I had the opportunity of traveling by Day Train yesterday from Johor Baru to KL.
Vinu and Family were visiting us. He had rented a car from Johor which is about 365 kms from here . Singapore is just across Johor and if you cross the Cause way the other side is Singapore.
Jayashree had to go back on Sunday night itself and Vinu stayed on. He started back on Tuesday morning. I did not want to miss an opportunity of going on a long drive with my Sonny Dear. The road from KL to Johor is excellent and the drive is always most enjoyable. I had never had the opportunity to go on a long drive with Vinu. I told him I would come with him to keep him company instead of him driving all the way alone. But the question arose as to how I would come back. Hubby dear came to the rescue and said that there is a train starting from Johor at around 4 p.m. which reaches K.L. by 10 p.m. and got me a ticket in the chair car.
All set and we started around 10.40 a.m. Poor kid of mine could not go very fast as we had plenty of time and we had to keep the speed limit to 110 kms which is the normal speed allowed. The roads are so nice that it is very tempting and many a cars just go at speeds more than the allowed limit. We had a lovely journey and had a picnic lunch I had taken in one of the resting areas which is built along the North South Express Way which is what the high way is called.
We returned the rental car and my sonny dear put me in the train and left for Singapore from Johor.
I have traveled from Singapore to K.L. by train quite a few times but never in day time. Once the train started moving I realized the scenic beauty around the Railway track was very very beautiful. I could see some thick palm trees and suddenly there were many banana trees and then there was some patch of dragon fruit garden and then some small streams were flowing. The train was mainly passing through Green Vegetation and not through towns. I had some magazines with me and I was looking out of the glass window from time to time trying to see if I could recognize any of the plants which had grown in plenty.
The train was going quite slow as the Railway system is not that good as compared to the Roads here. I was thinking it could be made into such a tourist attraction if fast trains with lovely coaches could be run from KL to Singapore.
The train reached an hour late but still I did not feel bored at all and was relaxed for a change enjoying the journey.
I was not at all tired and felt as if I had just gone for a lovely ride and back home.
Another thought also came to my mind. I was wondering if I could have done the same in India starting from Bangalore house to Chennai at around 10. 30 a.m. and reaching Bangalore by the night. At this point of time it is impossible to even think of such a thing as it would take 2 hours just to come out of city limits in Bangalore or even Chennai. Incidentally Bangalore to Chennai (340 kms) is a shorter distance than KL to Singapore.
Wednesday, May 28, 2008
Thursday, May 01, 2008
Name and Place
It is really funny how in each region a person is called in a different way.
As South Indians we don't have any last name just some one or two Alphabets of English which is called Initials which is written after or before our first names . It must be very unique to South India where people are addressed by there first names and the first letter of father's name and or the first letter of the name of the place to which they belong would be added to their name as Initials.
So a person would be known as Ramesh P.S. where P will stand for his village and S will stand for his father's name. Many times his name will be written as P.S. Ramesh and when his wife will be known as Mrs. Ramesh which is unthinkable in any other place as the Mrs. is always added to the last name of a person.
Now that people have started traveling every where this confusion of name is more pronounced. In the above example if the initials are put before his name where let us say P stands for some small obscure village in Tamil Nadu in South India say Pachampettai, in airports or hotels or other public places when they want to invite the attention of Ramesh he will be called Pachampettai thinking it is his first name. Poor fellow would not have seen this village even once in his life and will not even be knowing he is being called. When he realizes it is he who is wanted he will be flabbergasted. Of course in due course he will get used to it and life goes on. This has happened many times to my hubby dear and now we are used to his being called by his village name.
Now another problem is when this Ramesh is taken as a last name his wife will be Mrs. Ramesh. When he gets a son he will be named as say Arun and he will be Arun . R, but will be generally known as Arun Ramesh (as these days wisely most of the South Indians are dropping the initials which stands for their village or place and have only one initial) Arun's wife also will be known as Mrs. Ramesh where as actually she is Mrs. Arun. Hahaha very confusing right.
Well in some Kerala Christian families the first name of a person will be the last name of the son. So Thomos Joseph's son will be Jeffery Thomos. where as his brother Jacob Joseph's son will be John Jacob . More confusing right.
But many of the North Indian and Maharashtrian and North Karnataka people have this last name which they call as sur name . There will not be much confusion about their first names and last names.
They also do not understand the naming pattern of South Indians and they think all Ramesh's are related to each other thinking it is the family name. When I went to live in Maharashtra I was always asked 'thula nav kai' which means what is your name. What they meant was what was my sur name. I used to jokingly say that I don't have any name as I put my husband's first name as my last name.
