Our daughter - Elsa...born free



ELSA - BAPTISM

Born free, as free as the wind blows
As free as the grass grows
Born free to follow your heart

Live free and beauty surrounds you
The world still astounds you
Each time you look at a star

Stay free where no walls divide you
You're free as the roaring tide
So there's no need to hide

Born free and life is worth living
But only worth living
'Cause you're born free

This is one of the first Hollywood movie song that I understood fully due to the crystal clear words even though I was a kid. The name of the character of the lead actress was etched in my mind along with this song for ever. 

Many many years later, when my wife was pregnant, and we were seeing a news broadcast on yet another girl child being abused and neglected due to her gender, I commented that God should give a precious gift as a girl child to people who can take care of her to the fullest...who will give her every joy in the world, every gift that life has to offer, and the freedom to take any choice that she sees fit...she should be Born Free...

Later while discussing a suitable name for our little angel, my brother-in-law suggested this name in one of our numerous 'name storming' sessions, and immediately this song started playing in my mind...And I knew what would be the apt name for my child, the lead actress of the movie...a lioness named Elsa...Born free.

Now I will let Andy do the talking, or shall I say, the singing...

Tobacco : Kill the Image, and you will save Gen NeXt

World no tobacco day came and went...I wonder if google had a doodle to pass the message to the masses...Well when I think of the tobacco habit, many incidents come to my mind, and I will share a few.

1. After lunch, one of my team mates who is a smoker used to walk for 1 km in the hot Chennai sun (its more 'fun' as the walk is between concrete jungle on a tar road at noon time) since there were no shops near the IT park...many times he used to ask us 'Anyone coming' halfheartedly with a sheepish smile. Then with a bit of reluctance he will start the long hot walk.

2. I heard someone coughing in my hostel corridor one night...it was a friend learning to smoke...I asked him why he was trying so hard to learn...He told he wanted to see what it feels like and that he was so strong mentally that he could quit whenever he wanted to...In the years to come he got the nickname "Chimney" for obvious reasons...If you ask him eve n now, he smiles and says he still hasn't thought of quitting and the minute he does, he can stop without any problem ;)


3. On a dark chill night in Munnar, a guy was walking on a empty winding road to his hostel smoking a cigarette he had bought before starting the long climb up the hill to the hostel...Mid way, on a sharp turn, he ran straight into one of the most infamous Electronics Dept teachers of our college (Legend has it that a villan character in Sholay movie was named for him, albeit many years ago...good hindsight perhaps of the script writer that in future such a character will actually come to College of Engineering Munnar).

Well the guy panicked and threw away the cigarette. The teacher came close to him..

Teacher :  Why did you waste Rs 1.50 ?

Guy : (Doesn't know what to say...Then after a long pause) Sir...Actually the cost is Rs 2.50...

Teacher (without a pause) : Of course. But you have already smoked Rs1 worth of it :)...

(Another legend goes that the big rock overlooking our college, and which is split in the middle, was split when the rock laughed too much at one such infamous joke of this teacher)

4. Strong Image of Macho Man (Smoker) :A friend of mine is one of the best natured guys I have met in college.Never curses, never speaks ill of others, rarely gets angry, speaks to everyone with courtesy, doesn't drink, and never used to smoke...In college, with the beautiful hills of Munnar around us, road trips were a routine affair. And this friend used to smoke only on such trips because the image of the biker stopping after a long ride on a hill side, sitting quietly looking into the vast horizon and smoking was just too strong to ignore...Somehow cigarette made the pit stop feel complete. To my knowledge the guy still smokes noly on road trips and never at any other time...Thats how strong the image of smoking is I guess...

So kill the image, show displeasure when people smoke near you...even if they are close to you...and let the message sink in...

Rahul...Nam toh sunah hoga ?

As far as I can remember, I try my best not to get attached to stray animals...And the reason is simple : once we get attached, then we have to fulfill the responsibility of taking care of them, and living in a rented apartment where the house owner and/or the neighbors may not like having strays just complicates the matter. So when I first saw the old smelly stray dog which used to sleep on the terrace of our building, I did not give him a second look...he never seemed to expect any food from us, and was content to just sleep on the terrace whenever he felt like it.

