The commute - The Rickshaw Riders

I'm now stuck with a very long commute. 42 miles one way. Don't ask me how I ended up here but this is my situation till I figure out a convenient car pool or move.

KQED notwithstanding, it is a punishing drive what with the traffic, boredom and the thought that much of my time is spent behind wheels and not at work/home instead. This got me thinking of the various commutes that I have had over the years. The combination of the various homes and the various educational institutions and work places have called for interesting commutes.

So with nothing worthwhile to offer for your reading pleasure here, I'm kick starting a series on the various commutes that I have done. Anything to keep this blog running and cough up a few words every now and then.

Now this could be a bit interesting if blogger has an app that can take dictation (I'm patenting this idea now!) while I drive and publish a post by the time I reach my destination. But till that time, I regurgitate the thoughts while I drive and put them down after I get off.

Without further adieu, here is part 1.

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My earliest memories of commuting are of my father driving me to school on our trusted white and blue Lamby. Of holding my father’s hands and being firmly but gently shepherded from the school gate towards my LKG class room, to a waiting Mrs. Mallika Ramnath. The commute was a grand distance of about 4 kilometers that would take us from our home on South Usman Road through Burkit Road, taking a left on South Dhandapani street and onwards to Venkatanarayana Road. We would pass Panagal Park on the east side on to the green cover of G N Chetty Road. Appa would then turn left at Jeeva Park (Jeeva poonga) and drive straight down Arulambal street to our school. It was a journey of a few minutes that has stayed in my memory – my father reciting Adithya Hrudhayam and me standing the front and later hugging him from the rear seat when I was tall enough. I also remember transferring briefly to Sahadevan’s rickshaw at some point in time, perhaps coinciding with my brother’s arrival. For I remember Sahadevan pulling up in front of the nursing home, not too far from his rickshaw “stand”,  in the afternoon where our mother was in and me jumping off the rickshaw and racing to the upstairs room to meet my mother and my newly minted brother. Sahadevan, a gentle soul (compared to Muthu rickshaw-kaarar who will soon make an appearance) with a greying beard and a ready toothy grin, calling out from behind to not forget my bag. It was back to the father-son-Lamby-Adithya Hrudhayam routine in the years leading up to my brother joining me at the same school.

Having a working mother required a different style of functioning. She had to be at her work place much earlier than my father. Luckily, her office was midway between home and school. So the four of us would pile up on to the Lamby every morning. Once Appa dropped her off in front of her office, we would drive out to Jeeva poonga where Appa would give us our breakfast on a concrete park bench. A picnic style breakfast almost every weekday morning in a park in the heart of the city. To my father’s credit, he had to wrap up the picnic, drop us off at school and then head out to work across town, if he was in a hurry, which I’m sure he was on many days, he never showed it. While this continued for some length of time, given the logistic challenges that this routine posed, we migrated back to the classic middle-class mode of commuting to school: the rickshaw.

I’m not sure why Sahadevan was not hired when the two of us were rickshaw-ready. Perhaps he had retired or had an incompatible school route/schedule but Muthu rickshaw-kaarar was chosen as the charioteer. Mr. Muthu’s stand was just a few blocks down the road from our home which is where my father would have known him from, I’m guessing. He was already taking a few kids from our locality to our school which acted both as a reference and a convenience in choosing him. Muthu rickshawkaar was a character in every sense of the word. He always sported a week’s stubble: I don’t ever remember having seen him clean shaven. He had his towel tied around his head which offered some protection against the heat. His first few buttons were always undone and was always wearing a lungi that was in need of a wash. He was a rugged guy and somehow reminded me of Rajinikanth in the vasanta kaala nadigalile song from the movie moondru mudichu. He was a raging alcoholic and that is only putting it mildly. But considering that there were only very, very few days that he didn’t show up in the morning and thus putting us in a fix, he somehow managed his drinking and hangovers rather admirably. Till it killed him a few years later.

