My Childhood Friend

How will you feel after you have talked to your childhood friend whom you had not met or talked to for last 13 years? Yes! I did that today and I spoke to her for quite a long time and I cannot explain that feeling in words, but I know I am feeling really great. And I became conscious that If  I keep on talking, I will not have anything left over to talk when I meet her in person next :-P .

 It happened by chance that I came to know that she is living in the same city as that of mine, When I was in my father's home for 1 week to attend my grandmother's bereavement. 1 week stay in that house made me nostalgic and I was feeling low that I am missing those good old times now and all the good times have left . Many faces were missing from the scene. Many have come up. I could spend some time with my smaller cousins(My family is a very big family with an age gap of around 25 years between me and my youngest cousin!!!!) and I shared all the beautiful moments with all my cousins who were present as I was feeling so nostalgic.

It was the house where I was born and brought up and  I spent the most valuable years of my life with my sister, my cousins and my childhood friends - my neighbours. This friend of mine was not a child then, She and her sister were in their twenties and hence they were "Chechies" for us kids. I remember getting up in the morning, eating something what my mom used to give and running to their house with all the kids around us to play with them. It was fun there, chechis used to comb our hair, put make up for us, and finally put us in the water tank which was a huge rectangular concrete with full of water. We all enjoyed playing with water and it was really fun that after all the games, we all were fed by them. We all loved to eat whatever they gave. and there were no big "NOs" which we used to say when moms try to feed us. Our daily agenda was only to wake up early in the morning ,eat, dress up and "meet up" in our way side road, fly to Chechies's house. We could play all games, like swinging in the cashew nut tree, climb on the coffee tree, watch chechi making garlands with tulsi and hibiscus to put it in the idols of their pooja room,  play with the calves at their home, we could do whatever we liked and even play in rain (which was not allowed home then). So it was such a nice place for us to hand out and by the time we return it would have been around 6 O clock in the evening . by then we will be hearing loud "come back calls"

Time went fast, we all grew up, my family moved from father's ancestral home. After that I met Chechi's for the elder one's marriage and that too after 13 years gap. I wonder what 13 has to do in my life, because my meeting with them were in the gaps of 13 :-). Now I am contacting her again after 13 years. :-)

Interestingly I am hearing for the first time in my life, that somebody in this city is saying we "are not staying far apart"  though our places are some 20 kms apart.Usually people feel it is very difficult to move from one place to another here even-though its not so far off. But I dont feel this 20 km as a bigger distance for me to meet her. Anyway we have decided to meet soon and I am eagerly waiting for that moment and now also I wish If I could go back to my childhood!!!!

And I would like to add one more thing. I happened to watch the malayalam movie "Meghamalhar" yesterday which is based on the reunion of 2 childhood friends. I dont know whether this is a coincidence or not , I happened to make a call to my childhood friend today :-) .

Welcome Back!

Its 1st of September 2013, today and it took long 3 years for  me to come back and write. Feeling so strange, happy, I dont  know how to put it up. But I am in the  mid of  some mixed feelings. :-) Had actually started jotting down on 18th May 2013, which was a coincidence as my last post was on the same date on the year 2010 .But I could not complete what I had started with. Tried to catch up with what I wanted to write, but could 'nt get a feel to write. Anyway happy now for being able to start with something... It is not actually "just something" , it is something really good. 

Yesterday Rain No Its today's Rain!!!

I am too overwhelmed to write about yesterday's rain, actually not yesterday, today morning at 3AM!!.As usual,read about a cyclonic storm prediction in Chennai from our IMD,simply raised my eyebrows and gave a 'phew' look at it. Even I told myself that, I can also predict 'it may or may not rain' and the truth is whenever they predict about rains, it will definitely  not rain and when they stop doing so we will get rain. And I usually say, "aaana koduthalum aasha kodukkaruthu" (you give an elephant but dont give hope).

The previous day was different from other days.It was totally dark in the day time and it was getting more dark as time passed.At 4PM i felt that its going to be 7 PM. It was so beautiful to see the sky at that time, as if sky was predicting I am going to pour upon you !!!!. I gave a deep sigh, I know it is going to be drizzling only and I wont be able to see those rains which i enjoyed 10-15 yrs back. Unfortunately I have not seen any rain of those kinds in Kerala   nowadays. May be truth is there in  so called global warming, kyoto protocols etc copanhegan summit etc.With least expectations I engaged in my routine. Went out around 8 PM to see that rain has done its duty in Chennai by drizzling, even without making a noise. hmmm I just looked above and asked, Oh , you finished your work rt??? Dear Indra are you not kindful to us?Cant you see poor humans suffering under this heat?Back home, had dinner, just switched on TV, and saw Panchathanthram movie, a comedy one which i used to enjoy. But slept in between, and went to bed with all fans set at high speed.

