The couch is where the fun is (not what you think!)

I saw a program on TV which relayed the latest in camel racing from Dubai. Yes, the desert kingdom has had some pangs of conscience. After years of using young boys as camel riders for racing, they have succumbed to the criticism of their fellow human beings and have started using robots. That’s right. All the camels are mounted by robots, only half the body is required, fixed on to the saddle. But these robots also have whips in their hands. And there is a speaker installed in the robot to convey messages to the camel.

A road runs parallel to the camels’ track. In this road, Arab men (the women are busy in the Gucci and Louis Vuitton shops, I think) race down in their sport utility vehicles (SUV’s), driven by their chauffeurs, while constantly making clicking and other noises that the camels like to hear to egg them on to faster movement, into their hand held devices. I presume they also regularly click the button that will make the robot whip the camel! Welcome to the new high tech world of camel racing.

Now, this gives me an idea. An entrepreneur can organize betting on which of the cars would win the parallel race in which they are racing!

But we need to see where else we can take this idea. For instance, the whole race can be conducted from the couch. All you need are a few cameras placed along the track, and the Arab camel masters can sit comfortably in their couch and race their camels, with all the same accoutrements they now use. That would also be eco-friendly since they will not be racing their gas guzzling vehicles.

Let’s face it. We are punching buttons all the time. We start at an early age. Have you seen the little children with a Play Station or Game Boy in their hands? Have you noticed the bulging muscles on those little fingers?!

Punching buttons can be fun. Look at people in the casinos. A few years ago, they would have to pull down a lever to turn the drums and see whether all the bananas lined up to make them a winner. Now, there is a lever on the side if you want to exercise one arm (like the tennis player does), but pressing a button on the machine will also get those wheels turning. There is a channel on my TV that relays poker games on a 24 hour basis. Unfortunately various state and federal laws prevent betting on line, on tv, etc. But that will soon change since people need something to do when they lose their jobs, and they are losing it in large numbers. Why not start showing those slot machines on TV and one should be able to turn those drums with the remote, seated on one’s couch. Another button on the remote should darken the room, and create the requisite casino ambiance. And this will be eco friendly. We do not need to travel to those casinos.

Oh, I almost forgot to mention. The Georgia Institute of Technology in the US is designing battlefield robots. Various versions of robots are already in existence. They are sort of boxes, (or vehicles), that are used for mine detection, and so on. And there are un-manned planes, called drones, that can be sent flying deep into enemy territory to bomb a target. Some of these drones sent to bomb in Pakistan and Afghanistan are operated out of command posts in Nevada in the US heartland. But the new robots will be different. They will resemble humans (remember the movie Robot Cop? That was a good one!) and the professor who is designing them has promised that the software will make the robot soldier ethical. That is, it will not allow the heat of the moment to cloud its judgment and misbehave. No chances of walking into an Iraqi house and mistakenly killing the whole family.

Let’s get back to that couch. We are seeing a future where the US soldier will each be assigned a robot and can sit in his couch at home with his family around him and search for weapons of mass destruction around the world, or replace nasty dictators ethically with the help of a remote. Family friendly wars.

Here are my stock picks for the future. Invest in couches and remotes.

Get a dog if you have Vista

Barack Obama, president elect of the US, began his acceptance speech by saying that he was going to get a puppy for his two girls to have as they moved to the White House. He, I guess, meant it as a reward for his children on his success. I think he also meant that he would have more help in the White House so he could afford to have a dog.

Dogs are high maintenance pets. You need the time to re-arrange your life if you have a dog. There is a new product available on the market that can help you to rearrange your life and generate those extra minutes that you never knew you had. The advantage is that if you had this product, if will also raise your stress levels and having a dog will not only use that spare time but help you reduce those stress levels.

Thus, I think the other reason why Obama is getting a dog, that not many people know, is that he will also be getting a new pc when he moves into the White House. And that pc is going to come, loaded, with the new operating system from Microsoft, Windows Vista.

The reason I am able to make these perceptive connections is that I have a new Notebook that came loaded with Windows Vista operating system. And having a dog has been a lot on my mind. You see, if you had a dog, you would need to play with it and take it out for walks, etc. That requires finding some minutes to spare in between various daily activities. Now if you have Vista, you would find several such minutes in between your activities, since the amount of time it takes for the system to load, the amount of time it takes to ‘Switch Users’, the amount of time it takes to put it to ‘Sleep’ and the time it provides you to wonder if the system has shut down or just some program is loading, etc., gives you those minutes you need to take the dog for a walk, to give it a bath, to give its food, and so on. Of course, if you did not have a dog, you could use the time to make a cup of coffee (or tea, if that is your pleasure), to polish those shoes that you have been putting off for a long time, to dust those (real) windows, etc.

I was skeptical of this Vista business even when I purchased this machine. Various news reports warned me about it. Even this Fujitsu Notebook machine was sold with the older Windows XP till June this year, but I procrastinated and bought it in August. So it came loaded with Vista. Too bad.

But wait a minute! What do I find in the box that the machine came in? A disk that will allow me to downgrade to an XP! Microsoft, collaborating with Fujitsu, have thoughtfully provided me with a way to switch to the older system. (Bharadwaj wants me to perform the switch sooner than later so it does not mess with other files that I may be storing. But I worry if I am going to mess up anyway and have been procrastinating.) But let us reflect on the market power of a company that knows that it has put out a dud product, and gives people a way to switch to a product that it thinks it has improved upon! Wow! And this company makes profits, and has not collapsed like all those dud banks have been in the recent past.

Now Dasharath, who wanted a dog when he was young (and was refused by me since I did not want to do all the work that it takes to keep a dog), still cannot use my reasoning above as an opportunity to get a dog, because he has a Mac, whose operating system responds much faster to his needs and therefore does not provide him with those precious minutes to perform various dog related tasks.

Let's shift to a simpler life

Paul Theroux, the US-based travel writer, was on television the other day talking about his new book, the ‘Ghost Train to the Eastern Star.’ This recounts his travels through Eastern Europe, Central Asia, India, China and so on. I look forward to reading the book. But his response to the interviewer intrigued me.