In India lot of migration has been taking place in the last 100 years or so. My grand father who worked in Govt.(British) Service went to live in his village in Tamil Nadu after retirement. Where as my father who was educated in Benaras Hindu University ended up being in Bangalore where we were all grew up. But true to being a Tamilian we all carried two initials one the first letter of our Village the other first letter of our Father's name. My father never went back to live in that Village. I never had the opportunity to live in the village which was part of my name but had visited it only a few times. Later after marriage I had to live in many cities as my husband worked in an All India Service which took us to many places.
We happen to get a transfer to Palghat which is in Kerala.
Keralites are very attached to their native place or village and normally they go back to their native place to live after retiring from active service. So the first question they used to ask me is 'Nad Evide' which means Which is your place. I was and am still flabbergasted with that question. I feel I belong to Bangalore but since I had carried my Village name with me I always wonder whether to tell that Village name or Bangalore. So I used to say I don't have any 'nadu'
Thus by the time I reached my late thirties I had lost my place as well as my name from my journey from Kerala to Maharashtra. Now that I have traveled and lived in places outside India, May be I have really become a global personality without realizing it. As they say in tamil 'yaadhum oore yaavarum kelir' Let me add one more thing. What is in a name........
As South Indians we don't have any last name just some one or two Alphabets of English which is called Initials which is written after or before our first names . It must be very unique to South India where people are addressed by there first names and the first letter of father's name and or the first letter of the name of the place to which they belong would be added to their name as Initials.
So a person would be known as Ramesh P.S. where P will stand for his village and S will stand for his father's name. Many times his name will be written as P.S. Ramesh and when his wife will be known as Mrs. Ramesh which is unthinkable in any other place as the Mrs. is always added to the last name of a person.
Now that people have started traveling every where this confusion of name is more pronounced. In the above example if the initials are put before his name where let us say P stands for some small obscure village in Tamil Nadu in South India say Pachampettai, in airports or hotels or other public places when they want to invite the attention of Ramesh he will be called Pachampettai thinking it is his first name. Poor fellow would not have seen this village even once in his life and will not even be knowing he is being called. When he realizes it is he who is wanted he will be flabbergasted. Of course in due course he will get used to it and life goes on. This has happened many times to my hubby dear and now we are used to his being called by his village name.
Now another problem is when this Ramesh is taken as a last name his wife will be Mrs. Ramesh. When he gets a son he will be named as say Arun and he will be Arun . R, but will be generally known as Arun Ramesh (as these days wisely most of the South Indians are dropping the initials which stands for their village or place and have only one initial) Arun's wife also will be known as Mrs. Ramesh where as actually she is Mrs. Arun. Hahaha very confusing right.
Well in some Kerala Christian families the first name of a person will be the last name of the son. So Thomos Joseph's son will be Jeffery Thomos. where as his brother Jacob Joseph's son will be John Jacob . More confusing right.
But many of the North Indian and Maharashtrian and North Karnataka people have this last name which they call as sur name . There will not be much confusion about their first names and last names.
They also do not understand the naming pattern of South Indians and they think all Ramesh's are related to each other thinking it is the family name. When I went to live in Maharashtra I was always asked 'thula nav kai' which means what is your name. What they meant was what was my sur name. I used to jokingly say that I don't have any name as I put my husband's first name as my last name.
In India lot of migration has been taking place in the last 100 years or so. My grand father who worked in Govt.(British) Service went to live in his village in Tamil Nadu after retirement. Where as my father who was educated in Benaras Hindu University ended up being in Bangalore where we were all grew up. But true to being a Tamilian we all carried two initials one the first letter of our Village the other first letter of our Father's name. My father never went back to live in that Village. I never had the opportunity to live in the village which was part of my name but had visited it only a few times. Later after marriage I had to live in many cities as my husband worked in an All India Service which took us to many places.
We happen to get a transfer to Palghat which is in Kerala.
Keralites are very attached to their native place or village and normally they go back to their native place to live after retiring from active service. So the first question they used to ask me is 'Nad Evide' which means Which is your place. I was and am still flabbergasted with that question. I feel I belong to Bangalore but since I had carried my Village name with me I always wonder whether to tell that Village name or Bangalore. So I used to say I don't have any 'nadu'
Thus by the time I reached my late thirties I had lost my place as well as my name from my journey from Kerala to Maharashtra. Now that I have traveled and lived in places outside India, May be I have really become a global personality without realizing it. As they say in tamil 'yaadhum oore yaavarum kelir' Let me add one more thing. What is in a name........
Power of Technology
It is amazing how the power of Technology has influenced in many ways of our life.
I remember about 30 years back when I was selected to work in Machines department.( which was how Computer department was known as. Those days were not PC days and the data used to be stored in big spools which was maintained in the head office in Bombay) I jokingly said when Computers come to Madurai (where my hubby dear was working and where I wanted a posting) then I will work in this department. I never knew that my words were prophetic and hey and presto within a span of 10 years or so Computers did come to all places including Madurai.
