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Pooh is a lovely creature! Always looking for a little 'hunny'!

37 and so on

I turned 37! Yay!

During the week that led to the event of my turning 37, I was sick and very weak due to fever and cough. The weather was as cruel as the brutal election results. I was crushed by Uttar Pradesh's summer heat and the burning thoughts of living in this country in the coming days and years. I felt very fragile and vulnerable. But that was when I was 36. This is the story of how I graduated to 37.


On the eve of my turning 37, everything went as usual at home. Chinnu my wife cooked. We both ate. I got the sick-concession and was resting the entire day, sleeping and idling. She had asked me what I would like for the birthday. I didn't want anything other than love. Because I already had everything, including love. The little space left is reserved for love, and yes, I would like some more love.

By evening, I had developed migraine too. Perfect birthday it's going to be, I thought. So we had our usual roti-paneer dinner, some over-dinner-conversation, and some audio-visual entertainment. Suddenly at 10.55 pm, she says, "come on, let's go get a cake." I discouraged her saying the shop closes at 11, and that I was very weak (which I really was). She didn't budge. So we went to the only shop on campus to get a cake. Our favourite cake- Dutch Truffle was there. We bought one on a credit card, and rode home happily.

So, at 11.30 am, we happily ate tiny pieces of Dutch Truffle cake in a saffron state, in an almost all-saffron country almost at midnight. By 11 55, we were in bed. She wished me, and we were about to sleep when Jijoy called to wish. He always calls. At midnight! A cool friend, he is family. So at 12.05 on my birthday, we sleep.

I woke up at 7.30 am with a numbing migraine. 'Happy Birthday to you,' said the migraine to me. 'Thanks buddy, no one has been this close to me since my childhood,' I told the migraine, and got out of the mosquito net. Round the year, this mosquito net protects us. It's a great invention. We must have saved at least a litre of our precious blood this way so far. And the mosquito-gods are surely angry at us, I am sure.

In the kitchen, the poor girl is cooking breakfast and lunch simultaneously. She has to report at her office at 9.30 am, or else she will get scolded by her superiors who arrive at 10 or 11 am. Punctuality is important you know, particularly for contract employees! So I wander about in the small house, trying to make sense of what's happening. The pounding in my head is becoming louder by the second. I decided that I should stay home. When the food was ready, she packed our lunch in separate boxes. I kept mine at home. We then got ready. We both went to office area of the campus. After dropping her at her office, I went to my biometric attendance machine and gave a finger to the department. I personally had protested against the biometric attendance system, but had to comply in the end, thanks to the system's insensitivity to individuals' privacy. I returned home to rest.

At home, I forced myself to eat breakfast. Somehow, I managed to eat an entire puttu and went to sleep. Cough woke me up by 1 pm. By this time, five people had wished me apart from my beloved Chinnu. Some people would be unhappy when the number of wishes are low, but I wouldn't be. I am happy these many remembered or got reminded. It doesn't matter whether people remember or not. What matters is that you remain happy so that you can make others happy. After my MA at EFL University, Hyderabad,  I used to get one email every year from Prof Upendran on my birthday. Those emails used to make me very happy and proud. Nowadays, I don't get those, but the thought of those emails still make me happy. Afterall, birthdays are just like other days, except that they are not other days!

So I had my lunch, which my beloved Chinnu had packed for me. Then I had about 2 ml of the cough syrup given by the Institute pharmacy, and again went to bed. I thought I would wake up by 5 pm, so that I can go and pick up Chinnu by 5.30. Unfortunately, the cough syrup knocked me down and I woke up only at 5.40, by which time she had almost reached home walking in the scorching heat! I felt guilty, pathetic and weaker.

We had tea and another little piece of cake each. We decided to make kanji. By that time, Mettin a friend called from her hostel. She had come from Kerala that morning, and had brought some delicacies with her for us. We became super glad. While we waited for her, Shyam came. We gave him a piece of cake. He asked, 'why is there a cake at home now?' He used to remember my birthday every year, so when we told her it's my birthday, he wished me and stayed longer feeling 'guilty'. He is a long-standing true friend. No amount of forgetting will distance him from us.