He was asked why and how he chose the countries he visited. Theroux answered that he was attracted to a simpler life that he saw in these countries. Perhaps some of the residents of these countries would strongly object to that characterization, but his comment does strike a chord in me. I mean the simpler life and not necessarily those countries.

Take a look at Bharadwaj’s travels that are recounted in his blog (see link 'Blogabout' in My Blog List alongside). He describes how he walks about most places that he visits. He stays in hostels that have very basic accommodation. He buys provisions in most places and makes a meal in their kitchen. He does not stay in one place long enough to brew the alcohol that he consumes in the local bars, but I suspect he would if he got the chance. He lives off a huge backpack that I saw him pack. It has a few basic necessities, including modern ones that go beyond not just bark and twigs, and include an iPod, a lap top, a cellphone, and a high end camera, and all the accompanying chargers and wires.

Let’s switch channels. The media is full of reports about the current financial crisis. Banks are failing. The stock market does not know whether to fall or rise. I don’t need to read the media reports to get depressed. I only need to open the statement of my retirement funds to know that they have lost over 35% of their value just over the last six months. So leading a simpler life is not going to be one of choice but something that may just as well be forced on me. After all, if one wants the savings to last a long time, one has to live simply. Perhaps I should ask Bharadwaj to leave his backpack to me.

I just turned on the TV as I was writing this. There is a program on titled ‘I want that!’ and the information about the program describes it as the ‘latest, greatest, and most-modern must haves for living and home restoration..’

Clearly, my desire to shift to a simpler life style is not going to be easy.

What's in a name!

The latest addition to the RH Road clan is Varsha, Kutti’s kid. She is also called Kaveri, which I think is a much better name. But do they really care about my views? Probably not. For example, for years, I wanted somebody, anybody's daughter to be named Mira. Only Papu took me up on it. (Thanks, Pops!) Now, that is probably a coincidence. Never mind.

But do you know why you got your name? Would you want to know who named you (or was most influential in your being called what you are?) Find out. I did. And not just for me but also my siblings. Here are the results of my conversations with amma (aka patti, Kamala patti, Madras amma, etc.) on 10 Aug 2008.

I quote:

Mohana: "Rajamani kuttipa’s wedding was just over and I had visited Thirumohoor, a village near Madurai, where his wedding had taken place. The reigning deity in the temple in that town was Kalamegham. His consort was Mohanavalli. Since Mohana was born soon after that trip, she was named accordingly. Anna’s father used to call her Ramona, a Russian name. He knew 8 languages to facilitate the import/export business he was in, and would learn them from gramophone records (this is the 1930s/1940s, folks). She was also his favorite, and about the only child he would play with."

Jaganath: “I just named him Jaganathan. He was then called Jaganath by others.”

Usha: “I used to fast on Sundays in honor of the God, Surya. His two consorts were Usha and
Chaya. Everyone rejected Chaya. So the name Usha remained. I don’t know what I would have named it if it was a boy.”

Premnath: “One name was Krishnaswami, since he was born in 1946, named after amma’s father who passed away two years earlier. Another name was Premnath, after one of the gods in the temples of the Mathura area.”

Gopinath: “One name was Parthasarathi, after the lord in Triplicane. Another was Rajamannar, another god in the Mathura area. A third was Gokul, but this was rejected by anna who suggested Gopi. So it became Gopinath.”

So, it appears that amma did it almost all by herself! And it appears that our names end in a ‘nath’ by sheer coincidence. Now, why am I not surprised about that?

A Museum that made me cry

Bangalore’s new airport has some well laid out shopping space. One of which is occupied by a book store and passing through in late August I noticed a book there titled ‘Museums of India.’ Flipping though, I learned that there are two noteworthy items at the Government Museum in Madras – a Nataraja bronze and some Amaravathi sculptures. It was an attractive book that made me want to visit the museums described.

Problem was I did. Just ten days earlier, I visited the Madras museum, drawn to it by a news item I read in The Hindu a few months ago. The museum had gotten together some ‘Friends of the Museum,’ a kind of citizen support group. They were being trained in the treasures that were in the museum, and could serve as guides. Other projects were described. Wow! I thought. Here was a Director who was doing something new. I checked the museum’s website and found a lot of detailed information. There was even the possibility of taking a virtual tour, but the link did not work. Just teething troubles, I thought. I must visit the place.

But I was in for a major disappointment. There were parts of the museum that had been blocked for renovations. This was the section with the sculptures (perhaps where the Amaravathi pieces were), but the sections that were open had construction dust and materials lying around. The descriptive plates beside the display items just told you what the item was and where it was from, and if you were lucky, the period. There was no explanation of the significance of the piece. The gallery with the bronze collection was in good shape, air conditioned and well lit, but many of the other galleries were in various stages of neglect. Some of the galleries, the ones on biology and zoology, resembled a middle school display hall a week after a science fair was held. The beautiful building housing the art collection was closed. A modern monstrosity next to it now had the art collection. Original Ravi Varma pieces were in a corner of the floor without sufficient lighting, and behind glasses that reflected what was around rather than let you admire the painting behind it. I cried.

A month later I was at the Asian art museum in San Francisco. What a delight! Many pieces of sculptures from the same places and same eras as at the Madras museum but built around a theme of how Indian culture and religion spread around the whole of South and South East Asia. It was an educational experience.

As I admired the bas-relief frieze from Angkor Wat showing the vanaras attacking Kumbhakarna, I could even visualize the site at the Banteay Serai temple from where some vandal had dislodged it and sold to the museum. Now, wait a minute. Should I complain?

I would often bristle at the thought of museums like the British Museum that housed ‘stolen’ treasures from around the world. ‘The Elgin marbles must be returned to Greece’ was my ideological position. I am not so sure now. If the San Franciscans do a better job of preserving and displaying the treasures from Madras than Madrasis, let them have it.

Membership has its privileges

The advantage of Air France, of course, is that they speak French. I mean, they speak French and English, so for a student of French (yours truly), that comes in handy when trying to learn the language. Their magazine is bilingual so you can while away your time trying to figure out how much French you know.