Well my sonny dear bought me an Ipod which we all know as a device mainly used to listen to music when ever we want after down loading the songs from the Lap top or computer of what ever.
I wanted a storage device in which I could store all the pictures I have. Now that we have digital camera the amount of pictures or photos we have has become so huge that it occupies much space even in our personal computer. We have the old paper photos, colour as well as black and white which I want to scan and store in the digital device.
It was suggested by my son that I should get an Ipod wherein I can use it both to listen to the songs as well as store the pictures as it has both facilities and has lot of memory. Then in the same shop I found a device which has two small speakers and has a facility where in I can keep my Ipod and listen to the songs through the speakers instead of putting an ear phone. This has a Radio too so hubby dear and me can both listen to radio or Ipod when ever we want. So we fixed a glass stand in the kitchen and set the lovely device there.
Now came the downloading the music part. Though we were taught how to down load (we means it is hubby dear and I have told him I will learn the trick later) he had to find out the proper way by trial and error. He figured it out yesterday and and put me in a website from where I could select the old hindi songs so that he could save them in the Ipod. This site had some 200 pages of listings and it took me more than half a day to write out the names of the songs I wanted. Now I come to the point where I could see the real power of technology.
When we were in Jullundar Vasu's sister had sent her wordings of a hindi movie song , and Vasu and Swarna used to sing it together in the evenings. I remember the first few words of the song and did not know which movie it was from. Vaguely I remembered the tune and some how I wanted to listen to that song again. When I mentioned this to Vasu about 2 , 3 years back she seemed not to remember it or may be just we did not stay in that particular topic for long to bring it back to memory. Since I did not know the movie name or don't know how to sing it properly I just could not find a way to listen to that song.
Yesterday when I was going through the song list I was so thrilled to see a song which was written as 'Payal wali dekhna...' I think you can imagine how I would have felt. It was like finding some long lost person after a gap of about thirty years. Immediately the song was down loaded and I listened to the song and for those moments I went back to the Jullundar days as if in Time Machine.
Now I am searching for another song from Jullundar days 'Jaane o kaise log o kahate phool ko phool mila. If any body finds it forward it to me.
I remember about 30 years back when I was selected to work in Machines department.( which was how Computer department was known as. Those days were not PC days and the data used to be stored in big spools which was maintained in the head office in Bombay) I jokingly said when Computers come to Madurai (where my hubby dear was working and where I wanted a posting) then I will work in this department. I never knew that my words were prophetic and hey and presto within a span of 10 years or so Computers did come to all places including Madurai.
Well my sonny dear bought me an Ipod which we all know as a device mainly used to listen to music when ever we want after down loading the songs from the Lap top or computer of what ever.
I wanted a storage device in which I could store all the pictures I have. Now that we have digital camera the amount of pictures or photos we have has become so huge that it occupies much space even in our personal computer. We have the old paper photos, colour as well as black and white which I want to scan and store in the digital device.
It was suggested by my son that I should get an Ipod wherein I can use it both to listen to the songs as well as store the pictures as it has both facilities and has lot of memory. Then in the same shop I found a device which has two small speakers and has a facility where in I can keep my Ipod and listen to the songs through the speakers instead of putting an ear phone. This has a Radio too so hubby dear and me can both listen to radio or Ipod when ever we want. So we fixed a glass stand in the kitchen and set the lovely device there.
Now came the downloading the music part. Though we were taught how to down load (we means it is hubby dear and I have told him I will learn the trick later) he had to find out the proper way by trial and error. He figured it out yesterday and and put me in a website from where I could select the old hindi songs so that he could save them in the Ipod. This site had some 200 pages of listings and it took me more than half a day to write out the names of the songs I wanted. Now I come to the point where I could see the real power of technology.
When we were in Jullundar Vasu's sister had sent her wordings of a hindi movie song , and Vasu and Swarna used to sing it together in the evenings. I remember the first few words of the song and did not know which movie it was from. Vaguely I remembered the tune and some how I wanted to listen to that song again. When I mentioned this to Vasu about 2 , 3 years back she seemed not to remember it or may be just we did not stay in that particular topic for long to bring it back to memory. Since I did not know the movie name or don't know how to sing it properly I just could not find a way to listen to that song.
Yesterday when I was going through the song list I was so thrilled to see a song which was written as 'Payal wali dekhna...' I think you can imagine how I would have felt. It was like finding some long lost person after a gap of about thirty years. Immediately the song was down loaded and I listened to the song and for those moments I went back to the Jullundar days as if in Time Machine.
Now I am searching for another song from Jullundar days 'Jaane o kaise log o kahate phool ko phool mila. If any body finds it forward it to me.
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