wrong.  I make no moral or ethical objections to non-vegetarianism.   But most of the 6-8 year old kids that attended this school belonged to the TamBram community, strict vegetarians, some of us cohabiting with grandparents who wouldn't even allow onions and radish into their homes. Cooking meat has a smell that is very disagreeable to people not used to it. We'd almost gag in our classrooms, but couldn't really complain because some of the teachers and students who were non-vegetarians could take offense, and besides, it didn't seem right to complain about someone else's food.  I think, the two years of my life - fourth and fifth classes, I lost a lot of weight because I couldn't eat my lunch in that smell. I remember the relief when I moved to class six, and therefore to the diametrically opposite wing of school.

The primary wing also had a "tuck shop".  A small shack where the nuns sold hand-made toffees (a verrrrrry sticky caramelized thingummy that costed a princely 25 paise which we were given one day a year - on our birthdays). I must have had two or three of those "toffees" during my entire childhood, but I strongly believe that those few toffees were the sole cause of my root canal, many decades later.  What we would more frequently buy were "tablets", multi-coloured sweets tasting like sugared chalk at 4 tablets for 5 paise (yes, imbecilles, we had 5 paise coins then, a square coin..we even had pretty 2 paise coins). I think we got a lot of tapeworms in our stomachs from eating these tablets, or at least so I remember my mother complaining.

I could write more about the church choir, in which I was part (Alto..I believe Anita was a suprano, and I was envious of her high pitched voice). And the "Our father in heaven" prayer that sometimes I slip into unconsciously when I am worried - I am not even a Christian, the frogs in our toilets, the handyman cum watchman Arumugam who lived in a little shack near the gate and so on.  But it is lunch time, and I will leave them for another adrenalin-short day's post.

 

 

Ramble

On my way to pick up the kids from school, I stopped at our pet bakery to buy some snacks for them. While waiting for the cashier to fix his mal-functioning printer for the bill, I sat at the adjoining cafe. 

A girl, probably in her twenties ( I cannot guess people's ages from their looks anymore), was seated at the table opposite me.  She had a plate of blackforest in front of her, a cup of coffee next to it, a Daniel Steel in her hand and the most intent look on her face as she was halfway through the book.

That moment I knew what "dimensions" was all about.  This girl was in a whole different dimension from mine.  It was as if our worlds are mutually exclusive and all I can do is look at her like I would do, an alien. 

I have been through that dimension. I have visions of myself sitting for hours in Borders (and later, Barnes and Nobles) with a cup of cheese cake, Irish coffee and a book at hand.  Was it really me ? Or was it a dream?  Did my day have that many hours in the past?  If so, what happened to them?  Why is it that when I sit with a book now, just after the first page,I am worrying about the tiffin I should make in the evening and the elusive proposal idea, obsessing about the milk I forgot to curdify, the empty pantry,  the clothes that have to be brought in before the rain,  the logistics of the next project presentation and the vessels in the sink that needed washing more than the Wodehouse needed reading ?

Is it just me?  Dude can still get lost in his book (or whatever else he is doing) sans distraction.  Am I naturally scatter brained as I am now, or is this the collateral damage of responsibilities that I willingly took?    Or perhaps , it is a female instinct? 

When I saw that girl at Adyar Bakery, I thought to myself - one day, I will do just that. Leave my cell phone at home, not even boot my computer, leave the kid with the dude, and spend hours somewhere, just sipping coffee and doing nothing.  I doubt if I can do it, but no harm dreaming, what?