After he left, Mettin came with the delicacies she brought from home. We gave her a piece of cake too. She asked what's special, we told her its my birthday. She was 'surprised' and she wished me. Then we sat chatting for some time. The doorbell rings. Chinnu opens the door, and to her surprise, there stands a group of 7 friends with a cake and some candles on it! This is the biggest surprise of all! It turns out that Mettin was acting all this time that she didn't know about the birthday. Normally I would have cried. Being feverish and all, I didn't, or I couldn't. Either way, I was carried away with emotions, became super happy, but couldn't show any of it to those friends. All eight of them sat around, cut and had the cake, sang, made jokes, even made Chinnu sing, and so on. By about 11 pm, they left; so did my migraine.

Chinnu and I cleaned the house up, had bath and went to bed by 11.30 pm. It was a great birthday. Birthdays are great not because so many people wish, but because some people become limitlessly happy, and make others happy, and make them forget their sicknesses, misfortunes, unhappiness and difficulties. It would still have been a great birthday even if those 5 people hadn't wished me over phone, or those 8 people hadn't visited us with a cake, because Chinnu and I had shared our love. But it became a celebration because everyone who wished shared happiness. Such islands of happiness must connect to form continents and oceans to cover this earth. What we need is more happiness- on birthdays and other days!

So I turned 37, and so I go on...

Love. Nothing Else Matters.

Henry Miller had many wives. There was one wife named Hoki. She was Japanese. Hoki and Miller met in a Japanese bar where she used to sing. After meeting a few times, Miller asked her hand in marriage, and she said yes. She was not yet twenty, and he was over fifty!

After Miller's death, the other wives inherited all his wealth. Hoki was the forgotten Japanese divorced wife. She spent the remaining years of her life in her dark little room on top of a second rate bar on a noisy street. But she kept Miller's memories- a few of their photos, a few signed watercolours of Miller (Miller used to paint), and an autographed book. And of course, plenty of invisible memories of a good time.

When Paulo Coelho visited her once, she told him that she did not inherit the rights to his books or his property, and none of those' mattered, because the experience of being together with him outweighed any monetary compensation'. 'There was no point in squabbling over inheritance: love was enough,' Hoki said.

Yes. When there is love, nothing else matters!

[Quotes taken from Like the Flowing River by Paulo Coelho, Harper Collins Publishers, London, 2018]

The Pounding in the Head

Work these days is monotonous. The technical name is 'transcription'. It is to listen to recordings and carefully write down what people spoke in a test, paying acute attention to minute details like duration of pauses, number of 'hmms' and 'uhhs', syntactic accuracy and linguistic complexity of language, and so on. Transcribing 5 minutes of recorded speech takes approximately 90 minutes. Extremely monotonous. The larger picture is clear- a PhD thesis in the area of language assessment. But remaining focused doing the monotonous daily transcription is a tough job. Yet, I drag through this drudgery to reach the golden goal hiding somewhere in the future.

Then comes the villain- the pounding in the head. Some people call it a migraine. I call it a devil. Or a demon. Or whatever I want to call it! While the headphones reproduce different test-participants' speech about themselves, their lives, interests, studies, and other people, my eyes, ears and brain try to focus on how they express what they express. As I do so, the pounding in my head becomes louder. "My name is..." The pounding becomes harder. "I come from..." "I love playing the guitar." "I have a very small family." "My mother is a teacher." The voices from the headphone slowly become rhythmically aligned with the pounding in my head. I can neither hear anything nor understand a word of what's being spoken. Everything around me is blurred out into a hazy hum. The laboratory in which I work, and the people around me dissolve into the air, and I become the pounding in my head. At this level, I walk to the rhythm of the pounding in my head. Or maybe I dance to the rhythm of the pounding. Faster and Faster. Harder and Harder.

The 'Pounding'

Source

Then at one point, I give up living. I am pushed to a point where I no longer exist. At that point, I end. I stop existing. Blank. At the base of that whirlwind of a spiral, I ain't. For me, that is the zenith of existence and non-existence. That's the top and the bottom, fullness and emptiness. end and the beginning. That's when the 'I' cease to exist as an embodied reality. I become weightless; the body disappears. The mind disappears. I disappear. There is no 'I'. It is just the pounding. And I am the pounding.

