La Affaire Daddy

"Vechchu Vei..Paakalam"

I have heard this term a little more than a few crore times from my dad that I have grown a phobia towards it.

God made things in this world with a purpose. Who are we to destroy them? Noble thought! But come to my home in tirunelveli and you would realize that its perhaps not too profound an idea to practice!

Some people write diaries. My dad just collects it. Some have a fascination for calendars..the pireeli..swimsuit type...some collect "saami" calendars....My dad has 2 in 1987..10 in 1989...50 from 1991 and so on. He is also an ardent devotee of all Gods. These dieties first occupied the "saami alamaar". Then "moved" by the pious devotee's "bhakthi" they descended and moved to whichever place in the house they can - "omnipresent" in kitchen, fridge, tv, bureau and damn even the toilet sometimes...just in case if a cockroach decides to be a tenant of our anal passage...it will get scared seeing the poster of GOD Almighty "sorigified" in the door joints of the loo.

Every useless thing has a utlity value for my dad. So he does a "Vechchu vei paakalam" for everthing. Even his new VIP undy sticker is a good decorative element and has a place in the fan regulator.Then there is a flimsy jigu jigu wall hanging made of cheap plastic paper which is a sorry choice for a ceiling hanging (a la Chandlier lamps). It took me 7 long years to convince that we need to remove the package cover on it. It hung in my house for all those years neatly wrapped in a cover. For my dad, the cover was meant to prevent dust, even if it means the decorative (!) piece would never serve its purpose!

Oh then there are varities of seeds - Strawberry to Tulip flower... Kiwi to Pappaya..which will one day become a part of our orchard that we will never buy in a century. But so what? Even if the seeds are dried now, wouldnt some Professor in Arizona State University find a way to make life outta dried seeds and then, we can have all rows of kiwi, strawberry and tulip in our hot tropical tirunelveli. Heck..if al this cannot happen, Steven Spielberg's great grandson or some mission from mars will understand life in earth, by just looking at my house..They would even take these seeds to Mars and create new life..My dad is a visionary...and we are just shani..

As a kid I used to wear those black leather shoes from Bata. They are durable. In our house where useless stuff last for 50 years, you can imagine how long "durable" stuff will last.. I have all my school shoes and yeah, the dried cherry shoe polishes. So what if they are dried? We have kerosene in 10 bottles to liquidate the polish. When my son studies in DAV, I can fool him about the value of antiques and give him the same shoes sparkling shiny with my 30 year old cherry shoe polishes. You thought my dad is compulsive rubbish collector? No he just beats inflation across decades, which P.Chidambaram and Manmohan Singh cannot do!

And by the way, did you miss the part about Kerosene. We never knew why we needed it when we having cooking gas and microave owen. But now that we discovered the shoes and shoe polishes, there is perhaps a use for the kerosene. But I agree that 10 bottles would be an overkill. But who knows? With all the nuts, bolts, ball bearings, chain sprockets that my dad has collected, I can build my own Bullet bike and this kerosene will then have two uses. One, to lubricate and two, to run the bike!

My Dad is a craftsman too. Can you collect 1000's of nutirene coffebit and orange toffy wrappers, skillfully knit them to create tiny baby dolls with frocks? My dad can.. I feel helpless that this skill just dint find a better stage than our TV shelf, windows and his own bureau.

My dad also is a great socialite. He "hangs" out with sangar, subramanian, natrajan saar, segar - all wasted souls of my dad's office, for whom the only perfume is the "agarbathi" they kolithify everyday at home. But should that stop my dad from buying every new deo in the market (no matter if it sternly reads "Ramasamy - This is for women and not for you")? I love him and all that. But I kinda dont like him when he offers me one of his "scentu bottils" which read "Now unleash your feminine freedom". He doesn't like me refusing either! Ultimately these bottles end up in a massive plastic tray in our "so called" dressing room. He has all colors of bottles. All fragrances. Damn! I started hating perfumes becuase of his penchant for wierd smelling perfumes (including the famous "marikozhunthu" scent thats famously sold in city buses)

Did I say he also collects "Ball point pens" and "Fountain Pens"? The ones that have four refills in one (Red, Blue, Black and Brown), the Reynolds, the Hero Pens, The fully transparent fountain pens, the golden color ballpoint pens, the pilot pens, assorted refill packs - he has them all. But just as you want to use one of them, you will have to wade through an ocean of melted ink, stinking like rotten brinjol and then pick up a refill. When you finish noting that phone number, you would realize that the ink has not just painted your gripping fingers, but also under the nails.