There were seven kids in the rickshaw: the two of us - yours truly and my brother, Rishi, Vijay, Manav, Kumar and Vasu. There was for some time Ashwin and his cousin Vishnu thrown in to the mix as well. Rishi was the only kid that came from the other side of the tracks from West Mambalam. He was a few years elder than us and was a real fast runner. I later learned that he had joined the Indian Army, was posted in Kashmir during the Kargil conflict in the late nineties and had lost a leg in action. Vijay, my class mate, was the charmer of the group with his good looks and the ability, even as a kid, to engage adults in adult-like conversations. I remember once when Muthu was smoking a rolled cigarette without a filter instead of his usual beedi, Vijay queried “Enna rickshaw-kaar, cigarette ellam pidikkareenga? Neraya panam vechirukkeengala?” (How come you have moved on to cigarettes? Have you become rich now?) He was from a musical family and roped me into learning the mridangam at his place and also Hindi classes later. He used to live somewhere off Madley street behind the R1 Mambalam police station before moving to a house on Burkit road and then later to Mangesh street. Don’t ask me how but he took the commerce stream in class XI, completed his B Com and ended up in Accenture doing project management. I’m still in touch with him and he is now in Chennai after a stint in Bangalore. Manav, in the same class as Rishi, was the Settu – a Marwari kid that had a home on Ranganathan street. Yes, people used to live on that street! He was a hothead and would always pick up fights with other kids and sometimes with Muthu himself. During one such fight he yelled that he would ask his father to not pay Muthu, jumped off the moving rickshaw and ran back the few blocks to his home. Muthu waited to see that he reached home, let lose a few choice expletives and carried on. Kumar and Vasu, the other set of brothers. Vasu was my classmate and Kumar was Rishi’s. They used to live on Govindan street, before moving to a house on G N Chetty Road and later to Tilak street. Vasu, whose father I met many many years later, had failed to clear the class XII exams and Kumar had developed some mental problems. Ashwin and Vishnu were cousins and were Kannadigas. Ashwin, the quiet spoken kid was my brother’s classmate and Vishnu was fresh from Karnataka and had a strong accent. But that is not why he was everybody’s whipping boy on the rickshaw with Rishi leading the roast every evening. When things got out of hand, which was more often than not, Muthu would turn around and land a blow on whoever’s leg, thigh was within his reach.

Muthu rickshaw-kaarar was loud, smoked beedis non-stop, drank every night, took salary advances from nearly everyone’s parents. But he was also responsible enough to not lose a kid, not molest anyone, drive the rickshaw without any accidents and kept it running till he died.

I must take a moment to talk about the simple times. When a parent could hire a rickshaw guy without elaborate background checks, trust him with their kids to be dropped off at school and brought back home every single day. And the bloody system worked. Neither the non-alcoholic Sahadevan or the raging alcoholic Muthu ever misbehaved with any one of us. We were safe in their hands. And I don’t remember there being any untoward incident reported from our school that involved an erring rickshaw man during our years there. 

Reminiscences of an India trip Part II

And the reminiscences continue...

The RX135 experience

Although our first love was the Yamaha breed of machines, after much deliberation, we settled for a rather conservatively styled, easy on the gas, 4-stroke Bajaj Caliber when we (finally) bought a bike in the year 2000. Life usually has a twisted sense of making your wishes come true though. Fifteen years later, when the college going me has been put to pasture somewhere in the deeper recesses of the mind, I got to ride an RX135 across the city to my heart's content. This bike, borrowed from my cousin,  has clearly seen better days, has logged over 40,000 kms and could do with a wash and a real lock instead of the chain and lock arrangement. But it is a Yamaha RX135, remember? And that makes up for all the shortcomings. It is a fast bike and can still turn heads with its mating call engine roar. Or as I call it, 15 years too late. If my wife is reading this, I really love you honey! Within an hour of driving it, two people came up to us at a red light and offered to buy it. True story.

A man, a bike and his 4-year old son: it is a beautiful thing. My son would perch himself on top of the petrol tank in the front and demand to be driven around the block every time I came back from somewhere. At the end of that ride (at perhaps 20-25kmph), he would make an appreciative comment or two about my speeding skills. I need a tissue please. *sniff*

A test victory and the day-after Hindu write up

Savoring an Indian cricket win abroad live on TV, then wading into the sports page the day after and later analyzing the game threadbare with friends at college was a religious experience. A Sachin special followed by an R. Mohan or a Nirmal Shekar special in print (on a plain vanilla, black and white The Hindu) the morning after was like having good, cold beer with fresh, crisp onion pakkoda on the side. So while I was in Chennai, India won a test in Colombo and later the series. And our copy of The Hindu was at the doorstep even before I was up. Now, the series itself was good from an Indian fan stand point and the cricket was intense given the circumstances. The come from behind win in spite of missing both the openers mid way was heartening. As was the performance of the spinners, the openers and the fielders. The tail even wagged when it mattered. My only wish: drop Rohit Sharma and go with Che Pu instead. And I get this feeling that this team would be better served if they are aggressive in intent rather than behavior. But the magic was somehow...missing. Can't really pin point why. Oh and The Hindu? I continue to start reading the paper from the sports section even today although for an entirely different reason: to avoid actor Prabhu with his 3 chins jumping out from page 0 peddling jewelry.