There are brief moments when I enjoy other benefits too. You see, I fly to Aix en Provence once or twice a year to teach. So I accumulate some miles. Their Frequent Flyer program maintains a caste system. You start at the Silver level, then graduate to Gold, Platinum, and then, I’m sure, a higher level that the rest of us don’t know about. When you move from one level to the next (depending on the miles you have accumulated) you get a different color card, and tags for your bags. Of course, a higher caste lets you stand in a separate line to check in, use of their lounge at the airport (internet for a fee, perhaps free at the next level?), and so on.

The funny thing is that since benefits are attached to the level (try entering their lounge with a Silver card and they will call the police), you are now in a quandary and have to make trade-offs. Do you keep the miles and dream about the benefits you would enjoy if you traveled, or do you use the miles to get a free ticket and lose the privileges since you are now at a lower level?

So, I used some miles to get a one-way ticket to Bangalore (no, I am not settling down there yet) and enjoyed the privilege of their lounge in Paris (free food too!), and a Gold card that let me board the flight with the first class passengers. I noticed a difference in my step as I stood in that line. So, there, till they re-calculate my privileges.

But wait, there is a flaw in the system. When you board, you can still flash your Gold card even though you may actually be a lowly Silver. Your caste is supposed to be printed on the boarding card too, but with a crowd pushing behind you like the line at Tirupati, they let you through. It doesn’t work at the Lounge though. There a fellow, with all the time in the world, punches your number into his computer and checks your current status. Police!

But these transcontinental airlines certainly know a few things that the pretenders need to learn. I flew US Airways from Philadelphia to Milan. First, there was an announcement that you could get headphones for $5 or 5 euros. This should have warned me of things to come. (They think $5 is the same as 5 euros!). After paying $1240.55 for the ticket, they now want an additional $5 for headphones. I declined. They must have immediately put a mark against my name. When the meals cart rolled by, I asked for my special meal. The stewardess looked at me (I know those looks) and said let me check. Then she got back saying they did not have any, but I could take the pasta meal they had which was vegetarian anyway. Sure, it was, but floating in cheese!

Do clothes maketh the man?

I was just returning from seeing a show of the works of Sreshta and others at GallerySKE. I got into an auto at the corner of Vittal Mallya Road to go to Malleswaram when the auto driver asked me a question that I was not sure I understood. So I leaned across and asked him to repeat it. He wanted to know what my profession was! (He actually used the word ‘profession’ although his question was in Kannada.) As I paused to digest the question, he went on to ask me if I was an artist and followed it up with an explanation that artists normally wear pyjama and kurta (my dress at that time). I replied to him in Hindi that I was a teacher.

Clearly the auto driver was in a chatty mood and not willing to give up easily. About 10 minutes into the ride, he wanted to know at which school I was a teacher. I replied that the school was in Madras. ‘Ah’, he continued. ‘A drawing teacher?’ I decided to put him out of his misery and said, ‘Yes.’ He was certainly pleased that I seemed to conform his stereotype.

I decided to keep a watch and see how many people wore pyjama jurta in Bangalore. Not many, really. There were quite a few around the mosques but not otherwise. I wondered why the dress had been relegated to the art community; perhaps they need the freedom of movement to produce good art.

My classmate Surendra, who teaches at three colleges locally as a part-time instructor told me that when he retired and took up a career as an adjunct professor, he decided that he would wear a tie to class. He just thought it made a difference. It certainly did when he wanted to visit the Indian Institute of Management at Bangalore with his nephew, an architect from Kerala, who wanted to take some pictures of the buildings and classrooms. (He was working on a project designing a business school.) They were stopped at the gates of IIMB and asked if they had an appointment and who they were going to see. Surendra says he replied, ‘Director’and was waved in without further ado. He attributes it to his wearing a tie!

Prem was rather upset at the inefficiencies of bank managers and lower executives who always give him the run-around when he is trying to make a deposit or arrange a withdrawal. But his recent experience at Corporation Bank was rather pleasant. The young ‘Personal Investments’ Officer was quite helpful and offered to come all the way to the Valley School (from Malleswaram, about 30 kms) to discuss deposit options. But Prem was concerned with his attire. Apparently the young man wore jeans, a casual shirt, and a jeans jacket, with a chain around his neck that was quite prominent. Next to him was a young woman, staring at the same computer screen (‘an intern or trainee’ thought Prem) who seemed to be dressed as though she was headed to a party (with make-up to boot). Prem wondered about the bank that seemed to allow such casual dress habits.

What do you make out of these vignettes?

The era of the family doctor

Looking through the book stand at the airport, I found a rack that said ‘Famous Authors’ but my recent book was not on it. Clearly I have a long way to go. But I suddenly began thinking about an interaction I had with Dr. Raghavachari. I was sitting in his office in Thiruvallikeni flipping through the pages of a magazine called, I think, ‘Outlook’ or something like that. It was a business magazine of the 60s in India that usually had a page of photos of company events and executives in transition. He mischievously looked at me and said, ‘If your father’s picture is not there, he can’t be very famous, can he?’

Dr. Major K. Raghavachari MBBS was a peculiar bird. He had served as a medical doctor in the British army which is probably where he got to resemble the British. He was fair, about 5’ 10” and walked with a stoop, and spoke Tamil like a Britisher might. ‘Pad – ma – na – bhan’ he would call out to his compounder, stressing out each syllable, as if he might otherwise get it wrong. He always wore white; white pants and a white bush-shirt.

Dr. Raghavachari was our family doctor, since he was the Company Physician at Parry & Co. where Anna worked. That meant we would have to go to him (I think everyone did except Amma) when we fell ill, which was not too bad except that his system of seeing patients had a peculiar logic. He did not believe in the ‘first-come-first-served’ principle, so we would have to wait in his waiting room hoping that nobody else pulled rank. All those who were his friends got to see him first. And he would chat with them endlessly while we were fighting our demise in his waiting room. I was a regular visitor to his clinic since I would suffer every month from tonsillitis and would have to go to him for a bottle of tincture benzoine for which he would write a prescription and I would take it to the pharmacy. God help you if you went to him for his signature on some NCC form certifying physical fitness. You had to sit there and wait till you became disabled.

