Way No Way Yay!!

After tremendous impediments, lengthy discussions and then some, the elusive group decision finally materialized out of no where.

Eh? usted no entiende?

It simply means we, the group of friends have unanimously agreed to go on a one day trip. Yes. Read it again, but its done.

The votes are in. Everybody is in. The plans are drawn. The venues are decided. Lunch is arranged. Cost per head agreed upon. Transportation in place. People have agreed to reach the departure point at 5 AM (we'll see).

So there it is. We are going on a trip. The whole group (almost).

Here's wishing everyone of us a safe and fun filled trip for long lasting memories.

CAT maane SILLY

(Fiction)

If you haven’t heard, let me inform you that Pavan and Paresh have recently cleared the army selection exam with flying colours and have been inducted into the Black Cats and allied services. They just returned from Allahabad and explained to us their job profile.

Reproduced below is an extract from the weekly worksheet of Black Cats Pavan and Paresh.

MONDAY

The alarm grenade went off with an ear splitting bang at 4.15 am. Even before the concrete stopped falling from the ceiling, Pavan and Paresh were up and into their uniform. These Black Cats never sleep, only Catnap. They brushed teeth, trimmed whiskers, combed cement from hair: Time taken- 15 seconds. Put on their basic security equipment – Sten gun, handgun, toe gun, head gun, bazooka, mortar, howitzer, flame-thrower, surface-to-air missile, air-to-surface missile, surface-to-surface missile, air-to-air missile, missile-to-missile missile, spear, bow & arrow, knuckleduster and tooth pick: Time taken- One hour, 45 minutes. That’s why these Black Cats are said to have nine lives; they need more than one lifetime to just put on and take off all their basic security stuff everyday.

Outside, the cavalcade was waiting: 14 bulletproof cars, ten pilot jeeps, eight pilot mobikes, four tanks and two commandeered Blueline buses – just in case. “Now let those terrorists out there try anything. We’d show them who the real terrorists are,” muttered Paresh.

“I’ll drive,” Pavan told Paresh, and they roared off, sirens going full blast: POOH-PAH, POOH-PAH, POOH-PAH! Their route had been carefully planned to take in hospitals, schools and other no-horn areas where their POOH-PAHs would have maximum effect. They say these sirens work wonders on the patients. Paresh told us that once; an open-heart surgery patient got himself a free gall bladder removal when the surgeon’s hand slipped, thanks to an extra loud POOH-PAH! Well, they do say modern medicine is an inexact science.

On the way, Paresh navigated and kept score. “Seven cyclists, four schoolchildren, two scooterists and one three wheeler,” he told Pavan, recording direct hits only. “But it’s not quite rush-hour yet,” he added consolingly. An old lady hopped out of their way in the nick of time. “They are pretty agile these days,” said Pavan. “Must be all the practice they’re getting since we joined,” he thought. “That was my grandmother you almost ran over!” said Paresh. “Sorry; shall I go back and try again?” Pavan offered. “Anything for a comrade-in-arms.” But Paresh, good sport, turned down the offer.

They reached their destination and screeched back to base. “Not bad for a trial run,” Pavan said. “ Now we are sure to get it right tomorrow for the Big Day, when we take Mantriji’s eight-year-old to his friends ‘birday’ party.” “Will they let us join in when they sing Happy Birday?” asked Paresh.

TUESDAY

Uff-oh. Paresh got the address wrong. Birday party postponed as Mantriji’s baba did not show up for function to cut tape. But on the way back, Pavan ran three red lights and six pedestrians. “Even on the worst days, some things go right,” said Pavan. POOH-PAH!