One night, while sitting on the terrace and enjoying the cool wind, I broke my rule...The dog came up to me and stood near by my leg as I was talking on the phone , and by habit (I had 2 dogs back home), I started stroking the head of the dog. To my utter surprise it gave out a sound which can be at best described as a sad but content dog purr, albeit a few decibels more than any cat or dog I have seen, and the sound seemed to have a tinge of sadness in it ; perhaps at being ignored for so long.I am not trying to be dramatic here...you have to hear it to believe it. That sound touched me as I was surprised to know that a few strokes from my hand made such a difference to the dog. Well to make a long story short, I started to feed the dog once in a while.

By luck, couple of kids adopted him as their pet and named him Rahul. So I was relieved to know that he had got people to look after him. With his new found owners, Rahul seemed to get renewed energy, and the battle scarred veteran started reclaiming the street from other dogs. Somehow the bigger younger dogs seemed to respect Rahul who, due to age, did not even have a decent loud bark...rather it was a sharp yelp or howl.

The building in which Rahul's new young owners lived, also had my friends living in the ground floor. One weekend night, after our usual barbeque party by Anish, my friend, I started to walk back to my room which was half a kilometer away. The time was around 1.30am and being a cool night, I was planning to have a enjoyable walk back to the room on the quiet deserted by-lanes. As a reached the first corner, I noticed that Rahul was walking few feet behind me. As he had a new home and was always well fed, I knew he not looking for food...It seemed that he knew the time was late and wanted to escort me home. I continued walking through the lanes and Rahul trotted behind me, stopping by once in a while to smell something on the road, and when noticing that I had walked farther away, coming up fast to close the distance.

Now, as city dwellers, especially two wheeler riders know, at night each by-lane belongs to its own set of dog groups who bark or give mock charges to any one using the road at night time. So as expected, as me and rahul walked towards my home, many such groups of dogs came up barking towards us...Rahul seemed to completely ignore them and just kept walking behind me, never turing back to even look at the other dogs who barked or growled just inches from him, and I never had to shoo away any of the dogs away. Once I reached the gate of the building in which I lived, I saw Rahul trotting back to his home, content in knowing that I had reached my destination.

For your information, Rahul has even followed one of my friends into the Perungudi suburban train station, and actually boarded the train. Luckily my friend was able to shoo him away from the train quickly, as these trains stop only for a few seconds at each station.

Years have gone by, and recently I came back to live in the same lane by chance. And by surprise, Rahul, who was not seen in the area for a few months (as told anxiously to me by his young owners ), came out of nowhere and has started sleeping on our door mat at nights...as if continuing to watch over his old friends.

Mothers : The True Unsung Heroes In Our Lives

... It was a normal humid morning in March and the boy who had woken up early to study felt bit feverish...To make matters worse, the couple of boils on his face seen since yesterday were still there when he checked in the mirror. Since it was board exam time which is/was one of the most sacred periods in the Indian Education system, he and his parents decided to see the doctor as the boy had a exam that very afternoon.

The doctor after a quick look at boils smiled and told , "Nothing to worry, its just Chicken pox"...The boy remembered some time back when another doctor had told cheerfully "Nothing, just a hairline fracture" and thought "What was so good about Chicken pox and a hairline fracture ? Of course at that time he could not appreciate the fact that compared to the extreme cases of health issues seen by doctors everyday, such non-threatening aliments were 'normal'...

The boy returned home with his parents and the mood was somber to say the least. All 3 knew that he would not be allowed to write the board exams...Times were such that normal parents feared even over exposure to the sun would cause some performance reduction in their kids board exam. So there was no question of his being allowed to write the Exams as Chicken pox was top on the list of contagious diseases that would freak out parents of other kids taking the board exams. The boy's aunt who was a school teacher also confirmed that kids with such contagious diseases will not be allowed to write the Exam. Since there seemed no way out, the boy decided to get some sleep as there was nothing else to do and felt a heavy weight had been lifted off his shoulder, what with the rigorous study schedule that he had to follow to keep up with others...He decided not to think too much about losing an academic year, as there was lots of time left for that.

