People and bodies

On By Indu PatikkalIn Random thoughtsLeave a comment

How quickly does an individual become a body?

Bodies were transported on a train they say. A few hours back they were on that god forsaken plane taking a nap or watching a movie or having a snack. All of a sudden somebody they never knew or will ever know decided to aim a sophisticated missile at the plane, for no fault of theirs. They were not even given a chance to ask “why me?”. Nobody boarded that plane to die. They were on their way to do something, somewhere. Somebody on the other end of the journey was waiting for them. A wait that will last a lifetime and yet remain unfulfilled.

The big wigs of the world are contemplating on who dunnit? They have no idea on what the families of the people on the plane are going through. They will never know, unless somebody from their family was on that plane. Their families walk around with security and protection from the evils of the world and the irony is that these exact bigwigs are responsible for creating evil in the world.

Why do they make these missiles or any weapon that can take a life? Weapons that can cause such large scale destruction. You are not wreaking havoc on uninhabited land, you are aiming at alive and kicking people and destroying their dreams, their hopes, their future, their life.

NDTV ran an article on what a few of those on that plane were doing in life just before they got on that plane. Their stories, the people who mattered in their lives. Where they were heading and why. It’s depressing to read about their life and know that they reached the end of their journey in such haste and amidst hate of a section of individuals who don’t deserve to live.

What touched me deeply was the eleven year old boy who was travelling to his grandmother’s place leaving his mother behind in Amsterdam. He asked her before boarding the plane, what if i die? I cannot imagine the plight of the mother who probably brushed aside her son’s question thinking he was naive. Had she known or had an inkling of what would happen to her child, she would have held back her son.

There is no philosophical thought I want to add or write about here. There simply isn’t one. It’s plain life and the ruthlessness of a bunch of hooligans lead by a bigwig hiding inside his huge office probably giving directions for inventing the next weapon or planning the next murder..

Classifieds

On By Indu PatikkalIn classifieds, marriageLeave a comment

I happened to open the matrimonial classifieds supplement sheet this morning and to my amusement found some hilarious descriptions of requirements.

I have always thought, how do people find life partners with this, me being a happy victim of the socially classified “inter religion love marriage”. The concept of arranged marriages with these newspaper descriptions is outright hilarious.

Let me quote a few phrases/words used in these ads –
Seeks fair employed girl – how fair?
Seeks pious beautiful girl – is going to the temple everyday pious enough?
Vegetarian with clean habits seeks fair,  well educated girl – clean habits ?
Seeks highly professional affluent boy – how affluent might that be?
A gentleman 58 seeks sincere committed pleasant lady – committed to?
Seeks soft good nature bride – so she should not shout
Fair qualified brides – qualified for?
Very fair employed in USA seeks professional qualified bride – like being employees in USA is an added feather or extra qualification to filter out the desi employed girls.
Hindu girl senior position mnc abroad, widely travelled, multi lingual, modern outlook, traditional values seeking well educated and settled, broad minded groom – PHEW!
US citizen doctor parents seek alliance for their US citizen daughter, born and brought up in India with strong Indian values – they need the US tag but Indian values !!
Hindu healthy rich active widower 79 needs a healthy beautiful lady life partner around 65 – beauty matters even at 79.
Good family background professionally well qualified and well settled. Honest good human values  clean habits vegetarian tee totaller – aint you asking for an ideal guy who is non existent?

… and the list is endless.. I may be mocking these ads here, but marriages do happen this way, and in large numbers everyday. What amuses me is the first step in the selection process of a spouse are the phrases listed above.
And the flip side is you stand very less chances of getting married if you do not for into these flowery adjectives. The outlook that people enter a marriage with is defined by these phrases and it is none of these things that makes a marriage happy. Well maybe parents think that these are pointers to a happy married life.

Long live marriage and classifieds !!

Untitled

On By Indu PatikkalIn fatherLeave a comment

I don’t know what title to give to this post.  That is the reason I have named this untitled.

It was October 1st 2012 – my birthday. I come home in the evening and our family doctor calls from Bangalore. As soon as I finish my Hello, he goes.. “Your father..” my heart starts racing.. “He was here a couple of days back with some blood work results. I asked him to do a CT scan and we found that he has cancer in his stomach… We have to operate on him immediately so you come to bangalore tomorrow.”

Cancer was detected in people who smoked, drank alcohol all the time and had unhealthy eating habits. Not in a person who had been a vegetarian all his life, who never smoked, who very rarely had alcohol. Not my father. Not he who was scared of getting a blood test done. Not he who had never been to a doctor except for his cataract.

