Trip down the memory lane

Yes I had promised myself I would write about the trip I undertook with my family after
Vinu's wedding. It is almost 2 months since the trip but only now I have got the mood to write about the trip. It was sad that Anu could not join us as she had to go back to her work.
Anand, Vinu Jayashree, Tejas, Hubby dear and myself took up the journey in a Toyota Innova. We dropped Anu at the airport and started our journey to Coimbatore from Bangalore at around 5 p.m. in the evening. Luckily for me my brother VA Sr. had told me previous day the roads after Krishnagiri is not good and it is better for us to break our journey at Salem. That was a good idea as we reached Salem by around 10 p.m. and I was told we had to travel another 3 hours to reach Coimbatore which is just around 100 kms or so from Salem. We started the next day morning and by the time we reached Coimbatore it was almost 10.30 or so. We directly went to our newly built house in Cheran Nagar. I was like a student waiting for her results after the exams as the kids were seeing the house for the first time. They were so happy seeing the house I felt I had passed the exams with distinction. We then proceeded to Forest College in R.S. Puram where I had landed as a newly wed. This is where Sham was brought up and children were shown the place where their father grew up in different quarters he lived as a child and also our first home together (another quarters). We just barged inside the house telling the occupants that we had lived there long ago and asking about the sandal wood tree and other trees which had vanished now. Children could visualize both of us walking or cycling around the big wooded colony of forest college which houses the Southern Rangers Forest College and also lot of Forest Research Institution Offices in the center of a posh area called R.S. Puram.
After Lunch we started for Palghat where both Anand and Vinu were born in the Olavakot Railway Colony.
This time the roads were really bad and I had remembered them to be very good and told them that we could reach in less than an hour as the distance is just 50 Kms. That was not to be. Through out the trip the roads showed me at poor light for planning the road trip instead of making a train journey which would have been more comfortable and time saving.
We reached Palghat and went to our house again a quarters. This is where we lived for 8 plus years of our youth and had a lovely time. Anu would have enjoyed more as she did her schooling in this place. Anand and Vinu were quite young when we left Palghat for Pune but still both said they could remember the house very well.
Like Vasu said in her blog the house looked very shrunk especially the drive way which leads into the house. There must be some scientific reason for such perception as the mind might have an illusion of nice and large images of old things.
The house was a bit disappointing as it was not maintained well and the lovely garden which I was so proud of was not to be seen. The lawn which I used to water every day (since a good variety of grass needs to be watered everyday otherwise the other not so nice looking grass will take over as the ants will eat away the roots of the good grass) looked pathetic. I had a big ever green tree in front of the house and it had also gone . We could not go inside the house as it was locked and the people living there had gone out of station. I just roamed about the garden area full of leaves now which used to be so clean and neat thanks to my Gardner (who attended Vinu's wedding and can be seen in the Vinu wedding picture) and was looking at the coconut, mango and jack fruit trees and I could virtually hear Raghu, Chinna swamy , and Kunjambu speaking to me while plucking the fruits when ever I wanted. It was so cinematic that I almost laughed at the idea of hearing their voices.
We went and saw the club where we used to play shuttle and many housies on monthly club days and watch movies in the VCD and TV in the club which used to be a very great event then.
Since it is almost 20 years since we left the place we did not know any body living there as it is all Railway quarters where people live while posted at that place. Luckily for us our very good friends and neighbours Dr. Mahalingam who used to be a Divisional Medical Officer then had come back to the place as Chief Medical Officer the head of the Railway Hospital. I have a very great attachment to this hospital as both Anand and Vinu were born here within a gap of one and half years. We went to the hospital and when my hubby went to the CMO's room to tell him that we have come (He had also attended vinu's wedding with family and was aware of our program though not the exact date) he came running out with great enthusiasm to receive all of us. It must have surprised the people of the hospital seeing their great boss greeting us with such child like enthusiasm. We exchanged memories of the great times we had together and the many picnics we had in and around the Railway colony together. The best moment for me was the photo taken in front of the hospital with both my sons next to me.
We visited another doctor friend who have settled in the nearby town of palghat and had a great cup of coffee.
We visited the school where Anu did her schooling and also where Anand did his K.G. classes. I showed him the class where he used to sit and which had big window from which he used to see outside longingly to get out of the class as if he were in a kind of a jail. The classes were over and only few kids were waiting to go home and so he went in and sat in his class with his little brother who never studied there and also with some kids and took a picture!
It was a hectic trip but it was worth all the trouble and I have promised my Doctor friends I would visit them more leisurely on my next trip to Coimbatore.
The trip would not have been complete without our eating at the Annapoorna Restaurant especially the Vada Sambhar which no other hotel can match in quality. I had promised Anand he can have the Vada Sambhar which he used to love as a kid of just 3 years. We had missed having breakfast there as we could not reach Coimbatore in time for breakfast but made good by eating Vada for Lunch and also for Dinner.

Music Concert

Last week I had guests from India. It was Ms. Vasudha who is Bamini manni's niece. She is a Carnatic Music Vocalist and she had been invited to Singapore to perform in Shree Sivan temple. We wanted her to sing here in KL too and invited her over. She came with her dad.
I have heard her sing before in Chennai in Sabhas as well as at home when ever I happen to be in my brother's place and she visited.
I knew she could sing well, but I never knew she could sing this well. It was an experience to hear her sing. She is a young woman in her early twenties and is doing her MBA in human resources in Loyala college Chennai and she is like any other youngster, enthusiastic and cheerful and excited about her first visit to a foreign country. But once she is on stage she is completely transformed.
I never saw her practice or doing her sadhana early in the morning. She was just quite casual about singing. One local artist was to perform with her as the violinst as the pakka vadhayam. Since the violinist was not very experienced we were asked to meet up with her in the organizer's house. I was just watching their interlude and how Vasudha was asking what Ragas that girl will be comfortable with, so that she will do her alapanas in those ragas. Since my mother had also done the duty of a tamilian mom of putting me in music classes when I was young and the concerts I have heard though not many, I am quite aware of the kutchery format of Raga alapana, swaras and neravals and thukkada and all that even though I can not recognise any ragas. Vasudha told us later that she will decide the songs she is going to sing depending on the audience and she will roughly have a list in her mind.
Here I have to mention that my hubby dear loves carnatic music and I am no music buff.
On the kutchery day she started in a slow tempo and slowly the tempo increased. I could see that she was singing a lengthy song and then a smaller faster song followed. I could see that she was by far better than the accompaniments of mridangam and also gangira who just managed to follow her. She was all the time encouraging the Violinist and was smiling at her all the time. After the kutchery every body was praising her choice of songs she sang.
In the next place she chose songs which were completely different and the theme was 'muruga' songs even though it was a Devi temple. Here a srilankan tamil (of course malaysian) music teacher attended the concert. She teaches some of my friends devotional songs and they sing in murugan temple every sashti day. That teacher is not keeping very good health but she sat through the 2 hours and I could see she was moved almost to tears. The songs really moved the audience. One of the songs was my husband's favourite 'kanda va va'
I had arranged only these two kutcheries and after hearing her, she was invited to sing in another temple. Here she simply excelled herself and we could see that she was doing complicated thalas and while doing swaras she was excelling in her thala control. This I could understand as she did it on purpose and told us before how it is all mathematical calculations and how she is going to go about them. Anand had also once told me that the percussion instrument is just mathematical abilities when he learned tabla for 2 months in India and still he is at it when ever it pleases him.
She is good at purandara dasa kruthis and all these three concerts she could not sing that, she wanted to sing them for me alone. I wanted her to sing for my friends too and so off we went to my friends place where few music lovers had come and it became a chamber concert. (This word I am hearing for first time. may be that is what they do in America where lots of artists from India go, Invite all your friends for grub and then have the kutchery at home) . Here she sang purandara dasa and also kanaka dasa and also basaveswara vachana all in kannada. Her diction was so perfect. It is no wonder as her teacher is Dr. Manjula who is a kannadiga. There were lot of 'neyar viruppam' (audience request) she sang them too. Of course there was no pakkavadyam for her here. She ended her kutchery with a tillana every time. Every time I hear the tillana I can visualize some body dancing nicely to the tillana. Every where she sang she did not have any note or book and just sang from her memory and each time she did not repeat a song sang earlier.
I really wonder why she has not become quite famous as yet in Chennai. Is it that she has no God Father or Mother to support her. Is it that she is not a child of a famous artist or a 'sisya of a famous artist.
She does sing in the music season but not at the prime time of 6.p.m or 7p.m. slot.
I am convinced that with her caliber of music she will be one of the great singers in Chennai if not in India.
She wants to take up a job with her MBA and does not want to depend on music as her profession as she feels she does not want to get desperate and it will affect the way in which she sings. She loves to sing rare thyagaraja kruthis which are not that famous but which are very good.
We want to organize a real big concert for her here and may be we will be able to do it some time.