And that is what I call self, and you call god!

വാക്കുകൾ മാത്രമായിപ്പോകുന്നവർ

ആരും വിളിക്കാഞ്ഞും വല്ലപ്പോഴും
നാട്ടിലൊക്കെ ചെല്ലുമ്പോൾ, വീട്ടിലെ
പട്ടികകളിലൊന്നും പെടാത്തതിൻ്റെ വിഷമം
പട്ടിയെപ്പോലെ നിന്നെ കടിച്ചുകീറാറുണ്ടോ?

പട്ടിണികൊടുത്തു വാങ്ങിയതൊക്കെ
പണ്ട് വീട്ടുവിലാസത്തിലയച്ച കാര്യമൊക്കെ
ചിലരുടെയെങ്കിലും നിസ്സംഗത കാണുമ്പോ
തികട്ടി വരാറുണ്ടോ?

നിൻ്റെ വിയർപ്പുവീണ മണ്ണിൽ
നിനക്കുമാത്രമയിത്തമുള്ള മണിമാളികകൾ കാണുമ്പോൾ
പണ്ടേ ചങ്കിലടക്കിയ ചില കിനാക്കൾ
കുഴിമാടത്തിലനങ്ങുന്നതായി തോന്നാറുണ്ടോ?

എങ്കിൽ മനസിലാക്കുക, നീയൊറ്റയ്ക്കല്ല.
നീയും വെറും വാക്കുകൾ മാത്രമാണെന്നെപ്പോലെ!
'അമ്മ, അപ്പൻ, മകൾ, മകൻ, ചേട്ടൻ, ചേച്ചി...
പ്രത്യേകിച്ചർത്ഥമൊന്നുമില്ലാത്ത വാക്കുകൾ!

സോഴ്സ് 

Polished Edges of Cemented Corridors

While walking through the large open cemented corridors of IIT Kanpur, I see the polished edges of cemented corridors. This makes me think. How did the edges of these cemented corridors get polished? Who polished it?

Ground Floor, Faculty Building, IIT Kanpur

The answer is simple. And it is thought-provoking.

Nobody polished them consciously. The cemented edges of the corridors are polished when the working class people of this institution rest their bottoms. It is polished by those people who do not have cushioned chairs inside air-conditioned rooms to rest their bottoms! Yes. The cemented corridors are home to the marginalized, invisible people who built, clean and maintain this great Institution of Excellence. They rest their bottoms on the edges of these long open cemented corridors, because this institution doesn't see the need to give them a space to sit and relax. They are not on this institution's list of big names. They are not scientists, engineers or academics. They are 'nobodys'. They are peons, messengers, carpenters, masons, gardeners, cleaning staff, and other daily-wage labourers. They exist on the corridors of the institution. Outside office spaces. Outside the purview of human resource management team. Yes on the corridors. And their bottoms polish the edges of these cemented corridors.

It is for all of us to see. These polished edges of cemented corridors are a proof of something that this institution (like many others) doesn't want to acknowledge. But, these polished edges of cemented corridors will remain here as long as this institution lasts- pointing a finger at our sense of dignity and equality!

കുളിക്കാത്ത ഐഐറ്റിക്കാർ

ഒരു ഐഐറ്റി പരീക്ഷക്കാലം. ശാസ്ത്രവും സാങ്കേതികവിദ്യയും യുവതയുടെ തലച്ചോറിൽ മിന്നാരപ്പിനർ തീർത്ത് സാധാരണക്കാരുടെ പ്രശ്നങ്ങൾക്ക് പരിഹാരം കാണുന്ന കാലം. ആധുനികതയുടെ 'ബൈനറി' ഭാഷയിൽ ഉത്തരക്കടലാസുകൾ നിറയുന്ന കാലം. കൂർമ്മബുദ്ധി കണക്കു കൂട്ടലുകളായി കടലാസ്സിൽ എഴുതി തെളിയിച്ച് ഒന്നാമതെത്താൻ എല്ലാരും വെമ്പുന്ന കാലം. ഗവേഷണവിദ്യാർഥികൾക്ക് പരീക്ഷക്കാലത്ത് പരീക്ഷാ മേൽനോട്ട ദൗത്യം (invigilation duty) കിട്ടാറുണ്ട്. അങ്ങനെയാണ് ഏകദേശം 250 പേർക്കിരിക്കാവുന്ന റോമൻ ആംഫിതീയറ്റർ പോലുള്ള ശീതീകരിച്ച പരീക്ഷാമുറിയിൽ ഞാൻ എത്തിയത്.

