The Revenant experience

Watched The Revenant (a person who has returned, especially supposedly from the dead. You're welcome.) by Senor Alejandro G.I. A ruthlessly violent, insanely brutal and chillingly intense period revenge drama set in the forbidding yet breathtaking American frontier. One can, I suppose, call it a Western revenge story -- it is exactly that at the heart of it -- for purposes of categorization. But that would be like calling the Porsche Carrera a 4-wheel automobile: factually correct but descriptively inadequate.

As with any revenge story, you are comforted by the knowledge that good will ultimately triumph over evil. Yet what keeps one riveted is the narration. And in the hands of Alejandro, this story comes alive and holds you tight in a slobbery bear hug (pun intended). (*Spoiler) The good in this movie - Leonardo Di Caprio - suffers serious carnage through most of the 156 minute-length to triumph over evil - played by Tom Hardy. He comes back, quite literally crawling out from a shallow grave, from the dead to mete out justice in the good old fashioned way. (*End spoiler) There are other characters too - the noble captain, the unwilling accomplice, the Indian Chief looking for his daughter, the soulless French captain, etc but they hardly register for this one is about Leo DC and his travails in pursuit of revenge.

The Revenant goes for the jugular from early on with a fantastically choreographed attack scene (if you liked the Normandy beach landing in Saving Private Ryan, this one will leave you with goosebumps) drags you through the frozen frontiers (shot in Alberta and Argentina), plunges the viewers into frigid rapids and leaves you exhausted on the bloody snow. But the piece de resistance (I have always fancied using this phrase) has to be the bear attack scene. The animal tries to make a meal out of Leonardo and even comes back for second servings. My wife had to actually turn her head away from the mauling going on the screen. Even after reading about it's making, the magic of the scene hasn't worn off. There is no shortage of blood and gore throughout the movie yet this was the most visceral of them all. No bears were harmed in the making of this scene but many viewers may now be permanently scarred. Chilling.

The landscape is forbidding and frozen. Men -- when they are not soaked in blood or coated in grime -- are wearing hides, consuming raw meat, cauterizing their gaping wounds and being brutes. The weather is unforgiving and makes living difficult and survival nearly impossible. And animals - dead, alive, cooked, uncooked, carved out - play a role throughout the movie. There is an unmistakable tone of rawness about the whole movie, perhaps as a vehicle to reflect on the times this is set in. And this helped lure me into the narration and set up an intimacy with the characters and their situations.

It must have been hell making this movie in the locales and the weather. And on the strength of this performance, this is perhaps Leo's best shot at taking home the best actor award at this years Academy Awards. Instead of a gift hamper, give him a piece of soap and run him a hot bath please. He needs it.

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In a strange coincidence, I happened to visit a museum of History of the American Southwest, the day after I watched The Revenant. The visit served up yet another reminder of the decline of the native American culture at the hands of more powerful invaders. Once free and proud to near extinction: a sad story. The visit added to the residual effects of the movie that were still gripping me strongly. I also happen to be reading The Masque of Africa - Glimpses of African Belief by V. S. Naipaul, my first VSN experience, by the way, that explores the effect of imported faiths - usurping, subverting and wiping out - on native religions and belief systems. Talk about coincidence!

The commute - The Jeppiaar years contd.

Now to my commute portion of the story. My assigned bus, as I mentioned earlier, was Route 43 serving T Nagar. It made a stop near the IIT-M campus - which was the last on the route - before turning right on OMR and all the way to Sholinganallur, which in those days was little more than a sleepy suburb with not much going on besides the few colleges that had begun sprouting along the road. Once you crossed Tidel park, there was nothing to suggest that IT was going to flip this area upside down in a few short years. The swathes of swamp land were still swampy. I'm going to sound like my father here but there were actually mango and coconut orchards on the west side of the OMR -- Rajiv Gandhi hadn't lent his name then -- giving way to the occasional house here or a small factory there, including the Aavin dairy at Thoraipakkam that announced its presence with a strong stench. Barring TCS, which had a facility further south of Sholinganallur, the other IT giants hadn’t opened shop yet. And the numerous high-end, luxury, deluxe, state of the art, 10-minutes-from-the-airport apartment monsters were not even a concept.