Fitness Run

There was a Fitness Run organized in Tejas's school here in the nearby lake garden. I had heard about the fitness run through Ayeysha my friend who is from Maldives and whose daughter is in the 9th grade in the same school. So I kind of made my routine walking to jogging for the past month or so. I never knew jogging will be tough. Usually I can walk many rounds around our condominium which is approximately 650 meters. But Jogging I found is quite tough. Even one round I could not jog continuously and had to walk in between. It is another matter that Tejas used to beat me walking while I was jogging. My aim was to complete the run whether walking or jogging.
Finally the D day arrived which was this Saturday. There was this continuous rain from morning 5.30 a.m. The irony was there was practically no rain at all for almost a month here and rain Gods had to see us running and arrived on time on this day. We all reached the venue on time at 7.30 with all proper running gear with hubby dear with a camera to shoot all of us. It started pouring. we were all standing under the tents erected for the purpose of the run. Finally they announced that the run will start as per schedule. It was class wise for the students and there was separate race for girls and boys. Tejas's class had to go 3.2 kms which was two rounds around the lake. First round he did quite well and was in 3rd place but once he started second round I could see him walking talking to his friends!! If I had a mega phone I would have shouted to him to run. It was quite a tough run for the kids (4th ,5th and 6th boys and Tejas is in 4th) and Tejas was able to finish the run in 6th place. I was quite happy that he did that and came within 10 places. But poor kid did not get a medal as only first five places were given medals.
In the Category of 9th , 10th 11th girls who also ran 3.2 kms., Ayeysha's daughter Noor came first. She was way ahead of all the other competitors. We were all very happy.
All this happened amidst drizzling rain.
Finally it was the run for parents and teachers (women). It was 1.6 kms that is just one round around the lake. I started and completed and am happy that I completed within first 10 ladies and also I never walked and jogged the whole round. Ayeysha came 3rd. So mother and daughter both got medals and it was really great.
Tejas was disappointed that I did not get any medal. When I told him that I was the only grandma who ran and he should tell his friends that, he said ' why would I tell that you are my grandma?' That it self was like getting a medal for me. Only few of my friends knew that a grandma was running but I felt elated and told Tejas that I would run a fitness run with his kid too.
All this was made possible because of Anand. One of his dreams is that we should be running the small charity runs with him and he bought me a running shoes when I visited USA last time. So I have made a beginning and has run with the shoes he bought for me. Now I will run better and has decided to practice in the lake garden which we never knew existed so near our house.
Hubby dear did not run as he is not practicing and without practice it is not advisable to run at our age.

oil bath and grand mother

Recently when I had been to Chennai, I had the opportunity to get a Facials, Pedicure etc done from a beautician. She had told me that I need some oil massage for my hair for it to be healthy. When I raised my eyebrows, she said heat some oil and once it is warm massage on your scalp and wash it with a shampoo.
Today I remembered that and heated the 'nallannai' (sesame oil) with some whole pepper and curry leaves. That triggered lot of memories especially of my grandmother.
When we were children it used to be a weekly ritual to have what is called an oil bath. (which is nothing but what the beautician called the oil massage) . Every Friday it was our (girls) turn to have oil bath. Every Saturday it was the turn of my brothers to have their head massaged by my grand father. I vividly remember my grand dad making the sound of a moving train while massaging my brother's head. My brother used to say" come on let the train move faster" and it used to be such fun watching them.
This oil bath ritual if I remember correct continued in my family too, with my kids on Fridays and Saturdays till we were in Pune. My hubby dear took over the 'train' part. I don't know when all this disappeared from our life.
Coming back to my childhood, I used to be so impatient with my grand mother to finish the oil massage faster so that I could wash with what was called 'shiga kkai' ( a kind of nut powdered and used to clean the oil on the head) and go and play. Half the time I never had the patience to wash the hair properly and used to look too oily.

The other traditional ritual was the combing of hair. We all had plaits and my brother's wife used to have a long plait which I used to look at longingly as I just had two pigtails for plaits . (which my dear brother used to tease as 'elivaal pinnal meaning a rat's tail) . My grand mother used to sit and comb our hair nicely and put a tight plait(which I used to hate) and I had to wait for my turn as she had to comb my mom's hair and then my sister in law and then it was my turn. As usual I was impatient and used to say 'come on make it faster'. She told me once that one day you will feel sad that nobody is there to take care of you as this is part of taking care of you which truth I realize today.
Some how all these thoughts came to my mind today. We pay money to the beauticians to take care of our hair, our nails and face and what not when in olden days the grand mothers used to do this adding lot of affection and love apart from the massaging and combing.
May be our Society was fully evolved and we never realized it and changed all that in the name of Modernity and losing our support system which gave us physical support as well as mental support.

Vinu's Wedding

Well it is almost three weeks since Vinayak and Jayashree got married. Come to think of it, those two days just passed wonderfully that it seems like a dream.
The preparations, expectations, waiting etc etc turned out to be a Happy occasion which is what I wanted. It was more a get together for me especially as so many of my friends attended the happy occasion. Almost half of my lady College mates attended. My child hood friends took the trouble of attending it visiting from far off places. My school mates too joined the fun not to forget my friend from my work place (can I say that having worked just for a year). It was nice to see my many friends who happened to be with us as family friends in the Railway Colonies.