But if you went with Anna, then, of course, you got to pass all those in the waiting room (‘suckers!’) and got to see him right away. He would order a horribly looking cup of coffee for Anna. And you could sit there and chat. I remember chatting with him on all kinds of things. Once, he corrected me when I said ‘preponed’ (as an antonym of postponed. Logical, right?) saying there was no such word. I rushed back home to look it up in the dictionary and he was right! Of course, it is commonly used, in India, at least, and I’m sure the gatekeepers of the language have by now included it at least in the Indian versions of the dictionary.

Dr. Raghavachari was more than a family doctor. He was a family friend. He would visit Patti (Amma’s mother) daily to give her an insulin injection; his clinic was at the other end of the same street (Nallathambi Mudali St, Tiruvallikeni) where she lived. He was also of the genre of physicians who made house calls. The only problem was that he would not come when he was needed but when it suited him, usually after 9.30 pm when he finished his clinic and was on his way home! This irritated Amma no end, who would grumble and say, “Does one have to be on the deathbed for him to come right away?’

Raghavachari and Anna went way back, to the early days in Parrys when Anna was a rising executive and a hockey player and so was Raghavachari. They would both play for the company team.

During 1947-1952, Mohana was parked with Patti at the Nallathambi Mudali St. house, I’m told, and was going to school there. One day, she ran off to a carnival at the Bharath Scouts and Guides field (on the beach road) at the invitation of Dr. Raghavachari who was the official doctor there too. She took part in a running race and even won a prize! The family was in a panic, not knowing where she was. Finally, after she was tracked down, there was a family crisis with Patti declaring that she could not be responsible for Mohana’s truant habits anymore and she had to be sent to Hyderabad pronto (where the rest of the family was). It was Raghavachari who got hold of an air ticket (as ‘Menon’s daughter’ I’m told, perhaps a spare ticket lying around) and shipped her off before she completed her 7th. Standard exams.

But Raghavachari came home many Sundays, when he was at the clinic only half a day. This was a social visit to gossip about Parry & Co. politics and have his cup of coffee (no sugar, I think he was diabetic). He would wait at the gate and honk and one of us would have to go out and open the gate for him to drive in and close it after him. Same thing when he left!

Clearly he did not think much about going home to spend time with his family. His brother-in-law and his family lived with him (living off his largesse, I’m told).

He was also the officiating physician of the Madras Motor Sports Club (Was there only one doctor in Madras at that time?) and got me a pass to attend the annual Sholavaram races. That was cool, walking through the pits, and watching all those racers pollute the air!

Coming to think of it, his inability to speak anything other than English probably was genetic. His brother, Air Vice Marshall K. Narasimhan AVSM also spoke like him. And N. Gopi, (of Kadam – Sharanya fame) who is AVM Narasimhan’s son, is also similarly challenged!

I wonder how many of the doctors in the family remember Raghavachari. Chinni mentioned to Dasharath the other day that I am the only one of the siblings who does not have a doctor (certified or in process) in the family. His only response was, ‘Too late now.”

Catholics, like Hindus, know how their Gods look like (More on Italy)

Catholics are so much like Hindus. All the rituals, the religious imagery, and so on. Every Church and museum and palazzo (palace) had to have its pieta (Jesus after the crucifixion), the Adoration of the Magi (the three wise men at the manger in Bethlehem), Madonna and child, and so on in various interpretations. The churches were gorgeous. We managed to catch some highlights. We were at the Santa Miniato in Florence when the priests were conducting the evening vespers and sang the Gregorian chants. Hauntingly lovely. We were at the Santassima Annunziata (also in Florence) when the morning mass was being conducted by a particularly sonorous priest in front of a tabernacle where the fresco on the wall had the image of Mary whose face is believed to have been painted by an angel. There was a wedding on at the Basilica in Venice with the mammoth organ playing. We took a picture of the bridal couple with their family around them.

There was very little variation in the images of the Christ. I wonder who first conceived how he looked like and that became the dominant paradigm (much like the image of, say, Lakshmi, I guess). There was more variation in the image of Madonna. In some, she looked positively oriental. An early migrant? They all got the image of baby Jesus horribly wrong. Baby Krishna looks much better, in any variation.

I did look at the ‘Last supper’ by Leonardo da Vinci in Milan (allowed in groups of 15, reservations made about two months in advance) called the ‘Cenacola Vinciano.’ About five hundred years old. Da Vinci has painted three windows in the back of the room. Now, I have been to the room where the last supper took place in Jerusalem and that room has only two windows. Who are you going to believe, me or Leonardo?

I ran into a protest group of atheists and rationalists in front of the statue of Bruno at the Campo de’ Fiori piazza in Rome. There were about a dozen of them, with placards saying ‘NO God, http://www.nogod.it/) and flags announcing their group (UAAR, and some stuff in Italian.) The average age was about 60, having been brought down significantly by one 30 year old woman. They took turns to speak and tourists were all around clicking their cameras. Two vans of carabinieri (police) were nearby, more police that protestors. The only risk from the protestors that I could see was the possibility that some of them may have a heart attack wile protesting.)

We also did the Jewish quarter in Florence, including a visit to the Synagogue. The guide there was insistent that the community was well integrated locally, and spoke an Italian dialect with some Hebrew words, and followed the Italian rite. They were there from Roman times, and were neither Ashkenazi nor Sephardic (the two major ethnic groups in Judaism), he said. They were also a mixture of Conservative and Reform in their practices.

Transport: We did all our travel between cities by rail. Very convenient, with lots of connecting trains and easy to get seats even in this rush season. We did get ripped off by buying an ItalySaver Pass; for the travel we did, individual tickets should have been the way to go. Even with the Pass, we had to stand in line to make reservations anyway and pay extra for that. Chinni was very good at figuring out the local bus and metro systems in all the places.