So we first get and endoscopy done where they show us in colour the vehement devil called cancer. He gets admitted at Sagar Apollo for blood transfusion to improve his RBC, haemoglobin and platelet count before they could operate on him. The date of the operation is fixed. One day prior to the operation they discover through a immunohistopathology report that he has non hodgkins lymphoma, cancer in his lymph nodes and the stomach was a secondary infection. Operation is stalled and we are referred to an oncologist.
After a bone marrow test which classifies him at stage 3, chemotherapy starts. We get him into the executive ward in the hope that he would get the best facility and comfort.

So here we were with my father who had never been to a doctor getting shots after shots for blood tests. All through out my only prayer was that it should not cause him pain.

In those four months of six chemo sessions I saw my father shrivel up to an old man of say eighty years old when technically he was just 66. He looked healthy and full of life a few days before that birthday of mine. And in four months, he lost hair, his skin sagged, muscles were gone, he looked like somebody else. By the grace of God he didn’t have any negative reactions after the chemo and took it very well.
So after six sessions of chemo, a PET scan was scheduled and we anxiously waited for the results. It was the toughest exam we had written until then. The result was out and he was not cured. He belonged to that rare % of people who are not cured completely after a round of chemo.

So now the doctor advised radiology and more chemotherapy. My father looked so frail that it was obvious he would not withstand radiation and more chemo sessions.

The doctors told us that palliative care was the only thing we could give him. And on the other side he refused further treatment.

We stayed exploring alternate forms of medicine and on the advice of our homeo doctor who had heard this from her professor while she was studying medicine, gave him a dose of ground neem leaves and raw turmeric paste in equal proportions, the size of a small dice,  two times a day.

He took this regularly for a month and followed up with a PET scan. There was a significant reduction. He continued for another couple of months and he was clean!!

We don’t know if he would have a relapse, but for now we are good. It’s been about two years now, he still takes the alternate medicine as a preventive cure.

I am no doctor to prescribe anything but I had to share this so that people know that the could be hope. I don’t know if this would cure everyone who has this dreaded disease. But sharing information helps and doing my part in sharing the experience, just in case it helps someone…

School

On By Indu PatikkalIn bishop cottons, Friends, reunion, schoolLeave a comment

My parents took a bold step of paying Rs 50 in the year 1982 to Bishop Cottons for admitting me to Nursery. Then on, their next 14 years of life was spent on raising money to keep me there.

I was this short, stout mallu kid who never had anything fancy. While my friends brought magnet pencil boxes, I brought an ordinary close the lid box. While they brought pen pencils, where the lead from the front went into the back when it ran out, I had nataraj pencils. They brought erasers that smelled of perfume and mine was an ordinary nataraj eraser. Sharpeners were of every kind on display in class and bore no resemblance to the ordinary sharper, the cheapest in the Shetty stores opposite my house in Sampangiram Nagar.

Their bags were fancy which were often pink or some flashy color, while mine was a brick brown bag without clasps, and only had a buckle. When we switched to pens, mine was a local ink pen. My black shoes wore out completely before I got a new pair. My hair was oiled almost always and plaited with black bands. My lunch was always rice. As I moved to 8th std, I got a pair of big spectacles that made me look even more dumb.

Many girls in my class had everything I didn’t have for school supplies. They came in a car with a driver or with their dad on bikes. I went with the automan or walked back home with my parents. Somewhere in senior school my mother bought a luna. Boy.. It was a wonderful feeling sitting behind the luna and going home. She was probably scared to death to ride with my brother, me, our school bags and lunch baskets on the tiny pillion.
In Junior school at the Christmas party Santa Claus never chose me to handover a chocolate. I waited every year to get that diary milk or 5 star. Each time I was disappointed and I convinced myself thinking that only Christian girls got gifts from Santa.

Girls in my class took to sports, since this was not important at home, I just watched. In the 8th std, I wanted to become a prefect. I thought I had it in me to lead, not sure how. But I was not made one. The girl who was made a prefect from my class was an athlete. So I thought maybe that’s why.

As the years went by and I migrated from one class to the other I grew a sense of inferiority within me. I was not invited to other girls house and I didn’t invite anyone to my bare establishment of 300 sq ft of space that I called home. I felt ashamed. I somehow felt I was out of place. I only had 1 best friend all my years at Cottons.