It was a great moment in our life as all my siblings attended with their spouses and also my husband's siblings and their spouses. I was so happy seeing the children of our families mingling with each other and exchanging notes with my kids about themselves as they were all meeting my kids after a long time. There were my cousins and their kids and many of our relatives and it was really a very happy occasion.
But as it always happens when I think back about the wedding I feel I had not done enough justice to the guests who had come as I could not spend as much time as I wanted to, with each of them. I did speak to them but I would have had more to talk to them, had I not been called to do this or that or meet some other guests. Hope they will understand this. This is what happened in Anu's wedding too.
One thing I realized is that so many rituals are there in our custom as it was done as a get together and entertainment and social gathering and a leisurely pastime. But all that is lost now a days with every body busy and having many more ways to have entertainment and get together that even leisurely pastime has to be enjoyed in a hurry.
I was happy that the essence of the happiness was not lost in this occasion and we were all genuinely happy to meet everybody.

It was great to see our Gardener and Helpers from Palghat who had helped me so much in bringing up the kids and who knew anand and vinu since they were born in the Railway hospital Palghat. Anu, anand and vinu were so happy to see them all and were hovering around them and taking pictures with them which was so nice to see.
My Doctor friends who had helped me in various childhood ailments of my kids came the next day just to see my grown up kids whom they had not met for ages.
The great heroine of the wedding ( apart from Jayashree of course) was my aunt who is 80 plus of age but has the enthusiasm of a little girl and was hugged and pampered by one and all.
I was happy that Tejas got the opportunity of being a child in an Indian Wedding where children generally run around making new friends and be on their own without any adult controlling them as the adults are busy talking to each other. Only thing was that unlike all the other kids (like us when we were kids) he did not know how to enjoy the tasty food served at frequent intervals. So we had to chase him and force feed him some food which he likes when ever we had time .
Thanks to Jayashree's parents the arrangements were very good and the Wedding was performed in a nice way.

Mega Mall

These days going to a Mall has become a tiresome exercise.
About ten years back it used to be such fun to go to these big shopping malls and just roam around window shopping.
Now a days we go to Mall only if we have some specific shopping to be done. But this post is not about the shopping experience. This is about some construction marvel which I am witnessing at this particular mall.
This Mega Mall came into existence about five years ago if my memory serves me right. It was just some vacant space filled with lot of greens and hubby dear remembers seeing these vacant places, while he was inspecting the nearby railway track by foot.
Suddenly lot of construction activity started and first a big mall true to the name mega came into existence. Simultaneously a big hotel came into existence and within few years a big housing Condominium came into being. There was a Railway station built near the Mall. (yes same old railway track inspected by hubby dear). Then people started pouring in by different modes of transport and mainly it was by car.
A big underground parking was built in the beginning itself and there were some A/B/C/G and E/F parking areas with two levels P1 and P2. I don't know how many cars, these parking lots could accommodate but it was real huge. Then it became impossible to get parking on week ends unless one went to the mall in the morning itself. So we stopped going to the mall on week ends.
Now comes the construction marvel part. Then suddenly one day a few months back we noticed a new entrance saying parking and we drove through it. Hey and presto they had virtually dug out under the building so to say and constructed new parking lots. We could see the walls on both sides without plaster (looking kind of rock) while going inside. It was kind of eerie. But there was quite a lot of parking spaces. When we went there next time, to my surprise I could see them linking these new parking spaces to the building above by building escalators. (kind of reverse building order) . Everything was plastered and coloured and painted neatly. All these days we had to walk through the old parking lots to get into the escalators in the northern or southern side of the mall. Probably the new escalator will lead us to the east and west of the Mall. The mall is kind of linear and it extends from North to South with a Centre court and this centre court has small extension on Western and Eastern Side.
I am curious to see now where this new escalator will lead. I really appreciate the kind of building activity going on without causing any disturbance to the shoppers and the crowd seems to grow bigger by the day and it has an appearance of a fair or Mela going on every time we go there.
We always wonder how much the Mall must be making money by way of collecting the parking charges. Previously it was just a standard charge without any time limit. (may be that was why it was full all the time as parking charges are really high in a city like Kuala Lumpur). Now wisely the parking charges are levied based on the time of entry and exit.

Language

Tejas is learning Mandarin. A teacher comes home to teach him. I watch him learn the language. It appears very tough as it does not look like any other language which I have learnt.

I know quite a few languages. Tamil being my mother tongue I can speak fluently and can read very fast, but when it comes to writing I am not very comfortable and I wish I had learnt to write my mother tongue well. Still I have time and I will learn how to write properly soon. Kannada an Indian language I can read, write and speak very fluently as I learnt that language till my High School in Bangalore. I can understand and read and write Hindi our National language well. I am not that fluent speaking hindi since my accent gives others creeps when they hear me speak . Sanskrit is another language which I learnt in school/ college as second language. (the reason being it is a scoring subject) I know the meanings of many words in Sanskrit but I can not form complicated sentences of my own, but can make out the general meaning of a sentence if you know what I mean. Reading is no problem being the same script(Devanagari script) as Hindi and pronunciation is perfect. Malayalam is yet another language which I can understand and communicate quite well and read bits and pieces as my daughter studied the language till she finished her school. Of course it goes without saying I am quite comfortable in English, though again my pronunciation gives my kids creeps some time, though not always.
Well after all this background let me tell you that when I first came to Malaysia I was kind of surprised to read boards written in English but the spellings were really horrible. For example a clinic was spelled as klinik. I thought they were poor at spelling the words. It took me couple of visits and a serious thought to this subject to realize that it was not English but the boards were written in the local language the Bhasa Melayu. The language Bhasa Melayu had adopted the Roman script and the words were Malay words written phonetically. For example 'c' was to be pronounced Cha all the time and K is Ka sound and so on. Even though I get very little chance of communicating in Malay, I know the meaning of many words since I can read them because of the Roman script.
Coming back to the beginning, I find it easier to follow Tejas studying communication malay as I can read with him and test him, it just floors me to see his Mandarin. I understand that each character represents words and the meaning changes diabolically when the characters position is changed in a sentence.
All this set me into thinking. My children and many children in India do their schooling in English medium. They have second language as Hindi or many times, Sanskrit for reasons said above and never get a chance to learn their mother tongue. My children can speak Tamil my mother tongue very well. But when it comes to reading and writing they don't know. Every summer holidays when they were young, I tried to teach them some words and we never proceeded beyond writing all our relatives names in Tamil! So now they can recognize some letters and words in Tamil. That is all.
Whenever I read classics in Tamil and some lovely articles, it saddens me that I can not share the experience with my kids. We discuss many things we read in English and these are the conversations I enjoy most with my children. Some of the Tamil articles make me feel like wanting to share with the kids, as they being brought up in India and being Tamil, the artilces are very relevant to them and they can give me so many different ideas about the article or books or what ever I read. I feel sad and feel guilty for not teaching them how to read and write properly.
This again sets me in thinking that if Tamil also can be written phonetically in Roman scripts, my children and many like them can enjoy so many things written in Tamil which is a very ancient language like, Sanskrit, Latin and Greek. I know that even such an idea will make the Tamil scholars to pounce on me for even thinking like this.
I feel since German and French have Roman scripts many people are able to learn them fast and there are so many German and French classes going on in India. A thought can be given to the idea of Romanizing the Scripts of Indian language.
Coming back to Mandarin again Tejas has to cross many hurdles before he even can speak the language since writing it is so different from other languages.