Italy requires you to buy your bus/train tickets from the Tabacchi (newsstand/tobacco shop) which can explain why so many people still smoke in Italy. But oh! Those cities are a paradise for two-wheelers. The narrow streets and high cost of petrol does that to you. But it was a pleasure to see the range of vehicles – of all makes, and cc’s,(50 to 1200), two and three wheelers, the latter with two or one wheel in front, with tops and without, etc. What was interesting to see was the determination with which most two-wheeler riders were trying to add to the noise pollution and in wearing out their brake linings. When the lights changed to green, they would zoom even while seeing that the next light, 200 meters away was changing to red. It gave them a chance to screech to a halt and then zoom again.

One taxi driver in Rome lived up to the reputation of that genre. Getting to the station from the hotel, he first tried to convince me to go with him to the airport rather than take the train and mumbled when I insisted he go to the station. Then I realized that his meter was running higher than it should – he probably started it before he got to the hotel. So I ended up paying twice the fare I did for the journey in the reverse direction!

A fair amount of bicycles on the streets too. In Florence, the guidebook says that the city offered free bicycles for those who wanted them, if you could find the stands. I found the stand in Rome and was tempted to take one, but could not figure out the instructions about their use. (Apparently you visit an office and get a pre-paid card and then use it to release the bikes from the automated stands they are tied to.)

Rome, with all its monuments, and ruins from centuries BC gave you that sense of continuity of history. There would be an internet café in a 600 year old building. (Signs all around these cities in Italy tell you the geneology of the building.) They have started holding concerts in the Colosseum, a sports arena of over 1500 years old. You can see people jogging in the grassy oval of the Circus Maximus, where Ben Hur and his contemporaries raced chariots.

Italy is not doing a favor to its immigrants. With a falling population growth rate, it needs immigrants, but the police regularly chase the ones we see around the tourist sites. The Africans have a tight grip on the trade in spurious handbags. You see them at all the tourist sites. The South Asians are working in restaurants as waiters or in tourist stalls selling souvenirs. Some sell dark glasses, cleverly arranged on a large board, that can be quickly unfurled to resemble a table, and quickly folded to run when the police decide it was time to chase. Haroon, from Bangla Desh, trying to eke out a living selling roses was thrilled when Chinni and I flung our random Bengali phrases at him. He claimed to have landed there 2 years ago after paying 13,000 euro to a dalal who claimed there was a future in Italy where he could make money. (IMF projection is 0.3% growth for Italy this year.) He complained that there were many Bangla Deshis in town but they would not help him. It was an Indian who told him about the rose trade. (He promptly dialed Borun da on his cell phone and I had to speak to Borun and fling more phrases.) The Chinese, (oh, those smart Chinese) were running the restaurants and shops. They also have a strong hold on the wholesale trade of souvenirs etc. Recent clashes between locals and Chinese traders shows some resentment is building.

I hope I have triggered your interest. It was a great trip! So pack your bags. We’ll be happy to send you the maps and guide books.

Opinionated post-modernist and post-renaissance thoughts on a visit to Italy

I had a conference in Milan and Chinni decided to make a vacation out of it. She joined me after my meeting on 4 July and we did two days in Milan, 4 days in Florence, and two days in Venice. I then went on to Rome, while Chinni returned to Boston via Milano. I had work in Roma, a couple of schools to visit. (Hey, somebody has to do the hard work, you know.) Here are some random observations.

Don’t go on a trip to Italy during their tourist season unless you want to feel like being on the platform when the Coromandel Express gouges out its passengers at Madras Central. (I can hear Shanti saying, ‘That’s why we rent a cottage in the Tuscany country side and don’t go to the cities.’) That’s true. There are thousands of people in all the tourist spots, students groups, professional tour groups and others assorted people jockeying for space on the pavements, in the museum hallways, and in the lines for everything. The only way to deal with it is to look at that as an important feature of your holiday and start guessing games about where they are from, their relationships with each other and so on. That can be fun. Really!

Italians are said to be known for style and design. So, in Milan, I went to a department store looking for clothing and found them all made in China. I then went to a specialized clothing store and found the fashionable Italian clothing made in Italy but sold at prices that you would need to take out a bank loan to be able to buy. A shirt for 170 euros! However, I am happy at seeing all the assault being made on Italian fashion sensibilities. Walking around the streets, I saw odd clothes. (Those tourists!). I found some of the slogans on blouses and t-shirts inexplicable. There was a woman with ‘Aggressive’ in glistening sequins across her chest; another guy who wore a t-shirt with ‘Go ahead Release You’ on it. Now, what was that? Perhaps it is all part of a Chinese plot to spoil the Italian fashion image.

Bathrooms across the world always contain a mystery. It is usually one of trying to figure out how the shower works after you have suffered bursts of cold water on your body. In the Milan hotel I stayed in before Chinni came, there was a cord hanging in the shower stall. I thought it was a clothes line meant to dry clothes but could not find a hook or place to tie the other end. When I asked another academic from New Zealand who was staying in the same hotel what the cord was, he said that it was to turn on the exhaust fan, but did not work in his bathroom. I guess mine was faulty too for I would only hear a slight buzzing sound when I yanked at the cord, which would stop when I released it. Two hotels later, in Florence, I met a similar cord beside which there was a sign painted on the wall which read, ‘Alarm – for Emergency use’! Now, I wonder why nobody responded to all the yanking I did in those other hotels.

Food: The problem with Italy is that you got to be prepared to eat Italian food. Which is OK for a change but all the time? By my fifth day, I was ready to eat anything other than a mixture of flour, pomodoro (tomato) and mozzarella cheese in different forms – as caprese (cold sandwich), as pizza margherita (hot, melted and sticky), or as pasta vegitariana. Chinni and I finally found a Lebanese restaurant in Milan where we could get some falafel, and a Chinese restaurant in Venice where we got some vegetarian noodle dish. Oh, and a heavenly Tandoor restaurant in Milan where Pakistanis made us some palak panneer and tarka dal. But many Chinese run regular Italian restaurants too so don’t let their presence in the doorway inviting you in fool you. And the gelaterria! They were great and made up for the missing calories! There are two to every street corner. Similar to ice-cream, they help to finish off a tiring day. (I have a couple of months to go for my next cholesterol check.)

