Catching up

Alternate title: Eavesdropping is fun

I returned home from work and happened to walk in on a conversation between the missus and the visiting m-i-l over their respective cups of filter coffee. From the names and locations, I gather it was about their friends,acquaintances and relatives from Srirangam, TN. The song Malayoram veesum kaathu was playing mildly in the background. The whole conversation happened, of course, in Tamil. But here is a translation that attempts to retain the flavor.

malayoram veesum kaathu...

Wife: Are you talking about the Narasimhan mama who parts his hair in the middle? (nadu vagudu narasimhan)

M-i-l: amaam, the same person. He insisted that I visit them and took me home. paavam...

W: When I had visited in 2009 with paatti, we'd met Kannan bhattar. He still remembers us and enquired about everyone.

M: mmm...araaro paadinaalum aararo aagadhamma...

W: How is Amudha ma?

M: ul moochu vaanginene...Amudha now runs a shop opposite the temple, selling juice, milk, flowers and thulasi leaves. paavam, she has lost her aambdayan (husband)

W: paavam. What is Sumathi up to?

(Original: Sumathi enna ma pannradhu?)

M: Sumathi has been married off to someone in Uthamarkovil. She even has a kid... malayoram veesum kaathu... Arthi's son has joined engineering.

W: Oh! How is Kamala mami doing?

M: Kamala mami suffers from amnesia. paavam she is like Surya in the movie Ghajini.

(Original: Kamala mamikku amnesia di pavam. Ghajini Surya madhiri irukka.)

W: Is the shop where Rajesh mama used to drink panneer soda still around?

M: Oooh yes, still around. Saw it on my latest trip too. Alas, Dhitti Anjaneyar temple has been relocated...tch

W: Is Paru chithi's friend Vidhya's house still intact?

M: Yes it is. Vidhya is in the US. Her parents are very aged.

Talk then shifts to Mysore.

W: Why did Vasu mama leave Mysore for Srirangam?

M: kuthalathu thenaruvi... Cost of living high di...Srirangam is anyday cheaper. With only his pension, they had to leave. Nurse mami is in the US, visiting her son.

W: What's the news in Prema's household?

M: Sindhu has completed her MBA!

W: Oh...very good!

M: She is in Bangalore now.

W: What does she do?

M: The thing that Miss World and Miss India contestants do...

(Original: adhaan di? indha Miss World Miss India ellam pannuvale?)

W: Modeling?

M: Yes, that is what she does. She has even become Miss. Bangalore.

W: Who, Sindhu? Miss Banagalore? Doesn't she have a rather flat/wooden face? (mara thattu moonjiya irukkume?)

M: No, that's Sandhya. Her elder sister.

W: I'm not convinced. (Calls out my name) Google 'Miss Bangalore Sindhu'...Why did she get into modeling after an MBA? [By this time, I'm sitting with my laptop, typing this up in real time.]

The clock struck 8. The conversation died down, Ilayaraja/SPB/Mohan were dismissed with the click of a remote. Thirumadhi Selvam, a tear jerker soap came on. The m-i-l, who till now sat facing her daughter, turned her chair 180 degrees and faced the screen; their entertainment started while mine ended.

P.S: If you are still reading, Google returned no favorable results for "Sindhu Miss Bangalore". The missus's suspicions were spot on after all.

The Violinist - Part II

Here is part I of this two part series. [I'm not saying you must read it first. But if you did, what follows won't be as big a waste of your time than if you hadn't.]

We knew we were busted as soon as R's summon was read out. A meeting with the director usually meant that something was either very good or very bad. And since R hadn't done anything even vaguely spectacular in his curricular activities, it didn't require too much mental gymnastics to know what was up this time. R stood up deliberately, clicked his pen close and gave us a look. If looks could kill, he could have been charged for mass murder right away.

As he was whisked away, our minds focused on what lay ahead. We had safely ruled out any creative answers from R to defuse the situation and save our lives. You know, something like "I stopped playing since my guru passed away", or perhaps "I only play during the Thyagaraja aradhana in Thiruvaiyyaru" etc. We would have lined up to wash his feet afterwards, I'm sure. Also ruled out was a miracle or a divine intervention during his walk to the office that bestowed on him the skills to perform a stirring rendition of Bach's Chaconne from the second Partita and make the director reach for a tissue. (I looked up "difficult pieces to play on a violin" on the interwebs.) By a method of elimination, aided by our knowledge that coming clean under pressure was R's charcater, we gave ourselves about ten minutes max before he would let the feline life form out of its container. The only question lingering in our mind was whether R took an actual test on a violin. Which, we learned later, wasn't the case.

We had been conservative in our estimate. In 5 minutes, the office lady made her third appearance to be greeted by looks of "What took you so long?" Her missive this time around: round up all the boys in the class, head out to the office. As we approached the said office, R came into sight, as he stood looking folorn in a corner of the passage. An air of heavy silence hung over the place like a blanket as the male half of the class joined him.