Mother

One of my mails to my friend about my mother triggered lots of memories about my mom. Suddenly it dawned on me that the coming sunday is mothers' day.
Well all moms are special is an often used cliche. My mom was also very special in her own way. As a child I was very close to my dad. Even though I loved my mom very much, it was always my father to whom I used to run for every little thing.
When I completed my high school, like any other school girl I bought an autograph book so that I could get the signatures of my teachers and friends. I wanted the first page to be written by my mother. She wrote lovely advice in tamil asking me to be a nice girl. In school one of the teachers, who knew tamil read the lines to whole class and said it was very nice of me to have made my mom write. (it is an another story, that my brother took my autograph book without my knowledge and made my dad also write which I some how did not want , and he had written a 'tirukural' and which made me so angry with the lovely brother of mine). One of the professor in college wanted to know if my mother was a famous personality as I had taken her autograph. she had signed Lakshmi and within brackets had written ,amma, in tamil. I was so livid with anger just like any other teenager getting angry for no reason and said proudly ' for me my mom is a famous personality'.
I could see our relationship changing and I became much more closer, after I got a daughter of my own and I felt I could understand her better.
The real mother I could see only when she went through lot of crisis in life . The mother who controlled her cries, when my dad died in hospital so that it would not disturb other patients.

The mother who took care of my kid when I went away for training in Mumbai Jullundar without any complaint.

The mother who had lost almost sight in one eye due to glucoma and wrong diagnosis of a doctor, never complained but continued her simple hand works and reading of magzines.

Then suddenly without warning , she was diagnosed with breast cancer. She took it in the right spirit and listened to the doctor like a dutiful pupil and went through all the cycles of chemo thearapy and radiation without complaining, of course with great help from all my sisters in law ( 'mannis' ) and sister(God bless them). I had lost my father by then, but my aging grand parents were alive and my mom was their only daughter. She recovered remarkably well and became normal. I was so proud of her, that I took her back to our railway colony where she was diagnosed with the disease, and showed her off to the world , that my mom was well and most normal. She never spoke of her ailments and except for the near relatives and friends many did not even know that she was treated for cancer. So she lived to take care of her aging parents very well.
She was diagnosed with secondaries thirteen years later. By then she had seen grand kids from all her children and also great grand kids from a daughter as well as a son. This time also she bore the disease very strongly. But I never understood that she will succumb to it and I thought like first time she will recover fast. My sister in law and myself always joked when we took her for chemo saying no body will know who the patient is as she looked more healthy and cheerful than us.
I had seen her on January 8th when she was perfectly ok without knowing it was the last time I was seeing her. She was deteriorating by end of March, but was moving around the house on her own. I had my own family to take care and last time when I spoke to her over phone she insisted that my kids are more important to me, and I should visit her only when I was free which was just ten days away. But that was not to be. She died on April 4th, and was conscious till almost the end and died very peacefully. It was a miracle that she did not feel much pain which is so dreadful about cancer and did not even take powerful painkillers which was given to her. I was told that she must have been aware that she is losing time but she never showed it or spoke about it. But at least I was fortunate that I could come to Bangalore before cremation, which I could not do for my dad.
Only one thing I regretted. Even though I made her feel that I loved her very much, I still don't know whether I told her HOW MUCH I LOVED HER. I should have told her I loved her as much as I loved my father if not more. May be she knew it heart of heart.
I learnt from her to face the crisis of life with smiling face, and never to let her guard down and keep her sorrows to herself. amma at least let me tell you now loudly that I love you very much.

ASHANKURA

This again happens to be an article written and sent to me by Dr. Ramamani. She wanted me to publish it in my blog. So here it is.

I happened to receive an invitation card from Ashankura school for inauguration function of Annual sports. Ashankura is a special school for spastic and mentally challenged children. I had not really made up my mind whether to go or not as I had work. But arrival of a friend and common interest of we two, tilted my decision in favour of attending the function.
I never regret going there for it turned out to be an experience of different sort. The inauguration was arranged in outdoor space of Ashankura School. There was a dais meant for Chief guest and other dignitaries. School children both boys and girls in the age group of 8-16 were dressed up in sports uniform of red T-shirt and black shorts.
I had a look at these children with faces so different, faces with different features, faces with different expressions. Some had slanting eyes, some had mouths gaping, some had their tongues hanging out, some had a funny grin. Many children had a different bone structure, loose limbs, thin weak legs and walked with halting gaits. One boy had a mass of tissue in place of right ear. A boy perched on a chair had both his legs in knee length braces. His supporting walker had fallen off by the side. He drew my attention to get him back the walker. With the help of walker he joined the crowd of other children.
Probably not aware of the world, not aware of what is in store for the future these children just giggled .
These anomalous children are innocent victims of errors. Errors not of their own but of nature, of nature passing on the genes wrongly coded, of genes which do not give the right command for development of brain, bones or muscles, or errors during the birth process, often stranded while coming out of mother’s womb resulting in brain damage.
I went up to them and said ‘hello,’ wished them luck in sports and extended my hands towards them. Out came twenty hands with eyes peering curiously at me, some smiled also.
Apparently sports teacher was trying to arrange the children in columns of three for March past. A lady teacher who was holding the hand of a boy to keep him well with in line.
Chief guest and dignitaries arrived and sat on raised dais . They were welcomed and there were speeches. Lamp was lighted and sports was declared open.
Sports oath was taken by a tall girl on behalf of all children, oath meant for special Olympic participants. "I want to win, if I dont win I want to learn". She looked so normal and even graceful. I asked teacher how this girl happened to be a schoolmate of Ashankura.. I was told that she looked quite different some years back, now with training she has mastered many body movements and speech. That was an optimistic note.
A tall boy who had many medals to his credit from Special Olympics in Europe was leading the group for march past. It was proudly announced that he was expected to go to China for special Olympics later. He was the flag bearer.
The march past moved in a circle. All children marched past to the rhythmic beat of band and ‘ left right , left right’ command of leader not so rhythmically. Their hands flailed forward and backward as their legs stomped in strides of different lengths. March past was so asynchronous, yet looked so beautiful coming from them! As it went on, column of children grew wider and wider. Finally the leader saluted the guest of honour and planted the flag in front of him.
There was a sense of achievement in children’s face as they looked at their parents and onlookers who smiled back with encouragement. I could see the pride in parents eyes.
Then there was a drill. It was fashioned in accordance with different movements of cricket game. A girl brought a placard written ‘ bowling’ and children swung their arms in circles bowling an imaginary ball. Another girl brought another placard written ‘batting.’ Children batted virtually from both sides as a left hander or a right hander would do. Then came the placards ‘four’ ‘six’ ‘ catch’ ’out’ ‘ lbw’ ‘ wide’ ‘out’ ‘catch’ Mimicking of all these actions were done by children.
Spectators and guests clapped On the whole inauguration was a great event.God bless these children. God’s children .