I was sleeping so nicely and suddenly woke up with a shock after hearing a loud noise. I thought somebody had blasted a bomb. Just peeped out of the window and saw its raining :-) :-) though shocked, now delighted :-) But the thunder and lightning were scaring me. I witnessed those 'white nerves' running over the sky.Got up and ran to get a better glimpse and saw the most beautiful rain which i had not witnessed for the past few years!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! and it looked even more beautiful to see the water falling in an orderly fashion under the street light. Suddenly noticed a poor street dog trying hard to find a way to hide himself. Just  looked around to see whether there is anyone like me, who woke up at 3AM to enjoy rain... No nobody was there .. hehehehe..Just went on peeping through the window and suddenly Lord Indra ordered me, you girl go away and sleep by frightening me by his weapons of thunder and lightening. I ran to bed and tried to sleep by closing my eyes tightly not to see his war. I didnt know what to do. its going high.. Am scared of this sound and am sleeping near a window which is kept open. I remembered what we did during our childhood days. I started chanting Rama, Rama, Rama......Somebody Plz make me sleep, plz plz... Suddenly certain things came to my mind which we used to do at home when it rains. I ran to ensure that tv is switched off, plugged out the telephone connection, switched off fridge.Back to bed, glimpsing at the main switch board and asked myself, how come electricity is still here. He is the person who escapes first when he witness even cloud in the sky. Oh he might have fallen asleep. Not even a single second passed after that thought, the light in the board got off and i laughed at being made Mr Electricity wake up and escape.Water was pouring in through the window and noise of thunder was still scaring me. Suddenly Physics learning reminded me of many things.

1) I am sleeping near iron grills which i should not do

2) A tree is there near my room.( U shld not stand under a tree.while lightning) but i saw that some white thing was passing in b.w the branches. I really got scared and tried to close the window. My hands were trembling,fearing that touching the iron grill will giveme a shock. somehow managed to close the window, but couldnt bolt it due to fear :-( :-( . I started lying in opposite direction so as not to see any lightening through glass.Then i thought, oh god is glass a good conductor of electricity?? then i shld change the room and sit somewhere else. but i dont remember the conductivity of glass. Not even a 10th std textbook to check it out. No internet  accessnow. else i could have checked the measures to be taken during lightning. I cursed myself for forgetting those measures and what i learned in physics which i learned with passion.- Current Electricity. I thought whatever it is, Lord Rama will come to my help, since am chanting rama, rama..... Somehow managed to sleep...

After 1 Hr woke up hearing another loud noise. This time it was not Lord Indra, it was my windows, which i didnt bolt properly.So lazy to go and bolt, i didnt do. Thought anyway I am going to get up after an hr, why shld i break my nice sleep. Now that no need of a fan , It has become cool. Alarm rang at 630. So reluctant to get up from a nice sleep after a long time, but got up.Just looked at the switch board that was the 1st thing i did. and laughed at it, saying, I  know you will not come in near future. Ran out to see whether rain is still there, no its stopped. Hmmmm Couldnt witness it properly :-(  Opened the windows, wawwwwwww........... cool breeze is coming. To my surprise Mr electricity returned. I switched off the fan. Peeped out of the window to see whether it is flooded.No it was not...

Now that it started raining again. I am going to enjoy as Lord Indra went to sleep by stopping war :-) :-) Enjoy Maadi.........

who is great???

When it comes to development what comes into the mind of everybody is large and new bulidings of different size, shape etc,better infrastructure, good roads,especially widened ones with few craters etc.What is happening in those buildings??? Obviously, well educated, highly qualified professionals will be discussing new business plans,expanding existing business all over the world etc. What are they finally bringing to our nation? Profit for themselves or Profit for nation or for both??? I am not clear.

 But has anybody made a thought about those who support them? I point to those who are developing the so called infrastructure in our nation which facilitates those fellows in coat and suite to run their business smoothly. If you just ponder over their day to day life we can very well make out the difference between the high class and low class. They live in temporary shelters, cooking at unhygienic circumstances, exposing to dry and soaring heat,working 12 or more hrs to finish their tasks,exposing to pollution etc.How much they suffer to complete glassy building which is supposed to play a role in our economic growth.If you compare the person making the buliding and  the person sitting inside that finally, how ironical is it??? Both belong to humans,but on extreme corners.When we enjoy driving through a highway which is paved well, kept neat by some fellow beings,maintaining a garden in the mid, in short keeping the beauty and  condition of the roads well, have we ever  made a thought about the irony between us and them? We sit inside an ac car,not sunburn, no dust, dirt,always fresh while those who clean the road, exposing to sun,dust,dirt, ending up with some breathing difficulties.