But you know Mothers...they can never think bad about you or tolerate seeing anything happening to you.

So the boy's mother went out alone, took a auto-rickshaw and went to meet the School Principal. The Principal told that if the External Exam In-charge agreed to allow the boy to enter school premises, the school Principal would open a separate classroom in another wing of the school for the boy to write the Exam. Quick discussions followed, and to make a long story short the boy who was sleeping peacefully was woken up an hour before his Exam, to be told by a joyous Mother that "Wake up and get ready, you have a Board Exam in 30 mins".

So for the next few days the boy would reach the school after all the other students had entered into the exam halls and started writing their exam. He would then quietly enter the school premises and hurry to a building in one corner of the school. He would sit alone in a room with no invigilator, but just an elderly school peon sitting outside his room, who gave him extra exam sheets, water etc. The boy would hurry through the Exam knowing that he had to leave the school 15 min before the Exam time was officially over for others, so that no one saw him or came near him, thus minimize the risk of the Chicken pox spreading.

The boy could see his friends daily sitting far away in another block writing away with gusto , but he never felt bad that he was left out of his group, or that with his unique schedule, he was losing 30 min for each Exam. Heck even the 'discomfort' (to put it mildly) caused by having full blown attack of Chicken Pox didn't bother him much when compared to the other option of missing out an entire year. The thought of using unfair means never crossed his mind...Even if he bought all the textbooks and guides into the Exam room , no one would have found it out as he was always alone in an entire block during any of the Exams. For the record, the boy never shied away from copying in Exams before and after this period ;-)

He was just glad that he was able to write the Exams at all , thanks to his Mother.

The results came and everyone was running around with happiness of getting good scores but most of them also had a tinge of sadness in not getting even better scores... Of the maximum mark of 600, only something around 530 or upwards was considered worth mentioning.

The boy was very happy and content with his marks of 480/600...the exact marks required to get a distinction for his Board Exams !

Many years after the incident when looking back, he was surprised the tension caused by those board exams days, and wondered whether the world would really have fallen apart for him if he lost an year...And although he hears/reads about heroic deeds done by Mothers all around the world , be it running into a burning house to save a kid or fighting an alligator to save her child, just as her own kid is the most precious thing in this world to a Mother, to him his Mother is the best Mom in this world and this blog is a miniscule way of showing his love for her...

Dog Fighting and Modern day Hunting : Sports or plain Cruelty ?

I remember the first time I walked with my GreatDane around my home.I felt happy and content that I had at last got a dog of my own after years of waiting. But come to think of it now , it was never about 'I got the biggest meanest dog on the street' kind of thing. On the contrary, I used to walk my 2 GreatDanes during the 30min city scheduled electricity cuts, when even the street lights were off, as somehow I felt odd walking with 2 big dogs in the small suburban area where I lived, where people had hardly ever seen something as big as a GreatDane dog. Somehow I felt that walking with them during the day time or when people were walking in the streets was pompous in nature. But yes I did like it when the street dogs came running up for a challenge and then ran away when the saw the size of my dogs up close...It fed my ego and it felt good.

So when I heard about dog fighting back then, I always thought it was an awesome way to see which dog was the king of the street or something like that and wanted to know more about it but then the internet was still unknown to me. But I always thought there was nothing cruel in it because after all the dogs quickly give up in confrontations with hardly any bloodshed. But this weekend while watching videos randomly on Youtube I came across some real information about the world of Dog fighting. Especially about the Pit Bull...These dogs are breed to fight till the last breath by owners who say they 'love the dogs' but who also kill the dogs which give up in the fight, just to 'purify' future generations of fighting dogs from the weaker ones. Shocking was to discover that even 10 week old Pit bull pups are put in fights !

Hope this gets eradicated completely in US and all over the world in places like in Japan and Italy where its common. A 50 min documentary on this topic is shown below...Not for the faint of hearts...