Aeroshow 2007

This article was sent to me by Dr. Ramamani, who is the CMD (Chief Medical Director) with BEL Bangalore. With her permission I am publishing this as a blog.

I witnessed Aero show 2007 on .8.02.07 with the free pass issued by our management. Jet aircrafts Manufactured in USA, Russia, France, Syria and of course India were on display. F16, Sukhoi, Grupine, Suryakiran were some of the aircrafts I saw. There were exhibition stalls from BEL, HAL, DRDO and some foreign companies. BEL had displayed warfare equipments like distance target measuring, night vision equipments etc.
Coming back to Aero show, even though I have been witnessing the spectacular event for the third time, I never feel tired of watching it any number of times. Aircraft exercises and aerobatics are simply awesome. Just watching leaves my pulse racing with excitement, with fear whether the pilot can control.
While in Aero show it so happened I met a senior executive officer from BEL who was good enough to take me to a sit out meant for VIPs and customers. It was a vantage point as I could watch the jets right from take off and witness the breathtaking and awesome events.
There was an initial hiccough though. The first jet had a tyre puncture while landing. Smoke started rising from the ground which gave rise to panic among watchers. Actually nothing much had happened and the runway was cleared in an hour
The first display was that of Sukhoi. It took off., was air borne in no time and zoomed up vertically. As it went up it became a speck, took a vertical backward U turn and came down at 2 MAC speed in addition to gravitational force. Later it changed to a horizontal course, rolled and somersaulted from left to right and right to left .It zoomed up again and repeated the aerobatics before it came down. The show was a perfect harmony between man and machine built on perfect technology and a perfect co ordination between man and machine. What a combination in defying the laws of gravity and aerodynamics!! Man made split second decision and controlled the machine which in turn responded obediently.
Then there was the spectacular show of fleet of Suryakiran consisting of 9 aircrafts/jets all painted red. It was a beautiful ballet in sky by the Suryakiran fleet.- dancers in red skirt against blue sky. The fleet went up together, arranged themselves in various figures keeping a distance of 3 to 5 feet, changed the geometrical figure from V to arrow, from triangle to diamond. As they flew they left a trail of tricoloured smoke of green, white and saffron in the trajectory. Then four of them separated from others and flew towards each other in opposite direction criss-crossed their paths giving an optical illusion of touching .
Then other 2 jets flew in another pathway separately and each left a heart shaped smoke in their trajectory. One more aircraft cut across the path of these two leaving a horizontal trail of smoke which pierced the smoky heart in air with an arrow !!
Finally the parachute jumpers!! A helicopter took 8 of them high up and paratroupers jumped with the help of tricoloured parachutes. Each one maneuvered the parachute by moving the legs and descended slowly from a height of 30,000 feet .
It left me exhilarating and breathless

Pongal

Today is Pongal. Yesterday I had been to Brickfields to buy some Groceries. That is the place here in KL where majority of Indian (read it South Indian) shops and eateries are situated. Here there is a concentration of Indian population both locals and expatriates.
The main thing which struck me was the crowd and the wares which were on sale. First there was plenty of sugar cane (karumbu), then lot of 'manjal kottu' (turmeric leaves) whose leaves were the size of a small banana plant. There were, the new pongal panais (earthern pots), fruits, vegetables, betel leaves, sweets, plastic thoranams, flowers, garlands and so on.
Few years back garlands meant some jasmins tied together here and there with a woolen thread. But now the garland making has been mastered and each garland vies with another beautifully done with so many lovely flowers available here. There were temporary shops all around the platforms in front of the grocery and magzine shops.
I remembered the days when I used to search and search to get betel leaves for navarathri festivals. There never used to be so many wares sold for any festival. Now I can see every year the wares are also increasing and so does the crowd.

I think the media (visual) has a role to play in this consumerism. (yes I do equate these festivities to consumerism) I find the tamil programs which are aired in the TV , (previously there was no separate tamil channels only some few tamil movies aired thrice a week or so) showing great emphasis on these festivals. Every now and then I see advertizements shouting for some wares and talking about 'tamilar tirunal' ulavar tirunal' . There is an indirect suggestion that being a tamilian one should celeberate this festival with gusto, following certain tradition. Again and again they show people making pongal in new earthern pots, shouting pongalo pongal with a background decorated with fresh sugar cane, turmeric plants and what not. This in effect makes people throng to the market to buy these things.
I am not saying all these are bad or good but this is just an observation.
Any way I did feel I was in a Chennai street especially 'ranganathan street' in T Nagar, jostling around people to move forward. There was one more similarity which made me sad. Like the little India of Singapore and the market places of India the whole place needed lot of cleaning and maintenance.

week end trip to singapore

We had been to Singapore last week end. Singapore being a very small country, I thought I had seen every thing which a tourist/visitor should see and so would spend time with my son at home.
But this Singapore never stops surprising me. Last year when I went there and visited Sentosa Islands for a fifth or what ever time, I had not expected to see so much change and new things, but I did see lot of things , which really impressed me. Singapore is short of land, being a small island and it's space being limited.
This time when my son offered to take us to a new mall I thought it will be yet another mall.
But this vivocity which is near the harbour is really a different one. This was opened just two months back I was told. First the structure was very unique with so many curves and levels added to it. The location was also very good. It is just facing the Sentosa islands. In each level there is an open terrace from where you can just sit and watch the island and the view is superb. These terrace(s) have eating places, some small water parks for kids and lots of place to sit and relax.
The Sentosa island was connected to the main land by ferrys and ropeways when I visited it in the 90s. Later two or three years back it was connected by road and we could just drive inside.(by paying entry fees of course). Now this time from this mall Sentosa can be reached by monorail. I sat in the terrace and was looking at the rope way on one side going up and down, the mono rail moving like a caterpillar, the ferry fetching and dropping people, and also some cars and buses moving along the road. What improvement over the years. Who said malls are places where you shell out your hard earned money. It is a place to sit and relax also. Of course you do spend for reaching there and the drinks and eats you have also cost money, but that is not wasting your money. The concept and the execution is superb.
My blog would not end without comments about railways. We went and came back by train, managed by Malaysian Railways. The coach in which we travelled was AC 2 tier compartment. The berths are very uncomfortable. It is perpendicular to the coach unlike ours (in India) which is horizontal. Both sides are berths and there is place in the middle to walk. (our trains have space in the side for a meter gauge train also) The berths here are fixed unlike our side berths in the broad guage which can be folded. So the upper berth person has to be in his berth all the time as the lower berth is designated to the person travelling in it. Even though it is over night journey invariably the train is late and it reaches both ways only around 8 a.m. There is no space under the berth to keep one's luggage (as the fixtures for fixing the berth abstructs the space, bad design) and so one has to keep it in the next to the berth in the walking spce provided. We both were appreciating the design of our coaches back in India (though there is lot of things to be said about the maintainance of these coaches back home). Looks like it is a great period for Indian Railways and its minister too, getting appreciated all around.