WEDNESDAY

Pavan got the address right this time. But the guests didn’t let them to go in and sing Happy Birday, Spoilsports. Apparently the candles on the cake might make the Black Cats’s ammo go off. But Pavan and Paresh enjoyed the party anyway. Another Mantriji’s baba had bought along some Green Cats and these two Black cats got into a friendly argument with them. Score: Black Cats- Zero; Green Cats- Zero; Bystanders-Ten. Later, Pavan told Paresh his sten was pulling a little to the left. Paresh thanked Pavan and said he’d correct his sights. “Good lad” Pavan thought. “I’ll recommend him for promotion.”

THURSDAY

Trial run to take Madam Mantriji to kitty party. Paresh very excited. He’s never been to a kitty party before.

FRIDAY

Pavan and Paresh were let into the kitty party. Paresh got on all fours and began looking under tablecloths for the little kitty-cats, he thought, the party was named after, saying a shame-shame word in Amerikan Angrezi. Finally, one madam called him a battameez. Paresh was very upset. He’s never been called a B-word before, not by a kitty madam or anyone else. But he became jolly again when they did a body search of all departing suspects to see that no one was making off with the silver spoons or the left over Panneer butter masala. Paresh said he had a good time and would like to go to more kitty parties.

SATURDAY

Mantriji left for tour that day. Pavan and Paresh hopped into cars, jeeps, tanks, trucks, whatever and went roaring off to the airport. POOH-PAH! All aircrafts, balloons, birds, kites and ladies wearing high-heeled footwear had been grounded within a radius of 150 km to keep the flight path clear for the VVIP take-off. The VVIP plane was waiting, surrounded by an escort squadron of Air Force fighters. As the Black Cats ran up the ramp of the plane, one journalist fellow hanging about the sidelines called out to them: “Oye! All I can see are you Black Cats. Where’s the VVIP?” Paresh snorted in disgust. There has to be limit to stupidity, even for journalists. “The VVIP?” he asked. “You don’t think we’d risk a VVIP on a plane, do you, what with pilots landing off the runway and what have you?” Then, Pavan added: “ We’ve sent the VVIP off on tour on the only safe transport left in this country- a bullock cart. This plane thingy is just a diversionary ploy.” POOH-PAH!

SUNDAY

Both of them returned to Bangalore on three day's leave to attend Pallavi M S Shatri’s Birthday. Paresh is looking forward to it, hoping Pallavi will throw a kitty party.

RIDDLE OF THE COCONUT TREES

Kovalam is the Mona Lisa of beaches- too famous for its own good. After all that you’ve heard about it, you run the risk of initial anti-climax when you see it. Matters are not helped by the fact that the signboard that says Kovalam beach points to the wrong beach. I follow the sign and come to a thin strip of boulder-strewn sand where the sea hisses and spits like an angry cat. “Must be because of the monsoon; must be nicer in season,” I mutter. “Must be,” my mind concurs dubiously.

I plod back to the fork and take the other road that is signposted Lighthouse Beach. Round a rocky headland, two perfect scallops of beach open up in front of us, fringed by palm trees and souvenir stalls selling “I’m a son of a Beach” T-Shirts. A string of open-air eateries offer ‘You buy, we fry’ food. Now this is more like the Kovalam of Picture-Postcard fame. What with the surf purring like a kitten.

“Seafood wanting?” A young man, dhoti worn at half-mast in true Malayali fashion, asks me in touristese, the local lingua franca. “Seafood not wanting. Vegetarian wanting,” I said as he leads me to a thatch-roofed shack. Meanwhile, I ask for a drink: “A coconut bringing, please.” My host nods vigorously in negation. “Pepsi bringing!” he beams.“Coconut bringing,” I correct him. “Beer bringing!” he counters. “Coconut,” I reiterate. “Dollar changing?” he asks in a ploy to throw me off this coconut fetish. “No dollar changing; coconut bringing-now!” I admonish sternly. “Coconut cannot bringing,” he says glumly. “Why cannot bringing?” I ask, indicating at the literally thousands of coconut trees, each laden with fruit, that surrounds us. “Climbing man gone,” he explains. “Why can’t you climb the tree?” I ask, losing my touristese for the moment. My host looks horrified, as though I had made an indecent proposal. “I management; climbing man, climbing man,” he says. “Management cannot climbing,” So I settle for a Pepsi and learn my first lesson about Kerala.