If I have a soap in the bathroom, I am saved. I can just wipe the ink and get off. As murphy's law goes, if shit should happen, it will always happen. Just as I call out for a soap, Dad will be there with 24 options - from a simple hamam to a medimix to lux (imported by my uncle from Dubai) to some sample soaps with no names (given by his office, when he "travelled" to "madras" in 1998)...Aaa aaaa aaaaaaa!

I know you are tired by the sheer breadth of passions my dad has! If you live to read, go on...there are some more!

My dad collects papers! I repeat, Papers - which include news papers, petrol bills, vibhudi and kunkumam potalams, assorted letters saying "Ramasamy, this is just to let you know that your ULIP deposit has increased from 2000 Rs to 2034 Rs through our wasted investments we made on your behalf". There are letters that say "Ramasamy, our thoppanar expired in matunga. Thasathu will happen on Sunday" - dated 23, April 1989. He also has a stack of stock certifications of companies like GV Films which dont exist today!

Mom has four cardboard boxes of these treasures and God being so kind, we continue to get these treasures in piles, overflowing our shelves and occupying every possible square inch of our house.

How can I miss the best Souvenir dad has got in his life - The Ganga Jal

Dad had gone on a pilgrimmage to Kasi a few years back and in my opinion (and his too), its a personal fete comparable to Alexandar conquering India. For a man who think twice before crossing tirunelveli, holding his flag high in Kasi is indeed a lifetime achievement! What best way to celebrate it than by getting lorry loads of small brass pots with "Gangei Jalam"

We havea full loft filled just with these brass pots with arrested water in them! I asked amma what Dad is planning to do with them

Amma said " Cheththu pona odane idha thaan odachu thalavazhiya kulipatanum". Humor under helpless situations is the best way to beat the feeling of helplessness, I learnt!

Yipeee!!!

It feels like heaven.

I went to google.com and there was academy awards in Star movies. Then I just walked around to the fridge to take some "athirsam". I typed for some search keyword.

Then I reached out to my diwan and was sitting right next to the door to catch some air. I logged into blogger. Dint miss the uber-cool all-revealing drapes these actresses were wearing in the academic awards ceremony...sigh!!

Everything is possible....From this moment am "un-wired". I just did the "Ho..Ho..Ho..Wireless Ho!"

Its been more than year since I bought wireless router and it just happened today that some really capable IT hardware dude set it up for me! For the first time, I feel the mobility of my laptop.

I am gonna put a sticker in my door saying, this house is "Wi Fi" enabled..Cool na?

Now I dont have to carefully pull two ropes of wires and navigate them through my mid riff and keep a quilt to support me and keep two pillows on my tummy to avoid the radiation - all to move my laptop to the next room while staying connected.

Life is much better with a stupid laptop going wireless!

I cant have enough of it yet. I love this so much that I wanna sleep with my router!!

Review - Pachai Kili Muthu Charam

Its a bold movie, yet again from Gautham Menon.

The story line is not very complicated. A middle-aged man, Venkatesh (Played by Sarath) falls into an extra-marital affair with Geetha (Jyothika) and before he realizes he is stuck to the cobweb of conmen, who then blackmail him for money. The rest of the movie is about how Sarath saves his marriage with his loveable wife (played by Andrea) and then hits back to take all the money he lost to the conmen!

Its very refreshing to see Sarath Kumar being introduced as just "Sarath Kumar" and not "Supreme Star". He plays a medical rep who is content with his sales job and passes every chance of promotion to stay in the city with his wife and kid. Andrea plays Sarath's wife. Inspite of her not-so-south looks, she scores well in emotions and carries the role of a disappointed lover/wife with remarkable depth. I wish she gets more such roles in tamil cinema.

The story begins slow with first half an hour devoted to introduce Venkatesh, Kalyani and their son, who has juvenile diabetics. Sarath wields emotions like we have never seen. He also looks polished and bright. There is ample room for the first time to display love, lust, affection, disappointment, sorrow, contentment and fear - all in one movie. Sarath has brought in each of these emotions to their full and nowhere is it exaggerated.

The family saves money for their ailing kid and even decides to forego the idea of having another kid, just to devote their live for this kid. Its in this meloncholy-meets-reality situation, Venkatesh gets to know Geetha. Her's is another story of unsuccessful marriage life. Venky and Geetha turn friends. Geetha then takes fast moves to bring Venky into a love-lust

quagmire.

Gautham's dilemma is whether to become a Quintin Tarrentino or to be his own.The edginess and riveting narration which he followed in his earlier movies were very Quintin-like. Each scene led to the other and we did not have a minute to take a breath.But PKMC needed a full first-half to develop two micro-stories, one of Venkatesh & Family and the one of Venkatesh & Geetha. Gautham could have done well by limiting Venkat-Geetha relationship phase to the minimum and used the rest of the time to build a racy fightback.