pot-pourri

It is quite some time since I wrote anything. This heading gives me a liberty to jump randomly from topic to topic which I tend to do while talking.
Well I had been to India and thanks to Vasu could visit Mahabalipuram. It was sort of illogical that I , who has seen many places, like Great Wall of China, the Terracoata Warriors of China, the Angkor Wat in Cambodia to name a few, had not seen Mahabalipuram just an hour's drive from Chennai. I have been visiting Chennai for so many years for summer holidays as a little girl and later had the opportunity to live in the city for nearly 7 to 8 years, had not seen this place in spite of having a deep desire to see it. May be that is what happens to places near where we live and we tend to think we can do it tomorrow and the morrow never comes.
This was the first trip to Mahabalipuram for hubby also , who has seen much more places than me,
Well the structures really impressed me. I could very well understand why this place has been considered as a school of architecture rather than a place of worship. I could really hear the sounds of 'uli' the instrument which is used to make the 'shilpas' (stone icons) . I could understand what the great writer 'kalki' wrote in his famous novel 'Sivagamiyin Sabadham' where he describes this place as having many ' shilpis' working under a great master.
Though the place is quite well mainatained to our Indian standards, one thing which was very much lacking was the place for parking. Since now a days many Indians own cars, more and more people come to these places in their own vehicles. Organized big parking areas would help the visitors to go back from the place with the euphoric feeling rather than with a bad taste in the mouth having caught up in one of the worst traffic jam of one's life.
I did visit another place in Coimbatore which is called Isha dyana yoga centre. This is a place which is set up by 'jakki vasudev' whose writings in ' anandha vikatan' are really good. The writings have made me feel he is not just another guru who talks about God , but rather talks about the way of living. Here in this place there is a big dyana linga in a circular hall which has a big dome constructed just by bricks without any support and the hall itself is considered as a civil engineering marvel. Any body can go inside and sit there and do meditation. A strict silence is maintained there.
There is a mercury lingam which is submerged in water. They said it is about 625 kg weight and it is about 2 ft. height. We all know mercury is a liquid metal and I wondered how it could be stable in normal temperature even submerged under water. I did try to put some questions to the person sitting in the entrance who gave some explanation which was not credible. But when I discussed it with vinayak he said it can be some alloy with mercury which made it a stable structure in normal temperature. This is what I had also thought. I was mainly impressed with the green revolution they are brining about by planting lot of trees,
( lakhs of saplings and making arrangements to water them) there by trying to save the environment.
Well I did read two good books in my India trip. One was Tuesdays with Morris by Mitch Albom. It is about life and death and a teacher and a student. It reminded me about our hindu philosophy, though the book was not a philosophical book, the ideas I felt were very much in line with our ancient writings. The book takes only a few hours to finish and it is very readable.
The other one is The Goal by Eliyahu Goldratt. Again thanks to Anandha vikatan which is publishing the translation, I wanted to read the original.
I understand the book was written about 20 years ago . I read the original and it is a book on management written like a novel. It is really good. All complicated problems indeed have simple solutions but to find out what these simple solutions are, is the key to management. (managing one's life is also included in this.)

Time

Time is relative. I think this is a simple statement. But I understood the meaning of this practically by experience.
I knew there were time difference and how it is Night in western hemisphere , when we are having Day time in India. That was the basic idea I had as a child looking at the Globe.
In my first trip to Malaysia I experienced the two and half hours time difference . I started in the night in India and by the time I reached after traveling just 4 hours it was already morning there. All I felt was just sleepy. I understood why every time my hubby came to India he used to have his break-fast very early in the first few days. Thanks again to time difference since India lagged behind.
It took couple of trips to Malaysia to understand that, the clock was set for their convenience (I don't know the exact reason). The time difference which should have been one and half hours has become two and half hours because of the time they have set. That is the reason the sun rise in KL is at around 7 a.m. and sun set is around 7 p.m.
On my trip to America all count of time was lost and I traveled starting from Malaysia on a Saturday morning and landing on a Saturday evening, even though I had traveled for 22 hours.
The next thing I noticed was, there were some 3 time zones in America and the time difference between the East and West is around 3 hours.
That is when I understood that India also could have had 2 or 3 different time zones, as Assam and Punjab fall in the East and the West. But for our convenience we have Indian Standard Time. Actually Pakistan is half an hour behind us, even though Lahore and Amritsar are just 20 kms apart.

Slowly I got used to the idea of different time within America, and I was hit by another concept. In April one Saturday night I was told all clock was to be set one hour forward. This happened again in last Saturday night of October. Clock was set one hour behind. This they do for day light saving I was told.
This was sort of beyond comprehension to (dumb) me.
This year we were in Anand's place and Anu, Srini were visiting us. Suddenly it was the time(to) change (being last week end) and Saturday night the clock changed and so Sunday morning 8 a.m. became 7 a.m. I called one of my friends over phone thinking it was 8 a.m. decent enough time to call, but understood it was only 7 a.m and the clock had already been set behind one hour. (I was expecting this to happen on Sunday night) . Anu was thrilled as she got one more hour to spend with her brother and so when we started it was 4 p.m. which was actually 5 p.m. the previous day. (Have I confused the readers enough , that is the basic idea you see).
Add to this confusion that while I was at Anand's place in Tuscon, Arizona, he said in that place the time does not change for day light saving. So I need not worry about the clock. But still I had to think about what time it was for Anu who was in a different time zone, as her time had changed.
One of my innovative friends back home who has two children in different time zones in America has set three clocks in her house, one Indian time and the other two the time of their kid's place. I am sure she will be changing the time in the clock((s) twice every year .
Now Srini is giving me another input saying, from next year, they are going to change the dates of day light saving time to March middle and Nov. middle as they want to save more day light so that people could be more productive.
Well all I know now is I am going to lose one Sunday while traveling back to KL as I am starting on a Saturday night flight which will reach KL Monday morning 6 a.m.
Just by traveling 20 hours I will have to compensate the 12 hours gain I had while coming here by losing it now.