It was a short walk from our house to the bus stop. I would walk out of our campus, turn around to wave to my mom who would, without fail, stand there till I went out of her line of sight, cross Sardar Patel Road and walk along the CLRI campus wall past an Aavin milk booth to the bus stop. The tea stalls would be open for business and so would the restaurant Vasantha Bhavan. Even as I crossed the road, I could tell what lay ahead. If I could spot my classmate V and a bunch of others standing there, I knew I was OK. In the very early days of my first year, when I was running late, I would hurry, break into a half-run with every intention of boarding that bus. And on those days the bus was leaving just as I reached the bus stop, I would wave and signal for the bus driver's mercy. It worked on a few days and not on the others. Then the teenager in me began to notice that my actions had an audience: members of the opposite sex that had a fantastic view of my mendicancy through the big windscreen. Here is stating a matter of fact. Not all the girls in our bus were exceptionally good looking. But they were girls! (Yes, I hear the shouts of a misogynistic MCP directed at me.) And pleading with the driver in front of girls, no matter how they looked, was not cool on first principles. Period. Not cool at all. Mm hmm...

So I instinctively stopped doing it. Right away. Instead, as the bus passed me, I would turn around and walk casually to the Madhya Kailash traffic signal which was just a short hop from there. The cycles were long and at every red light at that time of the morning, a handful of our college buses would stop. All of a sudden, I could actually pick and choose less crowded buses with available seats and arrive in style. Of course, over the months, you start having a cup of tea with the drivers here, strike up conversations on the sly there and you build a rapport. And lo! No more leaving me behind. No more frantic waving. A look and the driver would actually stop and let me board. It was not bad at all. And in the evenings, I would get off when the bus slowed down at the Madhya Kailash junction rather than go all the way to the bus stop. 

The activities on the bus itself were pretty dull during the entire semester. Most of the students that were doing the long haul would be asleep. The ones awake would either be discussing girls, cricket or movies in no particular order. Sometimes in turns, over and over again. After all it was the 90s: Sachin and Sourav were playing like Gods, Kamal and Rajini hadn't gone haywire and could still turn out good movies, AR Rahman was still making music for Tamilians and Indians, and girls were, well, girls. My good friend R, from T Nagar, maintained a live database of the girl students across two colleges, ranking them, revising their ranks on a daily/weekly basis and documenting the reasons for the ranking changes. And they hire Pricewaterhouse Coopers for the Oscars. Good guy, good times. He did this on all days except those days after an India cricket match when all talk between us would be a critical, statistical analysis of the feats that had been performed the night before. Mind you, this was the 90s when Sachin was at his best. You can imagine the buzz around the key events - the twin centuries by Sachin in Sharjah - desert storm innings and the final of that tournament, the 10/10 by Kumble at the Kotla, the Chennai test defeat against Pakistan, the '99 World Cup fiasco. And then the usual academic stuff too: borrowing lab coats, calculators and set squares for engineering drawing. 

During the semester exams, the bus would transform into a frenetic, throbbing study room on wheels. Notes would be passed down the aisle, the last hour cramming into temporary memory and hurried revisions and the works. The study material was divided into five units for each course. Invariably, revising the fifth unit would be allocated to the 45 minute commute in my case. But I always got motion sickness which, in hindsight, explains my scores.

So four years and may be 4000 miles kms later, my bus commute came to an end. It was time to move on. And move out. Out of Chennai. Out of India. 

The commute - The Jeppiaar years

The gangly teen that had just entered college, yet to even have his first shave in life, crossed the empty road to the other side. Even as he was walking towards the bus stand less than a hundred meters further down the road, he could see that the bus he was supposed to take was just leaving from the bus stop, having collected the few students that had assembled there. He was late by less than a minute, 45 seconds at the most. He took the bag from his shoulder and started waving his hands, perhaps a bit frantically, for the driver to stop. He had established eye contact with the driver. Yet, the driver kept going on. As the rickety bus thundered by, it stung him. Not the driver's pushing on, but the glances from the girls seated in the front. Something changed that day. No, he didn't start arriving earlier. He never plead with the driver again. Ever. 