And the price for this 'sport of game dogs' is paid by the kids who get mauled or killed by some fighting dogs that gets loose, and more so by the countless harmless pit bull pets which get banned or euthanized due to the stigma,fear and hatred associated with the breed.

Some facts about the dog Helen Keller had : http://www.dontbullymybreed.org/

A quick search on the internet will show up similar 'bloody sports' like bear baiting in South Carolina where hunting dogs are trained by having them attack a chained Bear whose teeth have been removed and the nails filed down so that the Bear has no defense against the batch after batch of dogs which attack the same Bear all day long to get their hunting training. And modern day hunting with packs of dogs, all terrain 4X4 vehicles and modern machine guns all going after a single scared Bear hiding up in a tree or a wild Hog running for his life is somehow not sporting.

Check out an old blog of mine on the old fashion way of hunting.

Maybe its all hypocrisy coming from a person who eats meat and chicken from animals mass produced like 'vegetables' but somehow I feel that the fun in any challenge is when the odds are at least evenly poised if not stacked up against you.

New joys, new challenges , old earthy smells : Ah New Year it is then...

For a third time I found myself traveling to Bangaluru for New Year celebrations...One of them was spend with close friends at a huge garden party organized by some residence association in which we all danced all night long (subsided booz @ 50Rs being the highlight with a close friend spending most of his time at the counter bribing the bar tenders to give him more)...Another New Year eve was spend enjoying the crowd atmosphere at Brigade road but felt sorry for the ladies who had decided to take the same walk or those who came out of the pubs at that moment.An example being a luxury car being escorted by the police through the crowd with a grim faced guy at the wheel and a crying lady alongside him...The window on her side shattered by "New Year well wishers"...I wish blank noise team chooses this as a venue on next New Years eve for their cause if they havent already

This time the weather was not too cold in Bangalore when compared to Chennai , where chilly mornings and rainy weekends are too frequent to be appreciated these days. If you have lived in Chennai, then you an understand this fully...Whether 2012 is coming or not, climate change is yawing at our faces, utterly bored to see that we are not reacting to it at all...

After a cold shower at 11.30 pm (yep in Bangaluru which I wouldn't have dared 2 years ago) and a quick homely dinner, me and wify dearest decided to enjoy the New Year fireworks and festivities from the cozy confines of the flat's terrace 3 stories high. All around us we could hear the load crackers which didn't seems too out of place given that Diwali had recently passed. The sky was getting lit by amazing fireworks and most of the buildings around us had groups of guys shouting New Year wishes...For a moment I wanted to run down and get my camera to capture the fireworks but somehow I got a feeling that this moment was to be enjoyed instead of being digitally captured to show off amateur photographic 'skills' in the social networks. So we touched our glasses of chilled soft drinks and shouted the New Year wishes and spent time soaking in the energy around us...

As an icing to the New Year cake, next day we saw a wonderful movie 'Marykkundoru Kunjadu' which I feel is funnier that last year's comedy hit 'Pranchiyettan'...In a period when Priyadarshan and co are killing classic mallu comedies by remaking them in Hindi with people like Akshay Kumar ( His first and last piece of natural acting being the blushing embarrassed face he had when Raveena danced in front of him in 'Tip Tip barsa pani' song ) who think making faces is 'act'-ing funny, it is refreshing to see Mollywood dishing out such good movies...And speaking of movies was very happy to see the selfless Munni triumphing over the narcissistic Sheela (based soley on the respective Song's lyrics)...

Hmmm let me stop before I jump yet again to some other unrelated thread...

So wishing you all the very best in enjoying and facing the stuff that the New Year throws at you, and may you enjoy each moment of the life ahead while the Earthy smells of the world keeping you in the state of Do good - Be good , 'cause after all, we are all in this together...

Back 2 school for the ultimate post graduation : The Roman Catholic Marriage

The bell rings sharply at 5AM in the campus on the cold mornings of September in a small town in Kerala...and worse still, it rings repeatedly in a stern shrill tone that commands due acknowledgment. The students get up with sleepy faces and look at each other wondering 'This can't be happening to me' , and then 5 seconds later are jolted back to reality only to join the race to occupy the limited bathrooms lest they have to stand in long queues.