പുതുമഴയത്ത് മണ്ണിൽനിന്നും പറന്നുയരുന്ന ഈയാംപാറ്റകളെപ്പോലെ ശീതീകരിച്ച പരീക്ഷാമുറിയുടെ പലകോണുകളിൽ നിന്നും എഴുതിനിറച്ച ഉത്തരക്കടലാസുകളും ഉറക്കം തൂങ്ങുന്ന കണ്ണുകളുമായി വിദ്യാർഥികൾ ഒന്നൊന്നായി എഴുന്നേറ്റു പോകുന്നു. യാന്ത്രികതയാണ് മിക്കവരുടെയും മുഖമുദ്ര. ഇരിപ്പിലും നടപ്പിലും എഴുത്തിലുമെല്ലാം അവർ യന്ത്രങ്ങളെപ്പോലെ തോന്നിച്ചു. പ്രത്യേകിച്ച് വികാരങ്ങളൊന്നും പ്രകടിപ്പിക്കാത്ത അവരുടെ കണ്ണുകളും മുഖവും ഇപ്പോഴും ഏതോ കണക്കുകൂട്ടലുകളിൽ മുഴുകിയതുപോലെ തോന്നും.

മിക്കവരും കുളിക്കാത്തവരും തുണിയലക്കാത്തവരുമാണ്. രൂക്ഷമായ വിയർപ്പുനാറ്റവും ചെളിയുടെ കുത്തുന്ന മണവും! പരീക്ഷാമുറി പോലുള്ള ഒരു സ്ഥലത്തേയ്ക്ക് വരുമ്പോൾ പോലും മാന്യമായ വസ്ത്രം (എന്നുവച്ചാൽ അലക്കിയതും വൃത്തിയുള്ളതുമായ വസ്ത്രം) ധരിക്കണമെന്നോ, പല്ലുതേക്കണമെന്നോ, കുളിക്കണമെന്നോ, മുടി ചീകണമെന്നോ ഈ അലസന്മാർക്കും അലസിമാർക്കും തോന്നാത്തതെന്തേ? നന്നായി വിയർത്ത്, ചെളിയിലൊക്കെ ഉരുണ്ട്, നല്ല രസമായി കളിക്കുന്നതിനിടയിൽ 'എന്നാൽ ഒരു പരീക്ഷ എഴുതിയേക്കാം' എന്ന് കരുതി വന്നതുപോലുണ്ട്. ഇത്ര ലാഘവം എങ്ങനെ നമ്മുടെ ബുദ്ധിയുള്ള പുതുതലമുറയ്ക്ക് കൈവന്നു? അക്കങ്ങൾക്കും കോഡുകൾക്കും ഇടയിൽ പ്രകൃത്യാ ഉള്ള നൈസർഗികത നഷ്ടമായതാണോ? അതോ ജന്മനാ അലസരായവരെ മാത്രമേ ഐഐറ്റികളിൽ ഇപ്പൊ എടുക്കുന്നുള്ളോ?

ഇവരൊക്കെയാണല്ലോ നമ്മുടെ നാടിൻ്റെ  നാളെയുടെ ശിൽപികൾ എന്നോർക്കുമ്പോഴാണ്! വ്യക്തിശുചിത്വം കാത്തുസൂക്ഷിക്കാൻ സമയം കണ്ടെത്താൻ കഴിയാത്തവർ എങ്ങനെയാണ് നാട് നന്നാക്കുക!