So who is great actually? those who work hard to bulid up roads, bulidings etc by sacrificing their life or those who sit inside those cool bulidings, make decisions as how to bring more development to our country ? and finally who deserves bharata ratna, or padma awards? obviously till now, not any one working in the road....... then who will respect them??? are they not part of our development?

IRCTC and my lucky numbers :-(

Does anyone know how IRCTC allocates coach number and berth number, when we book an e-ticket? 

We travel  from Chennai to Trivandrum and back occasionaly.

Inorder to avoid standing up in queues at reservation counter for a long time and avoid the travel to that place, we usually prefer booking through IRCTC. Infact we are one of the valuable customers of IRCTC which might have earned so much of profit from us in the form of cancellation charge of tickets and booking charges.I think like that, but I dont know whether they even know us. 

The transition from the regular system to internet reservation appeared so interesting for me as i could save time as well as my energy otherwise i might have wasted it  at reservation counters. And the very good moment of witnessing the appearance of the 'Congragulations, your ticket has been booked" message on the screen always gave me immense joy.

I used to check the coach number and berth number too, which always appeared as a surprise for me.Sometimes I get  19 or 20 or 34 like that. I have noticed that If I book on ladies quota, I would always get S4 ,19. Safe and cool :-).

 It was on the initial years of my travel to chennai and to trivandrum.After marriage, booking tickets became the duty of my husband.And he used to tell  me that, whenever he books, he would get seats either at the exact beginning  or exact end of the coach. I was a bit surprised and told him, oh i have never faced anything like this. I was lucky to get in middle.So the first time he booked we got seats in the 2nd or 3rd coupe.We were happy and travelled. Later on if we had counted the number of times we got a 'safe and comfortable' seat, it would be some 3/10. :-( :-(. Hence I told my husband, ok next time I will do the booking. I started booking and I dont know, thankfully we were getting  seats away from the begining and end of coach. :-) So happy that we need not have to sit in a place close to the toilet,no light at night from the entrance, no slamming of the doors which would be opened at each station and never be closed, which may pave the way for the chill wind to vade in and always wake me up due to the chillness.

Time passed and once i was booking I got those unlucky seats and i just left it like that. Oh its ok, I am not getting the same always rt? so Why should i be upset. It went on like that for successive bookings too. either at the end or in the beginning.


 I dont know whether irctc's booking software has any function to check if passenger_name='myname' or passenger_name='my husband's name' then
allocate bathroom seats. :-( :-( :-(. Hence now when i book tickets, the thing I am waiting to check is not  the Congragulations message, but the seat number. I always pray before booking, Oh God, plz dont give me seat numbers ranging from 1-9 and 65-72. And to  my dismay the case is not different in 3A also.  


And I am not overstating,  

we had a journey from chennai to trivandrum and back on January and   had to  make tatkal reservation. Both ways we got the "lucky" numbers 3 & 6!!!!. As we usually give preference for upper berth, we got 3 and 6. So on the return journey i thought, ok let me  make a change , i gave middle berth as my preference. No change, I got seat no 5 . I thought so much about the reason and came to the conclusion that, something might have happened to their algorithm, that it might have been rewritten as

if user_id like 'myhusband's name' and passenger_name ='myname' and passenger_name='my husband's name' then allocate seat_no IN( 1--8, 65..72).

I decided. Ok let me create a new id and do the bookings. I made a new id and started the booking process. I checked the ticket availability. Plenty of tickets were available. and no tatkal this time. else i might have concluded that bathroom seats result due to less no of tickets or tatkal.  IRCTC was pretty fast not as usual. My heart was beating fast. Entered the passenger details, Made the payment. Now waiting for the "lucky draw" .The page appeared finally and I  dont know how to explain my feelings.................................................................................................


..........................................................................................................




 $%%^&&*&&&@!#)__+<>:"{})( I felt like 


damaging the software which allocates the seats . Again it was 3 and 6.!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! After a few minutes of shock, i thought ok , let me do the booking of return tickets. Went through the above process, with heart beating at a faster rate than before. and finally got............................................


Any guess????????????????????????


AS IF IRCTC HAS made a lifelong reservation of seat no 3 and 6 for me and my husband, we got those "beautiful" numbers again.!!!!!!!!!!!


see  in both ways!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!.


hmmmmm. My poor heart. It was running as if it was going to get an olympic medal ,but made a drastic reduction in speed on sensing that 3 and 6 has been read by my brain and passed those 'signals' to  my heart.


i think the algo has been framed like the following forever


if passenger_name='myname' or passenger_name='my husband's name' then
allocate bathroom seats. :-( :-( :-(. ALWAYS...........................


LIFE time membership in IRCTC for seat numbers 3 & 6.  


Now painly waiting for the travel..................................