Commuting to college, if Tamil films are to be believed, is more fun or at least as fun as attending an institution itself. In most of these films, made much before air pollution was a lesser evil than today, the hero and the heroine would always take public transport. And the leading lady - right from the days of Aradhana's Ms.Tagore - would always be seated conveniently by the window to get a ringside view of the hero's amorous antics. And would, at some point before the intermission, fall for the hero. Never mind that much of his actions can be called, if you are in a particularly charitable mood, eve teasing.

Into this scheme of things strode Jeppiaar like a colossus. After having already sanitized his group of Alcatraz engineering colleges to such an extent that they started looking more like middle schools, he proceeded to grab the idea of commuting to college as it existed by its horns, turned it upside down, pummeled it with his bare hands, spat on it and spat on it again. Still not done, he then burned it down and then peed all over the ashes for good measure. All the while being cheered on rather boisterously by the parents of his students.

For a sum of Rs. 3,000 per year per student - that financed the many luxury cars that he and his family were seen riding around in and the fancy bungalow that had cropped up along OMR - he offered to scoop up the boys and girls from the bosoms of their parents every morning right into the outstretched arms of the eager faculty, standing in front of the cells classrooms eager to impart engineering knowledge. This he did by running a fleet of buses that crisscrossed the entire city and its far flung suburbs like Manali or Thirunindravur, ferrying sleepy, future engineers to and from the college's campus on OMR.

Now, the idea was not bad. Mind you, it was much easier to take a college bus rather than be at the mercy of public transport especially if you had a monster commute. But as the saying goes, the devil resides in the details. Many good ideas bite the dust because of poor execution. And sadly, this idea was no exception either.  First off was the price itself: rather steep. As a marketing professional, I understand value pricing and also the pains that it can inflict in consumers. The second point that irritated me was this: at Rs 3,000, one would expect at a minimum to get a seat on the goddamned bus. This was not exactly the case. Especially for me and the others that boarded at our bus stop. Ours was the last stop on the route and on nine days out of ten, we would end up standing all the way to college or share the seat with friends. And on the return journey in the evening, we would have to race from the labs to the bus and reserve seats with the help of notebooks, textbooks, lab coats and other paraphernalia. This, we could have done on a Pallavan bus for a fraction of the cost. We had spoken to the man himself on a couple of occasions but to no avail. And finally, the separation of the boys and girls. A few seats from behind the driver's seat was the Lakshman Rekha - a length of insulated electrical cord was intimidatingly tied between two metal poles. Although there was no written warning posted, the way the cord was tied around with pliers spoke many threatening words, leaving no doubt that there would be consequences. The girls sat towards the front side and the boys to the rear. At some point in the past, a lady had crossed a forbidden line resulting in an epic. Mercifully, in the four years that I was a student, no such error in judgement happened and we collected our degrees without event.

Time now to give credit where it is due. But for the above points of inconvenience, the bus enterprise was so well run that had he decided to float a private bus business in Chennai, Jeppiaar would have driven Pallavan Transport Corp into bankruptcy in a matter of a few months. There were at least 30 buses that were all maintained really well, excepting, of course, mine - Route 43 servicing T Nagar which somehow resembled a wounded, rabid dog on a wet, rainy day. The drivers must have been ambulance/fire engine drivers in the recent past for once they got behind the wheels, drove like maniacs with the sole aim of reaching the campus by 8:00. To their credit, there were definitely no fatalities nor any serious casualties throughout the time I was there. Partly because all the burning of the rubber happened before the real peak hour started.

India ranks higher than the developed countries on which index?

minji-dil kenji-dum konja varivani-yAn Van-jiyA daruL-enai arunAchalA

I am a fool who prays only when overwhelmed (by misery), yet disappoint me not, O Arunachala!

Verse 78, Sri aksharamaNamAlai by Sri Ramana Maharishi

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While I was browsing the net the other day, I chanced upon an interesting article titled "Two charts show how economic prosperity brings a decline in religiosity" on scroll.in. 