By 5.45AM the 150 odd students are assembled inside the chapel (in military line formations strictly monitored by the nuns at all times) on the 4th floor for the morning prayer followed by the Holy Mass while the wardens go through the rooms just in case some naive soul decided to sleep a wee bit longer. After the mass, the students come down to the cafeteria for breakfast and are inside the class rooms by 8.45AM. The classes go on till 12 pm followed by a 45 min lunch break. People hide in corridors during break time speaking in hushed tones on their phones because mobile phones are banned in the campus till 10.30PM.Then more classes follow till 4 pm when groggy eyes light up for the much awaited 20 min Tea break...

The final sessions of the day last till 10PM.This is followed by the "introduce yourself" sessions till 10.30 pm so that people get to know the fellow students who are slogging along with them. Finally by 10.45 PM, everyone retires to their rooms (shared between 3 to 10 individuals depending on the room size) and the nuns lock up the iron grills that separate the boy's and girl's sides of the campus.The break times are not filled with loud voices or much movement and the air reeks with love in the 'campus' as most of the 'students' have come to the course in pairs and all break times are judiciously utilized to talk to their partners.The same cycle goes on for 3 days. (I heard fellow students at the Bangalore campus get away with a single day course...lucky rascals)

As you guessed from the title, the 'students' here are people who have decided to get married and have come to attend the mandatory 'pre-marital course', whose completion certificate is a must to get married in a Catholic church in India. For me, a person who had very limited time before the D day of my marriage, my parish priest bend the rules and conducted my marriage based on the promise that I will attend the 'pre-martial course' post marriage.

The first week after my marriage consisted of endless visits to the houses of close relatives as per the custom followed by a quick 2 day getaway to Munnar (where I came down fever, the gory details of which are coming up in a future post). Then just a week after my marriage, I was sitting inside a classroom of 150 students for 3 whole days learning what the Church expected me to have learned before I got married.

Now I went to this course with a biased mind.I had resolved before hand that I wont give ear to any the selling of religion or how 'our religion is the best' kind of stuff. But Boy was I wrong !

Those 3 days zipped by very fast, and contained well crafted sessions of various topics like

- Monetary budgeting after Marriage
- Work life balance
- Maintaining Family ties and the addition of your spouse to them
- Elaborate FAQs session on physical relations (it was a detailed and well handled fun session)
- Handling differences, respecting your spouse and accepting their quirks
- Past is past (dont ask or brag about old relationships)
- Abortion is not acceptable (the only session with pronounced religious bias)
- Chance to prepare for a proper confession (Christian belief that one's sins will be forgiven by God if one truly repents doing them, and will strive not to repeat them)
-Divorce is not an "option" (Divorce is not acceptable in our Church unless due to grave issues like mental illness, impotency etc )

My worst fears were left to rest as never did I feel that Christianity was being sold to me... instead it was explained how old customs help family life in the modern world. An example is how the habit of daily family prayer helps to break the ice during quarrels when the spouses are giving each other the cold shoulder. The classes are (predominantly) not taken by priests or nuns but by highly qualified doctors, psychiatrists, marriage counselors who know first hand about the common pit falls today's marriages could fall into.

The highlight for me was during the self introduction sessions when people introduced their would-be's to the whole class . Every couple who came to the stage stood 2 to 3 feet apart and then introduced each other with expected shyness as they were still not married. So I decided to spice things up by going there and then holding my wife in my arms to introduce her. Of course this joy was short lived as the organizers came rushing to separate us stressing that majority in the hall were unmarried and hence we should not be flaunting our marriage status.


All in all I had good time there with the celebrity status in campus bestowed on us due to the fact that we were already married but still came for the course while all others had come for that coveted course certificate. I am equally sure of the fact that that there was hardly anyone who wanted to attend the course in the first place if it was not mandatory as I am sure of the fact that in the end there was hardly anyone who felt the 3 days spent there were not useful for their future life.



In the end I have found new respect for the Church for the very fact that they take marriages so seriously and ensure that newly weds enter into it with the right mind set.