A gentle act

Sometimes I like hanging out alone, walking and walking and watch out the happenings around me. I thought I would go today. I had to post a document also. Hence I went to the post office and  was busy buying the stamp and pasting it on the envelope. At that time a middle aged woman came and asked me, “amma , neenga busy ayirkkiya” ( Are you busy?) I told: ‘No’.  She then asked me “enda form konjam ezhuthi tharingla” (can you just fill this form for me?) and showed me an application form which was for sending a money order. I just looked at her and really felt pity  that in this fast running world where people are on the e-world, doing everything over internet, there are a few who even don’t know how to read or write.

 I took the form from her and went through it. Initially I didn’t understand what was that (which always happens to me) I was suddenly feeling that Oh God, I don’t know what to do. But, I just focused on it and found that it just needed to write the name and address of the remitter as well as the recipient and the amount. I sought the information from her and filled it.  Finally the signature of the remitter was needed. When that part came, I asked her to sign. (Guessing that even if people don’t know how to fill a form, they will know to put their signature). When I gave the form to her, she said “ prachna ella amma, nanga areyum emathathi panam edukkarathillaye. Panam anappa than poren” (There wont be any problem. We are not cheating anyone. We are just sending money). Still I was a bit reluctant to put somebody’s signature. I just thought for a sec, and decided, Ok Let me sign. Nothing big is going to happen if I sign. I finished it and gave her. She said thanks. Then she asked whether I can fill one more form. I said ok, give me and did that also for her. I just looked at her face when she said “Thank You”. I could feel that, that “Thank You” was really deep from heart, not in a casual way where we use the words-  Sorry and thank You a number of times. I really felt proud at that time for helping someone by giving what I have and what she didn’t have. I was happy for being educated and understood that education doesn’t mean merely gaining degrees and degrees, but it has some societal values too. And I was too happy for using it which I was experiencing for the first time in my life.

Movies I watched recently

Recently I got a chance to watch 2 Hindi movies which had the same hero in both of them. 1^st movie happened by a mistake, in which I misunderstood that I was going to watch another movie whose trailer I saw a few days back, showed a comedy scene which was between the hero and a very famous heroine of  bollywood.  My concept about watching movies is that, it is only for entertainment. That is, a movie should take me a way from all the tensions and other thoughts for duration of the movie. I would never prefer to watch an art film (where I may have to break my head by thinking ‘Oh god why this guy is walking so long over the river side, smoking a ’beedi’ - a very common scene in Malayalam art movies) or a drama in which there is a triangle love story, the same soapy stuff which is a trend nowadays. Hence my preference is watching a full length comedy movie, at least 75% comedy, the rest a drama/ fight scene which I can tolerate.

So this time when I went for the 1^st movie, I sat comfortably with the hope that I am going to get some stuff so that I can laugh and enjoy. The convincing thing was the name of the movie ie ‘Wake up Sid’ in which I expected a guy who is so lazy and undisciplined and who may end up in doing foolish things and who may go for all mischievous acts. When the movie started I was happy and things were going as I expected. And in between I was searching for the heroine. As I could not find her on the screen, I asked my husband, where is Katrina!!!!!! . He just looked at me and asked “what?” I replied “I saw the trailer in which Katrina elopes with Ranbir and when he meets his mother he would utter a funny dialogue. And I was expecting to see such situations in the movie”. He gave me a look and replied, “Sorry that scene is in another movie, not this one”. I started watching with my sunken heart. 

The movie was a bit serious one. Yet I liked it even though it was not of ‘my type’ movie. The interesting thing I noticed was that unlike the usual Hindi movies, it had a moral: and thanks a lot to the director, there was not the usual masala where there is the usual hero-heroine love story, a villain, some n number of dances and n number of fight scenes. And the great relieving factor was that female actors were not ‘deprived’ of clothes. The moral of the story was, as long as u are living inside a pool of money and luxuries, you  will never ever realize its value and you will learn that life is not a bed of roses, when you start becoming independent where you have to earn on your own, make decisions yourself etc.

Same thing happened with the movie ‘Rocket Singh – Sales Man of the Year’, where I assumed the movie will be a full time comedy and my assumptions were consolidated when I saw that the genre is “Comedy’. Here I was searching for the song “Pocket Mein Rocket Hein…”which actually gave me the impression that it will be a comedy movie. Like Katrina was missing in the previous movie, here the song was missing L L . But I was happy that the movie was good and the story is exactly what is happening in the life of sales persons. It was actually touching the heart. The interesting thing I noticed was, the standard of both the movies are better compared to the usual movies. At least we can be happy that there are directors who know to make good films too which have some moral. If the film industry tries to follow this, we can again see an era similar to Malayalam movies of 1980s-90s where there were the classic movies which really brought out the talents of ‘our heroes’ who are now unfortunately portrayed as heroes with supernatural powers.