Not the most tantalizingly crafted click baiting titles you might agree. (Two charts show economic prosperity and religiosity do what? or You will not believe what economic prosperity does to religiosity. Call me old fashioned but click baiting has the exact opposite effect on me: I make it a point to avoid a piece if its title isn't a well crafted synopsis of its contents. Or in other words, I'm an old hag. But enough pointless digression, back to the pointless post.)

True to its title, the article had two charts, the second of which I display here. Looking at it, I was reminded of an old story of how a man, not familiar with the skills of climbing trees, gets stuck atop a tall one and starts off by fervently promising God that he would provide a big feast upon his safe return to ground. And with every foot that he descends, starts reducing the size of his offering.

Source: scroll.in

The only data points that came as a surprise was the USA - I didn't expect to see it so high on the religiosity axis - and China. But I live in California and there exists a whole "other" USA between the coasts and while I don't know much about China, I know enough to always take data coming from there with a grain of salt. The rest of the countries seem to fall at just about the right places that you expect them to. I'm assuming it would be a pointless exercise, but if more countries in the middle east had been polled, they would make the roof of this plot. 

The article makes a passing reference to the declining religiosity across the world. But I'm not sure that economic prosperity, just by itself, is the reason behind waning religiosity. The bottom right of the plot - the rich and less religious zone - seems mostly European, white and old Christian countries. And the top left - the poor and the religious group - seems mostly Asian/African colonies with Islam and imported Christianity. Are the old Christians - who happen to be rich - losing faith faster than the newer believers? And it would also help to understand if there exists a correlation between race and religiosity as the white folks seem to be losing faith faster than the rest. 

India is definitely not rich, definitely corrupt and is a mixture of multiple religions. And one look at the crowds at Tirupathi on any day will be like looking at the typical cross section of Indian society - the poor and the rich, healthy and the sick, able bodied and the disabled and of course the corrupt and the not-so-corrupt although that is not perceptible visually - jostling with one another in the hope of appropriating the hilltop deity's blessings. And this would play out not very differently at holy sites of the other faiths, I imagine.  This being the case, I was expecting a much higher score than 80%. 

What would be an interesting follow up exercise would be to label these countries with their respective ranks on the corruption scale. I'm thinking there would be a strong correlation between lack of religiosity and lack of corruption. 

My lazy, armchair theory floated with nothing more than instincts to rely upon? A mind free of wants and sins (and hence fears) leans less on religion as a source of strength and support. 

Pongal, oh pongal!

Happy Pongal! Today is India's thanksgiving. Actually, I'll quickly take that back with an apology. Thanksgiving is America's version of Pongal. There! That sounds so much better :)

As a city bred kid, with exposure to a closer-to-the-earth lifestyle limited to only during our spirituality-soaked pilgrimages vacations spent hopping through temple towns (Amma and appa, to reiterate a point that I have made many times, visiting Thirupparankundram, waking up early to take our place in a snaking line that never moved was N.O.T my idea of vacations!), Pongal meant little besides a cluster of holidays at the beginning of the calendar year. A day that started with shouting, upon being strongly coaxed, Pongalo pongal and consuming loads of ghee laden pongal and sakkarai pongal.

My idea of celebrating farmers and their profession was marked by consuming a more than usual quantity of their produce, then allowing ourselves to be assaulted by special patti mandrams (well intentioned literary debates in the days of Doordarshan that, with the proliferation of channels and a dearth of quality debaters, soon ran out of good topics and started pandering to the masses by debating just about any topic under the sun accompanied by off key renditions of cinema songs and thus spoiled it for everybody, but I digress. Sigh.) on TV and complaining the day after about crowds yet again trashing the Marina beach on kaanum pongal.

It was our mother, by virtue of her having done a fair bit of growing up in villages, who was the lone torch bearer when it came to infusing life into Pongal celebrations in our household. Between us two kids and to some extent our father, we favored urban, muted and toned down means of offering our gratitude to the sun and the farmers.

Although at its own sweet pace, time changes everything. Age, experience, growing up - all play a hand in changing one's perceptions. One such testimony is here. Today, Pongal isn't a day off where I live, yet I'm truly thankful to the powers that be for granting bountiful, even if erratic, harvests around the world. There are no groups of people trashing the city to complain about but I'm genuinely thankful to the farmers toiling in farms all over God's earth for their produce that nourishes us. And today the silence is broken not by noisy debates on TV but as the whistle blows on the pressure cooker, I'm thankful that I have been blessed with the means to gather the ingredients, a wife to make them into yummy pongal (both varieties), a son to share it with and a place to call home to keep us warm from the winter. The top 1% club? I'm in.