The supple mudra of the coconut palm as it caresses the sky is an eloquent symbol of Kerala. Surging out of the bountiful earth, the kalpaka groves represent the spirit of the land, its creative zest and its generous hospitality. The coconut is Kerala’s Kalpataru, supplier of all that the heart desires. It provides condiment and cooking medium, votive offering and ceremonial accessory, building material and decorative gewgaw. It is central to the economy. Alleppey is said to be the biggest coconut market in the world, with the next three years’ crop sold out in advance. Yet try to buy a single green coconut drink in Kerala. Chances are you’ll hear the same refrain I did: “Yes, we have no coconuts today.”

Perhaps it’s because of being of inestimable value in its generic totality, an individual coconut is literally priceless, and therefore unsellable. Who would want to buy it and why and for how much? There could be another reason, one that reveals more about the Keralite than about the coconut. And that reason may lie in the Malayali’s passionate belief in the Malayali’s progressiveness, a capacity that has enabled him to escape the clutch of customary circumstance to embrace the new and the unexplored.Passion, of course, is the core of the Malayali being.

To the Malayali, it doesn’t seem to matter so much what you do or don’t do, just as long as you’re passionate about it. So he is passionate about faith and he is passionate about skepticism; he is passionate about communism and he is passionate about petro-dollar capitalism; he is passionate about indulgence and he is passionate about abstinence. Which is why in Kerala you might see a lot of religion but not too much religiosity; ideology but not necessarily indoctrination; a lot of drinking but little drunkenness. Such cultural crosscurrents give the Malayali his innate dynamism.

The Malayali’s get-up-and-go has chalked up a number of firsts for the world. The first part of the country to conduct foreign trade, long before the advent of Vasco da Gama. The first to rise in rebellion against foreign rule. The first to have a family planning programme. The first state in India to achieve a hundred per cent literacy.Not satisfied with all these landmarks of progress, the Malayali continues to pursue the progressive, so much so that often he progresses himself right out of where he comes from. Kerala is a small state, comprising only 1.03 per cent of India’s total land area. Densely packed, it does not have the traditional divide between town and town or between town and country; one seems to flow into the other. So if you have someone going to Thiruvananthapuram and he is asked where he is going, by the time he replies Thiruvananthapuram he’ll probably not only have reached Thiruvananthapuram, but left it behind and be in Kottayam instead and by the time he’s realized this and corrected himself, he’s no longer in Kottayam but in Kozhikode.

This baffling velocity is aided and abetted not only by the fact that most places in Kerala have two name, the new and the old, like Thiruvananthapuram and Trivandrum, but also by the Malayali capacity to introduce more syllables, consonants and vowels into them than they intrinsically possess. Malayalis are passionately proud of Malayalam and make all their place names and descriptions sound like epic poetry. Thus Kerala-spelt Kay-Yee-Yar-Yay_yel_yay-becomes Kairralluh and the sobriquet of Alleppey or Allapuzha, the Venice of the Eat, becomes Thee Vennis of Thee Yeastuh, spelt Yee-Yay-Yes-Tee.

And by the time you’ve got that all figured and spelt out you’ve left behind not only Kozhikode which is also Calicut but also Kannur which is also Cannanore and are now in some place called Delhi, or Dubai, or Dallas, or whatever, where you might as well set up shop and become an award-winning novelist like Arundhati Roy, or a cartoonist and designer like Ravi Shankar, or a newspaper editor like B G Vergheese, or the dudhwala of the nation like Verghese Kurien. Which is why finding a Keralite in Kerala is almost as difficult as finding a Coconut. But then that’s the price of Malyali progressiveness.

S A T U R N