Ever Green Tree

It so happens I have been in USA around October quite a few times. Few years back while in North Carolina I started hearing about changing colours of the trees. First I wondered how trees could colors, even though I had seen lovely pictures of trees with orange and red leaves, I had not connected them with any change in colors. Then I understood that during the fall season when the trees shed their leaves, just before falling, they change their color. The color ranges between yellow to red with so many different shades in between. At some time you just see lovely reds and yellows around you when you go outside. I was told all the places in Eastern coast from Boston to North Carolina has this change of color. At that time we went to near by mountain ranges to see the thick trees which had changed color enmasse. This lasts for a week or less and then all the leaves start falling.
This time when I was travelling by train to North Carolina from Baltimore, I could see wonderful trees all in different shades of color. In between I could see some dark green trees defiently standing straight . I could make out they were coniferous trees.
This reminded me of a tree we had in our Railway house in Palghat. We had this very tall tree just in front of the entrance of our house in the lawns of our garden. It looked like a pine tree but I knew it was not a pine tree. Then my father in law who was visiting us told me it is called an ever green tree. There this magestic tree stood all the eight or so years of my living there, giving me some sleepless nights when it leaned dangerously(I thought) towards the house. But it was a beauty to behold and gave a special look to our house which stood out amidst the same model houses in our street. (I wonder what happened to that ever green tree now as it is more than 15 years since I visited Palghat ).
Coming back to the present I could see a lot of Christmas Trees which are also a variety of ever green trees. Now I could understand and appreciate the significance of such type of trees being called ever green trees. Within a month or so from now all those colorful trees will be standing leafless and only with sticks as branches. It is entirely a different sight which is equally if not more beautiful to see those seemingly lifeless trees covered with snow flakes in the winter months.
Now something else came to my mind. I was thinking may be this particular tree, or part of tree was used for decoration during the christmas as it must have looked nice to see a tree full of green and full of leaves amidst leafless trees in the winter when christmas is being celeberated and that is why it became a symbol of christmas and came to be known as christmas tree. I remember reading in Da vinci code that December 25th is not the acutal birthday of Christ but since that day was some festival day of Pagan People (those who were following some other religion those times) the day was adapted to suit the newly converted Chrstians. So the christmas tree is significant because of the season in which christmas is celeberated.
Now I really have a new respect for my good old ever green tree of Palghat and would like to go and check on the tree.

Train Journey in the US of A

I was very excited that I was travelling by train to Raleigh in North Carolina from Baltimore in Mary land. The excitement was understandable because I was taking a long distance train for the first time in all these years of visits to America. As I keep mentioning, the Public Transport system in US of A is not at all good, as everybody seems to be travelling by road in their personal transport what ever the distance.
When I decided to visit Ralleigh, many options were discussed. Srini volunteered to drop me which was nice of him but I felt to drive 12 hours up and down to drop me was not worth the trouble. We had visited the previous week end by car and had spent the week end with Anand and gone back to Baltimore. The distance between the two places is around 360 miles or so which is around 550 kms if my calculation is right.
The next option was to fly and that option was also ruled out as it is a pain to go through all the hassels of check ins, arriving early etc. and of course the cost is also not that attractive.

I said why not Grey Hound. Grey Hounds are big buses which take people across to many cities. Anand who had travelled by Grey hound was vehement in opposing that option. He said the buses are bad and the bus stations are worse and they are (the bus stations) so shady that I should not travel by that alone.

Next was to look upto Amtrack. That is what they call the passenger trains here. I was thinking I can travel by night so that I don't have to sit in the train the whole day. But to my surprise there was no night train at all between these two places. So we chose a train which would start at 10 a.m. and reach at 5 p.m. That was fine with me and we bought the tickets.
The interiors of the train was quite impressive and it was a chair car with lot of leg space and quite comfortable. It was a small train and it was almost full. I had not expected the train to be full as the day I travelled being a working day. So there were quite a few people who had time to spare to waste a whole day travelling.
The journey was very nice as the season being fall I could see lot of trees changing their colors and it was really a beautiful sight. I could do my hand work, read the book I had taken with me and I did have some chit chat with the passenger sitting next to me. It was exactly like a journey by day train back home where you exchange the small detalis about you and your family while gathering the same from your co passenger.
There were quite a bit of jolts , making me wonder about the track conditions, which was remiding me that I am a Railway man's wife who is sensitiveto the jolts. I had noticed while waiting to board the train in the station that some trains were delayed by 2 hours or so, which was put up on the big board. The other thing I noticed was it was a single track , and our train had to wait for other trains which were mainly freight trains to pass in many small stations. The freight trains were a sight to behold as they were so lenghy I just lost count. I am used to this habit of counting the bogies in any goods train when I watch them pass. It was more than 60 or so and the train had some four engines.
The train made stops in many stations and all these stations were small and had an old worldly look, one or two stations were almost on the main road. I could see the passengers being picked up by relatives parking their car on the road just near the train.
The train did have a caffetaria, but since I had taken some food and drink with me I did not bother to check it out.
At around 4.30 the coach attendant announced that we will be in Raleigh in another half an hour. So there was busy phoning time around, as each one of the passengers held their cell phone to call their dear ones to be at station on time. I was no exception, thanks to Srini I also had a cell phone with me.
We all got ready to get down as we could make out we were almost there. Now the train suddenly slowed down and came to a stop. It was amidst some trees and it was just 5 minutes to the arrival time in the station. There was no announcement and after some 15 minutes or so we heard an announcement apologising for the delay and telling us that there is a freight train ahead of us and so we are getting delayed. How long they did not say.
It was almost 45 minutes and still there was no sign of this train moving. So I cornered the Attendant and asked him why this delay and if there was a derailment ahead. He said there was no derailement but the freight train ahead had some technical problem and so they are checking it and he can not say how long it will take. Oh the Trains they are the same every where I thought. Then I called to tell Anand about this freight train ahead having a problem. He said I am just seeing a looooong freight train moving out of the station and so I think in few minutes your train will start. Luckily the train did start after a few minutes and it was just less than 5 minutes ride to the station. I reached after a delay of one hour.
But in spite of this I did enjoy the train ride.

The Lost German Slave Girl

Yeah this is the heading of a book which I read here recently. It is written by John Miller.
According to the cover of the book it is 'The Extraordinary True Story of Sally Miller and Her Fight for Freedom in Old New Orleans'.
This book is really good and the author says he was researching for writing about court cases in the 1840s when he got interested in the court cases involving the above mentioned girl and he has written it as a story.(narrative) which makes a very interesting reading.
The place this has happened is New Orleans which is a State in USA which was recently in news because of the 'Katrina' the strom which played havoc with this city which is situated below sea level.
There were many things which caught my attention , which I had not aware of. In this State there were many Blacks who were not slaves and were free. They were freed by their master or they bought their freedom by paying for it. (working extra hours and thereby earning ). There were lot of intermingling between the races, (not exactly marriage) there by having lot of mixed race children and adults in the population. Even the native Indians could be held as slaves. This lead to lot of white skinned people being slaves. Only pure whites could not be a slave legally.
This book is about a white girl who is supposed to be of German origin. A case is filed that she is a lost German girl who went absconding after landing in New Orleans from Germany. We get to read how there were so many Germans and other immigrants from Europe who also had to suffer a lot and do many kind of jobs , but they could not be held as slaves. (being of white race of course) .
The slave owner argues (his lawyers) that this particular girl is not of German origin but she is of a mixed race, who has definitely African blood, which makes it legal for him to have her as a slave.
I was horrified to read about how even if a mother becomes free, her children born while she was a slave are considered as slaves and are owned by the erstwhile Owner of the mother .
The story has many twists and turns . Thank God within some decades of this legal drama, due to civil war and Abraham Lincon slavery was abolished in 1865.