Nobody drinks tap water in Italy. When you ask for water in a restaurant, they will offer ‘naturale (non-fizzy)’ or ‘fizzamente (fizzy).’ Both come in bottles. Restaurants charge you a minimum of 1.5 euro for a 50 cl bottle when you can get a 1 litre bottle in a grocery store for 0.50 cents. Now, during Caesar’s time, they established cast iron water posts at various piazzas (squares) in these cities from which water constantly pours out. There seems to be no way of shutting them off. So, after the first prohibitively expensive bottle of water, save the bottle and refill it at these taps. In case you are worried about quality, by now you must know that there is nothing that a few pellets of Pudin Hara cannot cure.

Museums: Italy continues to live off the Renaissance! The museums and the churches are lovely, filled with frescoes, statues, and paintings of unbelievable beauty. Not being a student of art history but one of economics, may I add here that the law of diminishing marginal utility rapidly set in. After the third museum, I could not distinguish between a Michaelangelo, or a Pampolini, or Vasari. They all looked the same. The statues outside in the street corners looked the same and as good to me as the statues inside the museum for which we paid from 6 to 15 euros as entrance fee. And the more popular museums required booking well in advance otherwise you waited for hours in line to get in.

Chinni, the project manager, had done her research and booked us at the more important ones, weeks before our departure. Chinni would also rent an audio guide in the museum, a digital hand held device that guided you through with descriptions, usually with some additional information giving you history and tidbits about the painting, al for an additional 2 to 3 euro. She would point out to me the highlights that I seemed to regularly miss. But when we went from room to room in the museums all the art began to look alike. ‘Did you see the Giotta fresco which was commissioned by Cosmo Medici the first when he had just won the battle of Lebano?’ Chinni would ask me while I rested on a bench. I would say ‘Yes’ because, well, I mean, I must have seen it right? (I did glance about each room.) Or was it in the previous room. Or the previous museum? Or, maybe, in the piazza in the previous town?

The Iffizi museum in Florence was monstrous, and the guide book says, competes with the Louvre in Paris and the Prado in Madrid. Both of which we have seen so we can check this off in our to-do list.

Often, the museum and church employees had a resigned attitude at the hordes passing through. Cameras would click and flash right next to a sign saying no photos, and the employee would be either chatting to his colleague or staring bored at her finger nails.

Tour groups with guides were often fun to watch too, and distracted me from the works of Michaelangelo. Many families were accompanied by youngsters, who would have frustration written on their faces as they clung to their parents’ arms hoping this was the last room of the museum.

Some of the guides have figured out what the average tourist wants and cater to it. So have the museum employees. When I stood near the bulletin board at the entrance to the Santa Croce basilica in Florence trying to figure out the map, a museum employee walked up to me and said, ‘The third chapel on the right has the two important frescoes. Michaelangelo’s tomb is in the middle on that side, across from it is Gallileo’s, and Dante’s is here.” She probably meant to add, ‘You Philistine, you can see those and get the hell out of here.” That’s what the guide books do to us. They point out these must see things, and those spots have all the crowd, and when you return home, someone is sure to ask, ‘Did you visit Michaelangelo’s tomb’ so I had better see it.

Chinni has been inspired by all the beautiful artwork. She plans to commission Sreshta to do a mural in our Palm Meadows living room. But I worry. Sreshta may instead decide on an installation and we would have a projector with images in one room and something on the floor in another, reducing living space significantly. Stay tuned for more on Italy.

Thoughts on the Royapettah house

Gopi has put out some great stuff on the house, the beginnings, anna's passion and so on. This is Anna's first house and I recall he took the money out of the Insurance policy.. we had lived in Rajasekhara Mudaliyar Road, Chandrabagh avenue and then moved on to Mahadevan's house in Gopalapuram. Mahadevan was in Cudalore and JSPradhu was going to bring him down to Madras...and then Anna has to move out of this property quicker..I recall also going down to the plot and pouring water to cure the bricks. Anna bought the land from Hari who lived across and he was the Manager at Higginbothams. Our other neighbor was ST Narasimhan's daughter and son-in-law (Mohana's old friend) who was a psychiatrist and ending up going insane and then the Jains moved in ( ask Mohana about Mrs, Jain!!). Anna loved the mosaic and also the window grill that he designed ( though it was a difficult design , it gave us pain to close the windows putting our hands through those holes!!). The upstairs verandah was also a great place and at one time he wanted to enclose it...

Anna loved crotons ( I googled to see the plants) and we never know what crotons are in this country...it is just a beautiful plant with different colors and anna's also use to cross-breed them to get different shades of the leaves...he had several varieties... his reason for not moving into the Adyar bungalows and be with the British guys, Popni Iyengar, SN Lal, John John and others were because he liked the independence to work on the yard, folding up his dhoti.......

Another thing that came to my mind was my interest in dogs!!!!! I hope you guys remember we had Sheba in Coimbatore and she finally ran away( I think Prem and Usha might have taken care of the dog), Mohana loved Tommy in Secunderabad ( a street dog that she cared) and then the white German Shepherd that was in he Royapettah house... In 1964, I had gone to Nellikuppam to work in the sugar plant, Shanti perhaps 3 years old and Gopi around 14.....he loved to play with this dog in the front and I still remember him pulling his tongue and enjoying it going in circles..the dog played with him..however, whenever I came from Nellikuppam, he barked and never let me through the front door ( I might have thrown some stones and he might have remembered) and one day, I recall his food plate had fallen down and when Anna was going to pick it, he did bite him ( or did he bite Venkatesan..) and then the dog was sent off to the Fireworks factory....

I really enjoyed the cane furniture in the front porch and Anna had the greatest relationship with Jayabaratham guy...and we had that little green cane chair that was used by every grandchild and I am sure it is still somewhere.... I was thinking of Amma's room ( her favorite Godrej where she kept her Cadbury's chocolate) and the only bathroom with the Indian toilet..she insisted on it!!!