Its this indecisiveness till the first half, that brings the movie flat, for an average movie goer. Gautham tries to break traditions one too many at the same time. First its the story line which is about extra-marital affairs. Second its Sarath doing a subdued hero. Third its Jyothika with her earthern looks and unfamiliar voice dubbing and fourth being a very slow narration much against what you would expect his movies to have.

The movie takes off in a typical Gautham menon fashion, when Lawrence (Milind Soman) enters the story and the blackmail trail begins. You are waiting to see how Venkatesh handles the moral fight and when Venkatesh finds Geetha to be a part of Lawrence's con-gang, you would come to the edge of the seat.

But the feast that we saw in Anbuchelvan-Pandiya fightback is missing here. Firstly there is no fightback from Sarath for most parts and when he does its already the end of the movie. Lawrence & Geetha (we thought) die in a gun-fight with Venkatesh, who not very mysteriously has to rely on Sarath Kumar, the action hero to fight 10 men wielding iron rods. We too had to come to terms that after all its not Venkatesh, its Sarath Kumar.

With meloncholy-lust-deceit and chase taking three-fouth of the movie, Gautham would have felt, its too little a feast for his audience and as I thought I the movie was over, Jyothika springs back even after we thought she's shot dead, to lead another excruciatingly boring fight, where she indeed dies this time. It was neither racy nor any bit climactic. While Jo is all too willing to do a negative role in the end of her career's first innings, she could have taken care about her looks, dubbing and presentation. The life you associate with Jo, is missing.

My Verdict: You must watch it as early as you can. It may not be out there for long!

Elimination Round - Ideal Girl - Part 1

Preethi today asked me for my idea of an ideal match (The marriage type). Thinking of it, more than what kind of a girl I may like, there are many creatures I just would kill with a "HIT SPRAY" if I ever had the license. :)

First category is what I call as the neo-ramba girls. You can see them in college, office everywhere. No one except the "oh-its-been-a-long-time-since-I-saw-a-girl" guys go near them. This species oozes the oomph with extra large dangling ear rings, Revlon shades, cheap saravana stores jeans with embroidery on it and those really loud (color) and extremely noisy tuk tuk heel shoes. Just as you are stuck for words looking at their profoundly repulsive demeanour they reciprocate with "Chee, enna yen pa apdi pakre...enaku oru maariya vardhu" look. WTF?

The second category is "lovelace forever". They are very nice people. They are always there for you, feeling extra large for you. Hayoyo enada thalai le thoosi and wipes it off for you. SMS'es you with "Life is like a river. You are a goldfish. I am a dolphin" kinda message and expects you to reply with a "Sucha sweet girl you are" sms. She knows your ringtone, she remembers its time for you to pay the electricity bills, she even sms'es you to check the road on both sides before you cross.Before you realize, she knows everything about you. You can just walk straight and ask her, how many more deep breaths should I take to meet my average oxygen intake for every friday and she will have an answer. You never know. She perhaps knows. They call you by every name including babli, chintu, tintin, ashu, asho or sweetypie..that you come back home and shout in front of the mirror "ashwin" "ashwin" "ashwin" a hundred times, to feel how nice and relieved it sounds. Its all bubbly-giggly but they just dont get the point that one doesnt need to salvage the entire time, every ounce of energy and self-respect to "take care" of a guy. They are nice, lovely but carry zero magnetism

The third is ultra-pack. For these chics everything is larger than life. They exchange "Hi" with a rub of cheek and a kiss in the air, even if its just our good old besi beach, they are meeting in. They know how to wear a 9 yard saree with glass work and still manage to reveal everything. I can watch Antony Bourdain of "No reservations" eat live octopus. But I will puke if I sit with these chics for 10 minutes. They are adventurous in every sense of the word. They can tell between tasmac and a cognac which is 18th century brewed. They talk hard rock and metal.They drive custom made jeeps with 10 absolutely drunk guys in it whom she would have just met through yet another common friend whom she met the last week for the first time. (This is no exaggeration. I sadly happened to be with such a gang for precious half n hour of my 31 dec 2006)

The fourth category is Kartavya girls. They all look the same. There is only one way you can take them to orgasm - by taking them through a hypnotism spell and walk them through redmont seattle Microsoft office and show that they work there as a geek with the Vista OS in 2007. They would like "Java User Group - Code Marathon" t-shirt to Swarowski crystals. They shut down their eyes to sleep, reboot to wake up, fragement the bread for breakfast, disk cleanup their scooties, go to office in run time, take command(s) prompt-ly. Huff...enough said..

