The answer is not always
outside. Look within.
March 8th, 2009
“Nowadys you don’t get any help. Santha comes now and then, if I send word. It would be good if Santha came and helped everyday, but she drags that girl too. I don’t like her coming here.”
Unni? What’s wrong with her? I no longer know the people in my home-town that well. Unni was a young girl we used to play with when we went to stay in my grandparent’s place. She was quite some years younger than me, and that’s how I remember her. Smallest of the bunch. The girl who couldn’t talk coherently.
“I don’t like the way she speaks. She is upto no good.” My mother lifts her nose into the air.
Unni comes with Santha and I tell myself she is no more a child, not quite surprising as I am not quite young anymore. She has grown, and she has taken care to show off her charms. Like allmost all the young women.But lack of money and ill-advised accessory choice gave her a cheap look. Hint of too much kajal, big bindi with some curious design, too many bangles, weird hairdo. I can see why my mother disapproves. Poor girl, I know everyone wants to look good when they are young. Taste doesn’t come until you are over the adolescent rush.
I smile pleasantly to her, afterall this girl in the ghastly makeup is the girl who showed me how to make a peepi[whistle] with coconut leaves. She smiles and then asks my brother when he had come back from college.
“The doctor said she should be married off.” My mother tells me after they are gone.
They took her to a doctor?
“Oh, she was behaving starngely and all, so they took her to Medical College. Too many ailments and fainting and wandering off and all. He said she just want to get married. That is what Leela told me.” Leela is Santha’s sister, and the sisters are known to war even though they live in the same house with their children.
She is what? 15 or 16?
“16. They are looking for boys now.”
***
“Manu sent his wife to her house” My mother tells me after Santha had left. Manu is Unni’s brother.
What happened?
“Unni is back now. And Shyla is there too, after her husband died. So Manu and his wife were sleeping in the veranda. No place to sleep in the house. ”
Why is Unni back?
“She keeps coming back.But this time her husband had run away. It has been happening from the time they married.”
Hmm.. What did they expect when they married her off at 16?!
“They had to.” My mother is adamant.
February 12th, 2009
A long long time ago, there in the ancient land of India lived a very pious man. He lived in his aashram, doing penance, chanting mantras and the likes mentioned in the Puranas by Devarshis Chopra and Sagar. He was thus living in obscurity, invisible to all paapis who burdened mother Earth, except for his disciples who were prosecuted in the name of law by various Asuras who ruled the land and the Gods he prostrated himself to.
Then one day Maya, the temptress struck. She showed him a world he was not used to. Instead of his scenic ashram, he saw himself in a Hotel; he was not wearing the valkala anymore, he was not surrounded by doe-eyed beauties who demurely washed his feet with the water they fetched from the river. With the material came the greed. He began to feel that the Gods were rather miserly with their boons in the brand new world that had sprung up while he was doing penance for just over three or four thousand years. He hadn’t received any boon whatsoever, not even the kind where he is almost immortal and can be killed only by a flying sparrow. Is he not to be famous? Is he to die a lowly death, unknown to the world, just another ‘almost normal’ burden to the mother earth?
The Lord granted him his wish. He made him an international celebrity overnight. The ever-merciful God was much pleased and moved by his offer to sacrifice as many maidens as he could find to him.
Moral of the Story: Ahh, moral.
Posted in Stories |
February 6th, 2009
In a crazy world every job can be interesting. Well, sometimes a bit too frustrating. While coming back home in the bus, there was a small altercation in Marathahalli. A scooter rider riding the wrong way stopped the bus to yell at them. Cause, you know , he is on the road on his scooter(what if on the wrong side?) and don’t you have eyes in your stupid face, how dare you try and start the bus as if I didn’t matter? What if he had died? Then there are threats of physical violence and all the other things people threaten each other with.
An old man got into the bus as this was happening. IT was not a usual stop for the bus, but since the bus was not moving due to fight you know. The scooter guy rode off, and this new man asks the conductor.
“Does this go to Kodihalli?”
“No. Cross the road, and you will get buses.”
“But I want to go to Kodihalli”
“Get down from this bus. Take another from the other side of the road”
“No. I want to go to Kodihalli.”
The conductor is losing it, and he asks him to get down. The man is obstinate, and he is NOT going to get down. This goes on for some time.
In the end they managed to kind of push him out of the bus. Apparently BMTC employees have a high suicide rate. I don’t wonder why.
January 27th, 2009
Independence Day is nearing and we are being made to practice the mass-PT by George Sir. That is when an ambassador taxi stopped near us. A man gets down with a brief-case and marches;yes marches as if the drum beats were for him, straight-shouldered and all; and goes straight to George SIr.
“Good evening. I am Xavier, came to join as the new temporary English teacher.”
George Sir looks him up and down, and points to him the Principal who is sitting on the stage, watching us practice. Then he says matter-of-factly.
“When you meet him, you should salute him first.”
The poor man walks–marches–and salutes a bewildered Principal before presenting his appointment letter.
When you start out like that in front of the whole school, it is quite difficult not to be the butt of many a joke, and his many quirks didn’t help either.
Children can be cruel. I know that now. Most of the times unintentionally so. I think they realize the cruelty and meanness of many a silly act only when they grow up. I like to believe I was a sensible child. Yet we did glorify people who were just mean. Even though I know that “grown-ups” don’t exist in the sense I thought they did when I was little, I can’t help wonder why some of the adults in my childhood were never really grown-ups.
January 7th, 2009
I think I love the new year.. ;) Up until now anyway.. I am trying to pull a Pollyana on myself and this seems to be working somewhat. The people aren’t that bad either nowadays…:) Today I even witnessed something I thought I would never in Bangalore. People caring about other people’s business. In a good way. Today the volvo conductor tried to drop of two clueless older men almost a kilometer before Manipal Hospital when the bus was stuck in traffic. He said they were to get down there and walk. Then this man in the bus asked them to sit down, and told the conductor off. When he stuttered about not being supposed to stop at the junction, he was like ‘Then you are supposed to stop at Kodihalli and ask them to walk back. Not drop them off wherever you stop’. I wanted to clap, but of course I didn’t being a wimp.. :P
Happy 2009 to us!
Posted in Diary |
December 15th, 2008
On Sunday we went to Mekedatu.
It is near Kavery-Arkavathi Sangam; you have to walk across the river to catch the bus to Mekedat. After a bumpy ride in a battered old bus, all you see is some stone steps. But climb down and you forget to breath. :)
The river is beautiful, and the rock formations are quite a view. It did occur to me it would be real fun rafting in there.
Now, the photoes. Am stealing it from Sajin and he doesn’t know.. ;P
-
- The river
Posted in Diary |
November 27th, 2008
How do they they do it? How can they do it? Just go someplace and shoot people? People they don’t know, people who just stand there waiting for the train, bus or feeding a child or walking home. It is not the just the killing but the whole detachment from anything akin to humanity that makes me cringe. Show them a group of people, any group but of a size that justifies using up their ammunition, and they will just kill.
Humans do not deserve the earth. It is time we were extinct.