In the 9th I was made class captain ! Phew so I was noticed and I was someone. I loved the title. 10th again, I was made class captain. Double jackpot ! I was an average student all the while, didn’t fail in any subject, was not scolded by the teachers, did my homework on time, no comments during PTA meetings. But this inferiority feeling stayed with me.
My true moment of pride was when the music teacher and English teacher called me over and asked me if I could speak on behalf of the outgoing students during the graduation ceremony. This was what I had been waiting for, for many years, the moment of recognition. Maybe my participation in the debate competition gave me this opportunity. I don’t know. I prepared the speech and read it out in front of the entire 10th and 12th outgoing students. It was the best moment of my life, until then. I remember borrowing a sari from a neighbour to keep up with the dress code – plain sari, any colour.

I didn’t know that the best had been saved for the last. My 10th results. I was the 6th rank in school, missing the 5th by a mark. That was the highest I had scored in my entire years at school!! I had left behind the prefects chosen, the athletes, the captains.. It sounds really silly now, but what I felt on that day was like I had received a present from Santa on Christmas.

My batch is planning for a reunion after 22 years and these memories came rushing back. I have 14 years of work experience behind me now, an Account Manager at an IT firm, published a book, a wife, mother of two kids… I managed without all the fancy stuff I missed to own during those years. But the things I learnt, living in the meagre 300 sq foot house, the years at school, the scarcity of things are some of the best lessons I learnt in life. It took me a few years to realize, I am a little dumb that way.. so here goes.. “Thank you” teachers and girls for the best years of my life !!

Anjali Menon

On By Indu PatikkalIn Anjali Menon, bangalore days, cinema, director, manjadikuru, opinion, writerLeave a comment

Anjali Menon – “the” person on my mind for a few days now. More than the person, it is what she believes in and the woman she is.

Anjali Menon is a film director, she rose to fame in the malayalam movie industry with her flawless “Manjadikuru”, delicious “Usthad Hotel”, whacky “Kerala Cafe – Happy Journey” and more recently her beautiful “Bangalore Days”.. I have been enthralled by her movies, no doubt, but it is not until recently that I looked up youtube for videos of interviews with her and I was exposed to the kind of person she is. And Anjali as a person fascinates me more than her movies. What an amazing lady!! Its not that she talks about rocket science or the next space mission or what the various heads of governments are planning to do.. It is plain life. The life of you and me. She talks from her heart, and they are things I can identify with so well. She talks about malayalam serials on her blog and my, the negativity that flows through houses because of those serials is dampening relationships. She does not have the luxury to take a month off to write a script, like you and me. Her kid is running around and when she gets breaks she writes. What she has grown up with, is freedom. The kind of freedom I grew up with. And she has put best use of the freedom she got, no doubt.

If you have watched movies created by the legendary Padmarajan, then you would know that each time you watch the movie you will discover something new that you missed the previous time. Anjali is the only director who has been able to recreate the effect.

“Manjadikuru” is one such example. Its my third time watching the movie and it feels like I have not seen it before. The cast of the movie is the who’s who of the malayalam film industry – Thilakan, Kaviyoor Ponnamma, Murali, Urvashi, Jagathy, Rehman, etc.. and each role has its space never enroaching on another and yet such natural appearances. It’s a story that many of us have experienced as children. Writing about human relationships and its nuances through the eyes of a child without negatively influencing the thoughts of the child and at the same time taking away the positives from each situation.. REMARKABLE!!

After watching Bangalore Days, I feel Anjali has exemplary ability to space her characters out and carve out a niche for each of them.

Anjali Menon – is a gifted director. A master story teller. A woman like you and me who shuffles through the everyday of life and in between finds time to create magic.

Thankyou.. for.. memorable cinema !!

Venting out

On By Indu PatikkalIn Random thoughtsLeave a comment

What do you do to vent out ? Big.. Big Question. This is one question you better have an answer to. Well let’s see what are the possible ways ?
Scream at someone – as simple as that. This is by far the easiest way to vent out. What is important here is that the person you vent out to understands this angle and therfore strives to keep it at a monologue rather than converting it to a dialogue. The moment it turns into a spat of words what gets tarnished in the process is a relationship. For some reason you got angry and took it out most likely on someone else who was no way involved in the first place.
Keep quiet – the best thing to do. But this has a negative effect, pent up emotions are like a volcano waiting to erupt. There are people I know who prefer to keep quiet, but I have not known them long enough to know if the building up of suppressed emotions has a negative effect on the long run.
Listening to music – yes, that sounds interesting. But you are not talking your thoughts, just passing the moment.
But is that it? Will passing the moment help? After all the need to vent out is an instantaneous emotion.
What am I doing to vent out? I am writing 😊.