Big bang theory (not the TV show, but that too), pulsating universe, expanding, shrinking, creation theory - whatever your ideological leanings may be, one must take the time today, or any other day assigned by your culture, to pause and appreciate that the most important things in life - that the sun will rise in the east, that day shall follow night and photosynthesis - that we take for granted can indeed be taken for granted. At least for the foreseeable future. And also that you and me can neither control nor meddle too much with the important stuff.

An everyday lesson, if you are listening, showing us our rightful place in the universe - cosmic dust.

The commute - The Herculean Years

Parts One - The Rickshaw Riders and two - The Pallavan Years.

When I finished class X, we moved schools. We joined VanaVani, located inside the verdant IIT-M campus. It was a great school - although, so was the one that we were previously attending - and was close to our home. Oh and also the small matter of it being a co-educational institution which meant that about one half of the student population were, wait for this, I'm giddy, girls. Remember, I was in class XI. But most importantly, we were freed from the evil clutches of the Pallavan Transport Corp.

Cycling to school is freedom. Only someone who has been taking the bus to and from school for many years will fully understand the freedom that comes from being fully in charge of your commute. The shackles had been broken free. Tied no longer to the schedule of the bus, no more vitriolic comments of fellow commuters and not having to struggle for that elusive vacant seat. There was something powerful about having the keys to a set of wheels in your pocket. Even though the set of wheels may be a touch bent out of shape and the tyres are crying out for some more air. But imagine stepping out of the house, unlocking the bicycle and being on your way. To the school and not to the bus stand! Freedom indeed.

Having spent the early years of boyhood in T Nagar, cycling was limited to when we were visiting our cousins in (rural?) Virugambakkam or when our dad used to take me and my brother to the YMCA grounds on a few Sunday mornings. He would take us to the hockey - or was it soccer, I forget now - grounds, find himself a spot under the many trees and start reading The Hindu while we would knock ourselves out riding our red BSA SLR around the campus. So the idea of cycling to school was nothing short of exhilarating. Mind you, by the time I actually started taking cycles to school, I had learnt to drive bikes and even cars. Yet muscle power lured me more than horsepower.

Soon we were cycling everywhere. To school, to friends' places - with the new school, there were new friends to be made, to the beach - to shoot the breeze with the new friends, to the grocery store, to coaching classes. On the way to school, we would make a detour to the Jalagandeshwarar temple inside the IIT campus on test days and circumambulate the temple by cycle. We could decide to take either Delhi Avenue or Bonn Avenue (IIT-M was funded by Germany), hold impromptu races, travel the road less taken, stop by friend's places within the campus. In other words, this was a whole different world as compared to standing pressed between armpits, carrying a heavy bag and accepting curses flung our way five days a week.

It must also be mentioned that all this happened at a time when Chennai's roads were far less crowded and cyclists could venture out with the hope that they could actually return home in one piece - hell, Sardar Patel Road had a dedicated bicycle lane believe it or not - without (too much) fear of being run over by automobiles or mowed down by the collective indifference of motorists. Here is a piece of fact marinated in nostalgia: once you turned into Sardar Patel Road at the Raj Bhavan road junction, one could actually perceive a drop in temperature and a slight improvement in the air quality.