Mythili always liked Anna's taste for furniture and he always brought in a few great pieces..he also loved polishing the wood around the house--- I recall the staff from Parrys' who used to frequently come and polish our rosewood furniture and other tables....I still remember his face and he probably drank half the spirit bottle...Anna wanted his brass polished and he did it and made us do it too.....

I was thinking of the gifts anna used to get in the Royapettah house from all his distributors-- particularly fruits and the visits of people like Periaswamy, Kali and so many others-- and we had a tough time distributing all the fruits to family and friends... I was also thinking of people like Padam Singh, Parijatham, venkatesan etc who were part of our lives growing up there....

Well, Mohana remembers all the things around our house-- and hopefully she will tell us more...

I somehow, remember the teacher that used to come for Dasharath..D will sit on the Pai for sometime and move to the chair and the teacher will follow wherever D went....was he learning music!!

Having your own wheels

Having your own wheels

Tatiana, a colleague from Bulgaria, said to me last week that she did not know how to ride a bicycle. Did not know how to ride a bike! That amazed me since I thought it was a basic skill that everyone learned, like walking. I don’t remember when or how I learned, but I always knew it. I just assumed that I was born with bike riding skills.
I recall running down the street in Nehru Nagar teaching Dasharath how to ride a bike. (So he probably now thinks he was born with it.) But Dasharath also got his own set of wheels very early. Usha decided to buy him a tricycle as a gift on one of her visits from Calcutta. Off they went to Mint Street in Parry’s corner which was THE place to buy bicycles. A number of big shops there offered a lot of choice. Not that it mattered. Dasharath sat on the first tricycle he saw in the first shop they entered, and refused to get off. After the bill was paid, Rajan, the driver, had to carry him with the bike and put him in the car in the back seat and he came home riding his trike in the car.

Bharadwaj was truly amazing in how rapidly he picked up bike riding. I was giving him the heave ho in the parking lot of the apartment complex at Sunderland, where we were in 1986. He did a few rounds with me alternatively holding and letting go from the rear when I heard the phone ring. I ran back into the apartment. As I was answering the call standing near the window and looking out, I saw Bharadwaj hoist himself up the little bike using the entrance steps of the apartment and doing his own round of the parking lot! That’s it. Lessons over.

But knowing bike riding is not the same as owning a bike. And that took a long time for me. There was a bicycle rental place on Royapettah High Road near the Edward Elliots Road (now Radhakrishnan Salai) intersection, and next to a barber shop (Muthu, M. A. Hair Dressers. MA were his initials, not his qualification.) One could rent by the hour and so rental bikes were called ‘hour bike,’ or pronounced ‘avar bike’ in Tamil.)

I never even thought I would get a bike when, in 1961 or so, the door bell rang late in the evening. We were at Kandaswami Gramani Street apartment. Out stood Chellaswami’s butler (yes, he really did have a 60 or so year old butler whom he called ‘boy’!) with a brand new bicycle, saying it was a present from Chellaswami for my birthday.

We need a sidebar here. Now Chellaswami was a well to do barrister from London (‘Inner Temple. Same as Gandhi and Nehru’, he would say) who lived down the street. He seemed to have plenty of money, was single (‘my wife left me’ he once said), and had few clients (‘family property’ was whispered behind his back) , and so had plenty of time to stand in the balcony of his apartment watching me and my friends playing in the street. We would all occasionally visit him too and get some snacks and lemonade, served by the butler. Earlier that evening, I had celebrated my birthday with him, complete with a cake and candles to boot. Now it seems odd, but I never thought of it at that time. My friendship with him, needless to say, provided no end of merriment for the rest of the family that I had learned to ignore.

Anna was flabbergasted by the bicycle. It was truly over and beyond the norm for gifts and he asked the butler to take it back. I don’t recall what happened after that, I must have (at least hope I did) thrown a tantrum, but there was an exchange of messages between Anna and Chellaswamy and I got to keep the bike.

The feeling of freedom that comes from owning your own set of wheels is impossible to explain. From then on, I was on the bicycle every waking and non-school moment. I was not allowed to go to school on the bike, school being about 7 kms away. As a compromise, I was allowed to ride it till the school bus stop at the Music Academy intersection where I would park the bike in the house of ‘George’ Ramanujam, Anna’s colleague at the office. By the time I came to high school, I was allowed to ride it to school on Saturdays, when the NCC drill took place. Final year of school I graduated to riding it to school during weekdays too.

Ah, the freedom! One could stay back late, playing games, joining clubs, and not having to rush to catch the school bus! It came in handy for all the shopping that was to be done, buying vegetables from Thannithuravu market, going to TUCS on Royapettah High Road, going to Ajanta Hotel for dosais on a Sunday afternoon to serve as tiffin for all at home.

Now, Prem had a bike too, at that time. He would ride it to Guindy Engineering College (now Anna University), and take it across on the ferry boat while crossing Adyar river. See, I’m not the only crazy one.

When I joined Vivekananda College, it was the same bike that was the preferred means of transport for four years. When I went to Delhi for my Masters, I saw how it would fit the bill quite nicely. I was in Jubilee Hall, a University graduate students’ hostel, just a bike ride away from Delhi School of Economics. When I returned to Delhi after the first term vacation in Madras, it came with me on the train. From the station, it rode with me that foggy January morning, in the autorickshaw all the way to north Delhi where the University was located. It came back with me to Madras in 1972 and then I upgraded to a Yezdi 250cc motorcycle. (I did grow up.)

It was with me for a long time after that. I don’t recall if I gave it away or sold it, but I wish I had kept it. Last summer (2006), I went looking for a bike to rent in Adyar. I thought a bike a more pleasurable alternative to arguing rates with the autorickshaw drivers. I could not find a single one. I went searching down Guindy Road for the bike shop that I knew used to be there, but the new generation of shopkeepers around there looked at me like I was an alien. Chennai-ites had moved on to other forms of transportation.