Anybody that has watched the Egyptian queen in the opening sequence of the Michael Jackson video Remember the time needs no further introduction to the director. Nobody personified the new rich, the shallow and the bored better than the daughter of the Godfather of engineering education, Jeppiaar. Typical directors would be actively engaged in or directing research, publishing papers, stoking the aspirations of future professionals and may be teaching a final year class or two. None of these for her majesty. Her dad was rich, bad and powerful. And big daddy had given his charming little girl her very own college to run. Unsurprisingly therefore, her list of daily directorial duties involved breakfast, lunch, handling a disciplining session here, presiding over a student humiliation there and slapping an arbitrary fine before driving away in a brand new Merc. Ladies and gentlemen, say hello to Mrs. Sheela BabuManoharan, the Queen Nefertiti of engineering education.

She was quickly brought up to speed on the crime that was committed in section D. In most colleges, this incident wouldn't have registered a blip. Hell, pranks in our high school were more creative and frivolous. But on our college indiscipline scale of 10, our prank ranked a high 8 for its daringness. She gave us a withering look, said nary a word and simply waddled away. This was their classical response: no response. That would keep us guessing as to what lay ahead. After all, isn't the anticipation that is more thrilling than an actual roller coaster ride?

In keeping with standard practice, we were made to stand in front of the office with no chance provided to meet the powers that be to initiate our apology/punishment procedures. I've got no pride: we were beginning to get a lot uneasy. I mean, my high school principal, a strict person with the most authority that I had met till that point, seemed like a loving aunt compared to these guys. Our school principal took the bus to school. These folks drove around in brand new luxury cars. And while the former was an educationalist, these were ex-mafioso posing as businessmen who wouldn't think twice about spoiling someone's academic life. Thoughts of a curtailed undergraduate education did cross our minds. Would only the first 6 months of an engineering program amount to something in the job market?

But after 3 days of the standing out routine, the management somehow got wind of the fact that perhaps we were beginning to "enjoy" this sentence. With no classes, food on time and a bus ride to and from the college this seemed like a vacation rather than a sentence. For a few days, we were like, I don't know, regular college students? We were then barred from taking the bus which hurt as it meant taking public transport from what was essentially middle of nowhere in pre-real-estate-boom Chennai. But still, it was not too unbearable. If these moves were meant to break us down, they ranked somewhere between "useless" and "counter-productive" and we seemed to show very little by way of repentance with time passing.

Then one fine morning, out of the blue, Queen Sheela initiated the trial. She was flanked by the principal Mrs. Jolly sycophant Abraham and the HOD of Mechanical Engg Mr. Yes-man Jose, who I suspect held secret aspirations of toppling the former and hence made regular appearances at these trials.

Sheela: You must be ashamed.

Jolly: Oh yes, ashamed.

Jose: Ashamed you must be.

Sheela: You are not students.

Jolly: No. Not at all.

Jose: Rowdies are what you are.

Sheela: Even I have children.

Jolly: But they are well behaved.

Jose: Hey Jolly, you stole my response!

Just as things were flowing smoothly towards the regulation apology letter before being allowed to resume classes, Sheela's detective skills were stirred.

Sheela: Who shouted out R's name?

Jolly and Jose: Yes, yes who did?

*crickets chirping*

Multiple rounds of persistent questioning yielded nothing more than incoherent murmurs. Stunned by the resistance that was being put up, shotgun justice was dispensed. Our academic records were pulled out. The top ranker, Daniel George, was threatened with dire consequences unless he identified the culprits. Instead of mumbling his ignorance and falling silent, he launched into an expansive lecture of how if he pointed at someone, that someone would in turn point at a third guy and that it would be a never ending game. He earned an arbitrary yet well deserved steep fine. But more importantly,he made it clear for the rest of us that academic performance was one thing and street smartness was quite another. You don't teach the nuances of money making to Suresh Kalmadi!

Every one of us was asked to pay some arbitrary fine. Keeping those mercs running ain't cheap. The apology letter was asked for and filed. It touched upon the usual topics of realization, discipline and repentance with promises of good behavior in the times to come. Upon Jose's recommendation, for good measure, the usual suspects were also asked to bring their parents. And they did what was the right thing to do: hire parents from Kodambakkam rather than bring the original ones. We even made a few last minute changes in assigning parents so as to not get caught in a back-to-back scandal. One dad-on-hire even went to the extent of slapping his "son" in front of the director, asking him to behave well. He earned his keep.

Jose and Jolly Abraham then sermonized us on morals, student ethics and college discipline, trying to out do each other in impressing Sheela. While her ego was sufficiently massaged by all of this, she never quite got to know just who it was that proposed R's name.

(Original image is from here. Excuse my poor MS Paint skills.)

As for R, he earned some interesting nick names and became the butt of quite a few jokes that involved either a violin or music in general. This incident never did any harm to our friendship. If anything, we became even better friends.

Oh, and the orchestra that year was short of a violinist. Apparently, the closest that they ever came to finding one was R himself.