Civil War

Well I read this book recently and want to write about this book. This is a book titled 'The Civil war'. An Illustrated History by Geoffrey C .Ward with Ric Burns and Ken Burns.
As the title indicates, it is a book about American Civil War. Normally any history book is supposed to induce sleep. But this one is too good and if the history books prescribed in schools are anything like this no one will go to sleep in history class I suppose. I think you need a maturity to understand and appreciate history. That may be one of the reasons for history classes being a bore in school.
This book is illustrated with lot of pictures (photography was just then invented and quite a few photographs were taken at the war sites) and also maps and maps of placement of troops etc. I remember one of my teacher for my history MA telling us that history has to be studied with a background of geography, other wise it will be like it is hanging in mid air. This is so true and I could appreciate this concept while reading this book. These maps made it so realistic and everytime I read I referred to the maps for better understanding.
The main thing which struck me after reading was the great reconcilliation that has taken place after the war between the south which was called confederates and the north which was called the union. There may be some abberations here and there but by and large the reconcilliation and integration is complete.
The whole life style of the southern people changed and slavery which had a sanction of the constitution before the war which was fought for 4 years between 1861 to1865 was completely abolished by the end of the war. Here what I mean by complete abolition is the abolition constitutionally. In reality, it has taken more than 100 years for the blacks to get into direction of the main stream and the process of them joining in the main stream is still going on.
I could see from the book how many who fought on both sides had soft corner for the other side . They all met at the certain site of the wars after 50 years. (civil war is not a single war as it was fought in many many fronts and in many places). The people who had fought with each other and killed each other meet after 50 years as people who are civil to each other and as the citizens of the same country.
Like the author says before the civil war, the united states was mentioned as 'The united states are....' (meaning different states) becomes The United states is..... after the war. The number
of Americans died in this war was much more than the number of Americans died in the two wars put together.
Since anu lives in Baltimore which is just one hour from the capital Washington DC I could appreciate the book much more as I could visualize the many places mentioned in the book. The confederate capital Richmond is just 100 miles from the Union Capital Washington. While driving to North Carolina I could read many signs for places which I could identify with the civil war like Manassas the first place where the first shot was fired in the civil war.
It really made a wonderful reading that I could see a different perspective of America.

Sanitary Commission

I was reading a book about Civil War. I read about the unhygenic conditions prevailed during the war, the wounded and the dead and the unavailability of good water etc. I read about the Santiary Commission which was trying to do its best though it was 1860s and they were not much aware of the connection between the death rate and the unhygenic conditions. ( for example the surgeons using the same instrument for removing the bullets from different patients just after wiping it and things like that).
I had a chat with vasu which was about the apalling condition of Railway coaches even reserved AC coaches which have rats (Yes it was rats we were talking about) in it.
These two lead me to think about the sanitary condition in India and how we just don't give importance to it at all.
It is ok in 19th century if people were not aware of hygene. But it is unpardonable if in 21st century we are not aware of this. We are aware that diseases are spread by mosquitoes, cockroaches and rats. These abound in places which are kept dirty. This is simple truth every one knows.
Coming back to railways previously each coach used to be thouroughly cleaned before taking up a second journey. Now I wonder if it is done at all. The screens put in the AC compartment is so dirty I wish it is done away with. In the station while we waited, we just could not stand still but dance as there were so many mosquitoes around us. We were in the end of platform where there was no fan.
We are hearing so much about the dreaded chickengunia(how ever it is spelled) which is taking its toll and is spread by mosquitoes.
What we need is a separate sanitary team (in all probabalities we will be having one or more department I suppose) which is given the first priority, money and power so that cleaning is done in war footing.
I remember one of my relative who was of my grand father's generation used to be a sanitary inspector, who used to work in rural areas and used to go from village to village. I wonder what work he did but he used to make his wife's life miserable asking her not to do this or that .
We must be having those posts even now who must be issuing certificates to hotels and eateries. The whole cleanliness of public places has to be taken in a serious way and that department should be given sufficient importance and fundings from the Govt. and should not become a punishment postings like archives department. I feel by rediscovering Sanitary Commission or Department some improvement can be seen.

Life Style

Some thing has dawned on me in this trip to America. Every time I visit this place, or in fact when ever I am in KL, I tend to compare it with India and always think when it will be that India could become like these places,, I mean the houses, lay outs, roads, life style etc etc. Finally it dawned on me that given any number of years it is impossible for India to be an America or for that matter America to be India.
Now that I have seen quite a few places in US where anu/srini happen to live I find a common thread to each city and the lay out etc are very similar. You have a very very busy 'downtown' in each city which is nothing but the 'city centre' (which is called 'pusat bandaraya' in KL) where lot of offices are located. These areas are not normally very fit for living in the common sense, as they are crowded and expensive and it is some times considered as not a very safe place to live also. I don't know if 'Manhattan' down town in New York comes in this category, for safe living, as I have heard that to live there is considered a luxury.
Well coming back to the general cities, the cities just have grown in vast expanse around the down town which can be called the suburbs. Each suburb is so big and has wide roads which can be reached either by local roads are by highways. That is each exit of a high way takes to a suburb and you should know which exit to take. Again it should be mentioned here that USA has a very poor public transport system. They have the usual set of stores to buy your groceries and other necessities and being an Indian you get to know the location of Indian store also which has the same set of indian grociers and also rotting vegetables from which you pick up the good ones. (I wonder why they can not throw the rotten ones every night before they close the shop).
I have the experience of living in aparment complexes. Each apartment complex is maintained by a company so everything is in order and you can just go and complain if anything does not work and you have lot of space to park your car and also lot of pathways to go for walks.
In the apartment a net is provided for all the windows and doors of the house so you are protected from insects. (This time in India I could see lot of mosquitoes every where and even while waiting for the train to come in the station and in fact inside the train also. We are discussing how to curtail the mosquito menance in the coimbatore house.) These are just nets which any body can dismantle which are fixed on the outside of the glass doors and windows. But no body bothers to remove them or take them away. But this can never be done in India as it is most unsafe ,for somebody will remove and take away the net and also the glass door is not safe at all. Similarly here the roads are not cleaned every day (in fact I have seen them being cleaned in India and also in KL) but I don't see any plastic or papers littered on the road. It has become a culture with people not to litter. Roads are broad and paved (tarred) till the end of the footpath and neat footpath is laid on many roads and so there is no question of dust and mud. where as in India we pave the roads only in the middle and it is another story that vehicles come over the foot paths if at all there are any foot paths in the narrow streets.
Similarly I can fillup another page writing about the condominiums in Malaysia where about 200 to 300 aparments are in a single complex managed comparitively well and it is a different type of a life style.
If such things have to be done in India first of all the hafazard development which has already taken place without any planning should be destroyed which is just impossible. Houses are built anywhere and everywhere and then roads are built in and around the houses. I only hope at least some more roads are built in India so that cars and vehicles can move.
So I have decided to sit back and enjoy the expanse of America, the condos of KL and also the relative independence I get walking to and fro from my banks and autoriksha stands and other places.