The significance of c/185

Having named this blog by a house address requires some explanation. It was a house on about 2 grounds (4800 sq ft) of land in a cul de sac that anna built. But it was much more than that. It was a metaphor for an era and a life style. Eras change and so do lifestyles, but it is always easy to understand and laugh at one’s own when you have something to compare it with.

Thus, the building of c/185 (later renumbered 248) was a major accomplishment. It was a time when you did not have home loans available from banks, so it meant digging deep into your own reserves, and borrowing from one’s retirement savings. Anna was scared of debt and it was years of nagging by amma (‘all your friends have already built their houses’ etc. usually drove him to another room) that got him on the path.

A local bigwig (lawyer, I’m sure, active in the Music Academy, and so on) had recently deceased and left his estate to his children. Some of them were selling some of their shares and we took one.

The design was his, but he got hold of a junior architect, Hariharan, at a prominent architect’s firm to do the detailed drawings. Hariharan lived in the bachelor rooms at the Royapettah YMCA and we would catch him in the mornings or evenings to go over details. A general contractor was appointed but with the provisio that some of the materials would be provided by us. Cement remained a big problem, for it was an era or shortages and you needed permits and licenses to obtain many of the requirements. Ice House chithiya (S. M. Rangaswami, amma’s uncle, who used to work for the PWD, so that was enough qualification!) would come at critical times to check if the concrete was being poured properly for the roof, and the lintels were properly wired.

When it took so much effort to build the house, it had to be loved! And did he love it! Anna would stand back on the street and admire his work of art, even years after its completion. He chose not to live in the company housing in Adyar but preferred to live in his own house. His ostensible reason was that he did not want to live with colleagues next door, but I suspect the real reason was the satisfaction it gave him.

Maintenance was big with him. He was always looking to see what needed to be fixed and would have it fixed. The grand kids, during vacation visits, would be given a can of oil to go around oiling the hinges and the locks. They would also be given huge bunches of keys to go around identifying and marking as the keys were matched to the locks. Nobody could hammer a nail into a wall to hand a picture without his permission, which was rarely given. He would regularly pull chairs and tables a few inches away from the wall so they did not mark the surface. The brassware that he loved to display would be polished by him, with an old banian and a can of Brasso. All the while complaining that ‘If you wanted to give a gift to someone you did not like, choose a brass item. They would have to polish it the rest of their life!

Disturbing the structure petrified him. (He had rejected concealed wiring since he thought that if the wires needed to be replaced, it would require breaking the surface and the re-plastering would show!) For years he planned to add rooms to the terrace on the first floor and would wander around the terrace while shaving and with the soap foam dripping but never had the courage to initiate the action. The only change he made, with great reluctance, was to re-do the kitchen (re-position the sink, lower the counter, and add cupboard space) while grumbling to everybody outside amma’s earshot that it was unnecessary and ruined the kitchen!

A house like that is also a base of sorts. A base to come to during vacations, since it was always there. There are few such ones around anymore. (The other one that served its time was ‘Sripuram View,’ Chinni’s grandparents’ home.) I recall the vacation visits of the family and let’s hear their voices of what they remember!

Once the house was done, it had to be named. As Usha points out, there were several under consideration, but none that was important enough to merit christening. Some of the ones that made the initial cut (only partly in jest) were ‘At last’ and ‘VR7.’ More serious was ‘Thirumala’ the abode of his patron lord and Kamala (both his wife and his mother’s names). But in the end he decided not to hang a plaque. Perhaps he did not want to drill additional holes on the wall to hang the sign!

अ Preface

Family lore may be interesting to some and boring to others. I was listening to a caller on a radio show who was reacting to the speaker on the program commenting on the value of learning from the dead. One of the ways he said was when you visit the cemetery and recall the gravesites. So the caller remarked that his parents were cremated and he tries to perpetuate the memory of his parents by telling the stories about them to his children.

We all wish to know more about our families, long-past anecdotes, and wish to keep connected. At one timeI did not! उसके बारे में याद है! I remember the times when I would rather be in my room on the first floor of 248 RH Road (formerly c/185) reading a comic than come down and say hello to Rajamani Kuttipa who may be visiting on a Saturday afternoon। Fortunately, after a brief hello, parental conversation would move along and I could slip back upstairs। That was in 1966। In 2003, when I visit Chennai, I make time, to drive 20 miles in congested traffic to visit Rajamani Kuttippa …। To say hello!

Different folks have different recollections of the same event and that should be interesting. Some remember more than others. I guess another reason for putting things down on paper is that age differences allows some people to know erstwhile events better than others. Papu and Shanti, for instance, will be able to recall more of Anna from the time they spent holidaying in Royapettah than Bharadwaj who was four when Anna died. Or Jag will recall more of life in Secunderabad than I would . Putting things down gives everyone an opportunity to understand a time which seems hazy.

Family gatherings at weddings, deepavali, etc. are other times to exchange information on ‘Remember when …’ Such gatherings are few and far between as we disperse around the world. So it is time to digitize them.

Moreover, it is not just long past events. We would love to read about current events too, I'm sure. About a snake that turns up at Kaigal guest house when Umesh is staring at the ceiling, or Papu's recent trip to Singapore.

The technology of today makes this free exchange possible. It also allows dissenting opinion, by allowing others to append a footnote clarifying their memory of the incident which may be different from that of the writer. இங்கே தமிழ் உம் ஹிந்டிஇல்லும் எழுதலாம்! (One can write in Tamil and Hindi also here! And Prem can write in Kannada or Telugu also!)

Welcome to Royapettah High Road

One more blog to crowd cyberspace! This one is inspired by Shanti, who wanted to collect family experiences into a book. Good luck to her! But I thought, hey, why not start a blog, and so here we are. I have appointed a technical advisory team (Vivek, Sreshta, and Bharadwaj) who will guide me through the process of navigating access to this cyberspace. I hope to entice others to post to this space as well, after I get help on how I can allow them to do so! Till then, I hope the comments feature will, at the very least, make people participants and not just be lurkers!

What topics will be covered? Family reminiscences, current family events illustrated with photos, and anything else you are interested in airing in public (yes, remember this is NOT a private site!).

So, keep it coming folks!