For all these complications, there is one category of girls, I just fall for. It takes one full post to write about them. Thats on Part II..

Slurrpy Iyers

I was fortunate to have been bred , as a child, in a street where eating was just more than a daily chore. The oldies, I remember, have arranged for massive mass lunches for every conceivable amavasai or pournami.

Coming from such a tradition, Sarvana Bhavan's rationed thayir sadam feels like an insult to the Slurrpy Iyer in me. Here is an ode to the abundance, indulgence and sheer slurrp that I miss!

Iyers of the previous generation, I have known, have squared off their fortunes just by drinking paal payasam and moor kozhambu. Even today my granny cannot make food for less than five people, even if its only she who eats!

A family getto at Iyer homes is a treat not just for our taste buds, but also to our sight. Being a kid I was always the messenger when a devesam or punyajanam happened at our home. I will run the entire street and "invite" the fellow iyer-bagasuraa's for the lunch.

I am not sure why they call it "Thalai vazha elai" . At my age of 10, I could easily strech and sleep on that leaf. Its in this leaf they serve food. Anxiety always took over me when the "tarrap" "tarrap" "krrr" sound of cleaning the leaf starts. What amazed me was not even one of those mamas would tear the leaf with that WWF style washing and nor would they even lift their butt to reach to the contours of the leaf.This is one art, I envy and never could master even to this date.

You must also note that the amount of intake is inversely proportional to the grip of the veshti.The tight veshti relaxes as they progress from sambhar to rasam to payasam to thayir sadam and when they finish the penance (??) the veshti just slips down in sheer load that it cannot bear!

Now back to the basics.

The iyer saapadu inherently breeds socialism. Everyone's given a level playing (?!) ground.Even as you get served, you will wait for the rest of all to get served too and just as players do their team chant, the Iyers do their mantra chants..a la...ready joot 1 2 3

It all starts with a modesty personified drops of payasam whose sweet taste would perhaps be a spoilsport to the sambhar rice that comes next in the order. But Iyers being no ordinary men, use the plain rice to wipe the residual payasam clean and bingo, the banana leaf is ready for its next victim!

There is of course an order in which food is served. Paruppu is always served before food. Salt takes the left extreme, while kootu and poduthuval take the centre stage. If there is Bhoondi it takes a strategically precarious place between uppu and kootu. On the top right, comes exceedingly syruppy and intolerably sweet "pineapple jaam", which rubs often with an equally crappy and sour "thayir pachidi" . The bottom half is reserved for rice and the mixes and payasam.

The best eater is one who has the most rice grains on the inner palm.The more you squeeze and make the food eject out of your fingers, the more you are recognized as a veteran. There is also a tradition to reserve a seat for a person who is anointed as the one through which the departed soul, relishes the lunch and he gets a dhonnai which is yet another improvisation. Its a small banana leaf rolled into into a pentogonal shaped bowl with no stiches what so ever...which is then filled with ....what else... pal payasam.

I learnt about aerobics only when a few years back. But it's always been a familiar exercise having watched our grand dads skillfully doing a half U turn with rasam with the side of the palm turned into a skilled wiper taking along all thakkali and rasam in one massive gravity defying swirl taking off perpendicularly like a sukhoi and then go way up to a rolling tongue and scale back the same way in a split second, back to take over the "now retracing wave" of rasam. Its difficult to put this art in words. But I always wonder, with such relex and navigation skills why did no michael schumakers come out of our community!

Another notable aspect about rasam is how you slirp. An "ussswwwpp" should always follow with another "ussswwwp" within next 40 seconds. If it does not, the rhytm will be lost between sound, aerobics and wiping. There is so much in eating a rasam sadham.

Between every transition from one rice to other, you are served with a liberal dose of pal payasam...and the person who serves invaribaly pours one more scoop...saying "mamaa sandhehathuku" (meaning...just in case you are in two minds and feel for not having another scoop, later)

Talk about spoils !!

Finally they serve you with banana which should technically be ejected out of lack of space, but where there is will, there is intenstine and colon.

After all this, the maamas' then move out to the table kept ready with skillfully arranged vetthalai,sunambu and paaku and here starts "indha kichchambi irukanae...verum jambbam"...Another discussion, another day passes by without realizing what massive fete they have orchestrated in that 2" * 1 " banana leaf!

This was taken at 8 30 AM on a Sunday morning. I like this blue tint at the end of the road! Somehow Sundays have their own special color, right?

The School KFI Road - Besant Nagar

Can you try writing a suitable quote for this?