There were the usual troubles of course, with cycles, especially old, creaky ones. Flat tires, slipped chains and the occasional falls. One of my friends, V, used to routinely show up in class with a cycle chain in hand for effect. Needless to say, he was waved in without much fuss even by our Chemistry teacher Mr. G - a stickler for punctuality. We also did some very smart things - riding cross armed (which left a friend of mine with a broken arm), slow cycling (collected a few scraped knees as prizes), getting towed by friends that had started using mopeds and scooters/bikes - that led to a few injuries and/or reprimands. On one such towed trips, I was going so fast holding on to a friend that was riding pillion on my other friend's Bajaj Chetak that I didn't even realize that my bag had fallen off the carrier that had the weakest spring known to mankind. I must have been doing a good 40kmph and the loud rattles that my ancient bicycle was making by way of protests against the abuse that it was enduring must have drowned out the thud. Anyways, the bag got picked up by some good Samaritan who turned it in to the IIT office as opposed to my school's office. The IIT security who lost no time in getting in touch with my school who in turn informed my father about the situation - the bag and its missing owner. The missing owner, meanwhile, reached home in record time just as my father stood there with a you-better-have-a-good-explanation-son expression on his otherwise friendly face. A joint parent-teacher investigation ascertained how I got separated from the bag, how the bag ended up where it ended up and the most awkward question of them all: why? But you live and learn.

The red BSA SLR got stolen one night from right in front of our house and after a few cycle less months, we got a replacement one provided by the diligent and entrepreneurial cops of the Kotturpuram police station. They came up with the idea of making a neat sum from the many stolen bikes that lay unclaimed in their station. One afternoon, after paying whatever was the going amount of bribes for a cycle return, we came home with a beat up blue SLR whose good days were in the distant past. Then there came bicycle number two: a really dilapidated Hercules that got a new lease of life for Rs. 200 that I used for the 2 years that I attended Vanavani. Then when I joined college, my dad got me a brand new Hercules for Rs. 1,300. If you think I'm disappointed that he didn't get me a motorcycle - like many of my friends - you are wrong. Neither did I feel the need for a motorized means of transport nor was one offered by my parents.

The Hercules - which still stands under the staircase of our home in Chennai - served all my needs through the four years of college. Computer classes - 6 km one way, 3 days a week for 2 years. Collecting notes and photocopying them around semester exams - 8 exams over 4 years. Then the many trips to the IIT-M library during those exams. And then collecting signatures from the faculty members while applying for US Universities. Oh and the cricket matches across Adyar and Besant Nagar every weekend over those 4 years. No to mention the many Saturday evenings by the beach.

By the time we finally bought a bike - exactly 3 months before I left for the US - I must have clocked at least 5000 kms on the Hercules which, I reckon, would have easily paid for itself a few times over even at those petrol prices.

Next up: The Jeppiaar bus service

The remote (controlled) employee

GEORGE (dating a girl in prison): Jerry, I like being with her. Plus, I know where she is all the time. I have relatively no competition. And you know how you live in fear of the pop-in?

JERRY (shudders): The pop-in.

GEORGE: Yeah, no pop-in, no "in the neighborhood," no "I saw your light was on." 

Credit: Seinfeld scripts, The Little Jerry episode.

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For many years since my entry into the working world, my manager has always been located in a different timezone, country and continent altogether. I don't know which Gods I managed to please but think about this: I'm this fresh-out-of-school rookie taking his first, tentative steps into the big, bad world of working professionals and right off the bat, I didn't have to be in before or leave after the manager or try and impress the boss. It was a good 4 months before I even saw my manager in person for the first time: it was all calls and emails in the early days. Of course there were enough checks and balances in place to ensure that we weren't goofing around were getting optimally utilized but you get the idea, right?

Thus it went for years on end. Managers changed. My work location changed. The manager(s) and I continued to play tag via email, periodic conference calls and the occasional video conference. My travels were planned out, their travel itineraries were published in advance and we were aware of each other's whereabouts. It was one happy party. Granted there was the odd day or three when I really missed sitting down the aisle from the boss but advances made in the world of communication technology ensured that those days were few and far apart. Throw in the fact that I was traveling nearly 70% of the time, my in-person meetings with my bosses were rarer than solar eclipses. 

They say all things have to come to an end. So after 6 years, the proverbial honeymoon ended when I moved to the Bay Area. For the first time, both me and my manager were located under the same roof. I felt like moving into a big joint family after years of being in a live-in relationship in a different place. Awkward. Suddenly I became more conscious of the hours that I was actually present in the office, the way I dressed and be part of a wider team as opposed to a one-man army. I had to a bit of keeping up with the Joneses. Don't get me wrong: I truly have only good things to say about the people that I reported to. But a six-year party will have a pretty strong hangover. 