The Avani Avittam reduction

As mentioned here, the fervor that once surrounded avani avittam in our house has all but evaporated. From a full blown man-festival replete with silk veshtis, ezhai kolams and meals with payasam in the nineties, avani avittam around the house has now become a mere ritual devoid of any fan fare. In 2008, in the wake of our mother's passing away, the three of us had donned our respective new poonals at different cities in India. In 2009, it was just me and appa going about the routine at home that day, while I doubled up as the cook too. Well, tripled up as the makeshift vadhyar too. If those were bad years, I think we hit rock bottom this year. Appa, unable to sit on the floor on account of a recent surgery, changed his poonal seated on a chair. In fact, he was wearing it after having been without one on medical advice! And this time, I didn't even try to put on my cook's hat. And so the post-poonal meal? Curd rice at Saravana Bhavan. Changed times, new reality.

The one bucket bath

Super: It's the super. We're installing new low-flow showerheads in all the bathrooms.

Morty: Low flow? I don't like the sound of that.

We are true T Nagar old timers what with our family calling the very heart of T Nagar, or Mambalam as it was known then, home since the early 1930s. In other words, we know water shortage. Ever since I was a kid, a half bucket of water was all that was allotted for the daily bath. Even was we moved to relatively water-rich locations across the city, water frugality as a habit has stayed with us. Things have changed with moving abroad and all. But this time, I went back to the bucket. No surprise that it is the most sensible thing to do anywhere in the world. Made me re-realize how much cleaning can be accomplished with under a bucket full of this precious commodity. 

Reminiscences of an India trip

The boxes have been unpacked and set aside. Jet lag is definitely on its way out. The snacks are half depleted and homesickness doesn't singe like it did a few days back. As the curtains come down on yet another holiday trip to the old country, there are myriad thoughts that come to mind. Here are a few of them in no particular order.

Three functions in the home and as many hospital visits. Two cities and two trips between them. Two lost cellphones. Plenty of housekeeping and walking the family politics tight rope. And a half a dozen temple visits woven into the already hectic schedule. If our vacations were movies, they would carry statutory warnings urging the general public from undertaking such activities.

Vacation - the misconception

Most people that I know take a vacation with the aim of relaxing. Taking a break from the daily grind. It needn't necessarily be a picturesque place with stunning scenery and a resort to kick your feet up. One could vacation in a godforsaken place like Ambur or Guntakkal, no personal animosity towards either of these two towns, and still emerge fully rejuvenated. The idea, I would imagine, is to not prepare a running list of action items and get into a race against the clock. But that is the routine for normal people. We do vacations slightly differently in our family - with a strong sadomasochist flavor. Imagine trying to run a marathon in 9.79 seconds. On barefoot. Even before the dates are finalized, there are at least two sets of diverging tasks with shuffling priorities. Once we arrive in India, a third and a fourth list with a dozen different items each, get added on. Long story short, by the time the day of the return flight dawns, there are compromises, unfinished tasks, missed chances and plenty of guilt to carry back home. 

Chennai - the city that was

A city that threatens to cut all remaining connections with its roots at breakneck speed. What are those roots? The answer depends on the individual. My attempt to define Chennai's roots would be a shamelessly nostalgic exercise by yet another caught-in-a-timewrap-NRI and so I won't do it here. But there seems to be a certain desperation to affix on its lapel the cosmopolitan city tag and lose its cultural/traditional identity in a hurry. If it pained me to see McDonald's, KFC and Subway outlets in Bangalore in 2013, I'm pissed beyond words to see KFC, Domino's and Papa John's at every street corner in Chennai. When there is absolutely nothing wrong with the idlies, vadais and pongals available at the bhavans and cafes.

Earlier (as in, when I was a kid, which was, sadly, many years ago), restaurants that served meat had special, unmistakable names: Colombia, Runs, Coronet, to name a few. The aroma (foul smell) from within the confines would be strong and just scanning the handwritten "Today's special" board at the entrance would give me shivers. The clientele would be mostly men. And those places invariably had a cigarette stall at the entrance that also sold beedas to the well fed patrons stepping out. Cut to 2015. Going by their sheer numbers now, I realize that meat consumption at restaurants must have risen exponentially and that such establishments have gained acceptance as family sppropriate places.