Then I switched jobs. And guess what? In the new gig, my entire team, including my manager, was located in Israel with me and just a couple of others holding the fort here. And to make things more interesting, the holy land follows a Sunday through Thursday work week besides the ten-hour time difference. This meant two things: early morning calls and emails on Sundays. Oh and back to being a remote employee together with its pros and cons. And the dress code at the new place? Tucking in a shirt means it is either a wedding or a funeral. Through the course of the year, I slowly became more of an Israeli employee than a California professional. 

But in just over a year, things look different again. I am now part of a small, close-knit team and everyone is located in the same building within a few meters from each other. Talk about a small world. Back to pressed clothes, regular shaves and ch... I'd like to tell you more but I think I hear steps coming down the hallway. Talk to you soon. 

Life comes a full circle

As kids, when we had to go in the middle of the night, I remember my kid brother would just get up, walk to the rest room and do his business without any fuss. He didn't even bother with turning the lights on for two reasons. One, he wasn't scared of the darkness, or just about anything for that matter. The second, he was too short to be able to reach the switches in that old house that was built in a time when flipping switches was strictly an adult thing.

Yours truly, on the other hand, would wake up our father who would accompany me, turn the lights on and once I was done, even pour some water from the small, green mug on to the bathroom floor for me to stamp on before returning to the paai to resume my dreams. I also remember, on some nights, he would nuzzle against the rear of my neck before I went back to bed.

Last night, my son, who is going through a bout of cold and cough, woke up in the middle of the night and wanted to go. I had not gone to bed yet and was awake. He held my hands and we walked to the rest room. He turned on the lights and insisted on doing his business himself. Although watching over him, I stood back. He then wanted to blow his nose and this one needed my expertise. Once done, I carried him back to the bed and like a fish being released back into the river, he snuggled back under his still-warm blanket in a single motion. 

Life has come a full circle. And yes, I did nuzzle his nape. 

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Getting a hair cut is a sacred ritual for most men. There are preferences, specifications, requirements, whims, fancies, choices surrounding what is one of the few moments men dedicate to themselves.

My earliest memories of getting a haircut are of holding my father's hands early on a Sunday morning of his choosing - on a fine weekday morning, he would announce that it was time while applying coconut oil to my hair - and making our way to the nearest salon: Capital Hair Dressers in T Nagar. After browsing through the Tamil newspapers and magazines during the wait, we would step up to the plate for our grooming session. 

My father had very simple requirements for himself: short on the sides and back and medium on the top - something that I have adopted and use to this day, although with varying degrees of success. Once he was ready, he would inspect my cut, chime in with an opinion on the length and once he was satisfied, we would step out: two men with spanking new haircuts.

The brisk walk back home would have one detour - to purchase a couple of shampoo sachets, as opposed to the default shikakai powder. He would choose a set of clothes about to be washed to wear to the saloon and wouldn't carry too much money on him either. Upon return, the clothes would be rinsed separately and the loose change deposited just outside the bathroom door - to be sprinkled with a few droplets of water before returning to his pocket. This was the routine that was followed religiously. 

Yesterday, with both me and my son badly in need of a haircut, we made the trip together by ourselves for the first time. My wife usually handles this and had a dozen instructions for me. I picked out a set of clothes that were near the end of the laundry cycle and we were on our way. Although there is a salon within walking distance, they charge an exorbitant amount and we go by car to a more reasonably priced one. It so happened that we ended up on adjacent seats and I spelled out the same set of instructions handed down the ages for myself as the lady started spraying water on my hair. "Just like daddy for the boy Sir?", asked my son's hairdresser a moment later and I nodded. Fifteen minutes later, we were on the way back home. Two men with spanking new hair cuts and the younger of the two holding a candy in his hand. 

Yesterday, shampoo sachets weren't needed. Although we went straight into the shower, the clothes weren't hand rinsed separately. But the cellphone, the car keys and the candy did get a token sprinkling of water before they went back to their respective locations. 

2015 - The year in review

I meant to post this sometime in the last few days of 2015. But one thing led to another. Minutes ticked and time slipped by. Cold days and colder nights came and went and before I realized, it is 2016.

I haven't done an annual review here before. Given that my lifestyle doesn't routinely provide high adrenaline content, a year-review would be regurgitating mundane minutiae of our going through the grind.  But there is always a first time. And if nothing else, it is an occasion to come here and throw a few hundred words at the readers. All two of them. And that includes me.

I have this sense that time is accelerating with passing, ahem, time. I shared my observation with my father and he also seemed to agree. So I'm not alone. I remember slogging through the 80s going through the school grind. And I'm sure you'll agree that the 90s were definitely faster. Right? If the 90s were fast, the 2000s were a blur. And here I am, already half way through the 'teens. Anyone else out there that shares the same view?

So 2015 appears to have disappeared faster than the years before. It was a year with the usual highs and lows. There were good days. There were definitely bad days. I was trying to settle into the new job - getting to know new people, a new work culture, new technologies. There is always something exciting about a new job. Even though this one requires me to wake up early to attend calls and meetings.

The Israeli Spring

Then came the two-month-plus trip to Israel. With family. Life in Tel Aviv was interesting, providing us with a rare opportunity to immerse ourselves and experience life in a new land and its language, culture and food with our 4-year-old in tow. 2500 kms driven. Many pictures. Many stories. Many memories. Easily the fastest two months in an already fast year.

Summer of Slowelectron

Then came the longest trip till date to India since I left her shores. One that is better measured in weeks than days. Father's surgery and the convalescence. A handful of functions - all of them arranged and hosted by us. Then getting a house renovated and repaired. All the while navigating tricky family politics. And plenty of it. With toppings of difference in opinions, misunderstanding and clashing ideas. An exhausting trip both physically and mentally. One that I was secretly happy when it was coming to an end. But spending a precious few days with my niece was totally worth it.

Free fall

The quakes. There were hundreds of them over a one-month period. The experts called it earth quake swarms. They were given less threatening labels: minor, mini, nano. But the house developed a few cracks, a few doors got jammed and a few floor boards started creaking. Minor, mini, nano and scary.

I tried becoming a coffee person but that hasn't taken off quite as my wife imagined it would. Now don't get me wrong, I do enjoy my cup of coffee here and there. I come from a family overflowing with addicts and aficionados after all. But I simply have not been able to make a habit out of it. While on the topic of beverages, I enjoyed a bit of wine this year. I even picked out a favorite and finished three bottles responsibly.

And finally a wet winter

Watching the Malayalam movie Premam was easily the best movie experience for me. A simple story told so beautifully. An inexperienced cast that moved me so completely. A director that wove me into the fabric of his movie. I have watched the movie twice so far, been listening to the songs on loop for nearly a month now and have a crush on the Malar character - my wife knows this. If I'm sad that the movie is being remade in other languages, I'm outraged that Shruti Hassan is playing Malar in the Telugu version.

Late last year I realized that I have something common with Sachin Tendulkar besides cricketing skills and sponsorship deals: tennis elbow. It was an awkward conversation when the doctor ruled out possible causes one by one: tennis, cricket, weights at the gym, garden work. Atrophy would have been a more suitable ailment given my lifestyle. I'm deflated by the thought that the cause is likely a bad posture while working on the laptop and nothing remotely glamorous.

But that didn't stop us from going on a three-city road trip touching Carlsbad (Legoland), Phoenix, AZ and LA. We tested our son on some kid-friendly rides at Legoland, visited a much modified ASU campus and a very different Tempe and camped at my friend's place in LA on the way back. Happy to say that the son is not scared by the three rides that he went on: like mother, like son. (Disclosure: Despite my son pleading with me, I refused to go on any of the rides.), my wife and kid finally got to meet a very special person in Phoenix and my son brought out a hidden "dad" side in my yet-to-be-a-father friend. I rented a car from Payless and the lesson: pay more to avoid Payless. A tired car and tiresome service make for a tiring trip.

On balance, a typical year with its usual highs and lows. I'll take typical and uneventful over unforgettable and scary - the two options in the game of lucky dip that life often is.

I have been a bit active in blogging compared to the previous years: 24 posts and 1 comment. I wish I had read more also. Other than that, I have been the same person that I was in 2014- irresponsible, immature and a tad overweight.