Busy, crowded malls, SUVs hogging available road space, late night shows running to packed houses at multiplexes, organic grocery stores and The Hindu that sells its front page to the highest bidder: this is a Chennai with a strange flavor to it that old timers may find hard getting used to.

Kalam - El Presidente par excellence

An ex-president whose passing away brought together people in a way not seen in recent history, transcending regional and religious identities. Flex boards bearing his face, a quote and a few words from the local folks popped up at every street corner in Chennai. It is difficult to imagine such a genuine show of love and respect for an individual without caste, cash or Dravidian party affiliations in Tamil Nadu. An inspiring story of a truly simple man that stood really tall among the politicians. It was also sad to see that it quickly went from a natural outpouring of respect to the "right" thing to do. Many commercial establishments jumped on to the Kalam-grief bandwagon and started placing the token Kalam picture by the entrance only to not be left out.

MTC - Pallavan in a new garb

Forget the brand new Chennai Metro. I took a ride in an MTC (the erstwhile Pallavan) bus. From Vadapalani to Adayar. In a throw back to the olden days, I boarded it not at a bus stop, but in running at a busy intersection. But I stuck out rather starkly from the regulars that day. And how! For starters, I was in shorts and a t-shirt - a definite give away that I was truly not a regular patron. I had in my hand a black helmet. Stuffed with sweets and savories from Gowri Shankar (Chennai's best wheat halwa and sonpapdi maker to date!) And I was clutching a pink ladies' purse on the other. And I misheard the fare as Rs. 70 and without batting an eyelid, handed the conductor a hundred rupee note when he had actually asked for Rs 17. So. Out. Of. Touch. The conductor now has a device for ticketing but still doesn't go to the passengers to issue tickets. Old wine in a new bottle anyone?

Mysore - the clean thorn in my flesh

This city, where from hails my wife, was announced as the cleanest in India's swachh Bharat campaign. People that made the announcement obviously didn't marry a dyed-in-the-wool Mysorean udugi. For someone that already had her nose in the air when it came to matters concerning general cleanliness and hygiene in public places between the two cities, this announcement making it official (across all of India) made her float on air. Oh the ribbing that I had to endure in both Mysore and Chennai! Especially when the train was just pulling into the northern outskirts of Chennai. Ouch! My only feeble come back? I could recharge my mobile internet dongle at 11:30pm in singara Chennai and not in heritage Mysuru. Aha!

Parking woes in Tel Aviv

Here is something that I wrote when we were in Israel earlier this summer. For some reason, this was languishing in the drafts section and I have decided it is time to inflict this upon my unsuspecting reader(s).

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Parking in Tel Aviv is a nightmare. And from talking to the locals, it doesn’t appear to be a recent problem either. In the book of the Carinthians (12:8, isn’t it simpler to write 3:2? I once scored a ‘centum’ in maths in a class test in class VII. I think.), it is said, I shall lead my children to the land of overflowing honey and milk but you’re on your own for parking your camels. Thy shath be screweth mwa hahaha. *To be verified.*

The place where we stay is near a popular beach along the beautiful Med coast.  And on Fridays, the place is swarming with people heading into the warm waters for fun and frolic in beach wear that leave nothing to imagination. The streets look like there is a giant Pothy’s around the corner holding a grand aadi thallupadi sale on itsy bitsy teeny weeny bikinis and nearly everyone from as far away as Beirut, just bought themselves one. Net result: The best ever traffic jam I’ve ever been in. I’m stuck in a car looking for a spot that doesn’t exist while one half of Israel wants to show off perfect beach bodies and the other half wants to look at it.

In less touristy suburbs (like Syria), the streets are lined with cars of residents on both sides all the time. Rumor is that if you find a great spot, very close to your apartment, you work from home for the rest of your career. At a conservative estimate, there are at least 3 parked cars (and nine cats) per person in Tel Aviv. The ones driving about the roads are just clueless tourists looking for a spot which explains the traffic jams. So on any day, you are more likely to run over a few cats than find a spot.

Much like a degree in philosophy, finding street parking in Tel Aviv is time consuming, pointless and there are no clear rights or wrongs. Only wrongs. And there are more people doing it than you think.

To add a further layer of confusion to the already difficult process, there are, at last count, 23,619 different shades of curbside paint codes with varying implications. There is the ubiquitous yellow and red which means that Rafael Nadal will one more French Open title if you park your car there, they will tow your car, punch you in the face and steal both of your kidneys while simultaneously sullying your otherwise spotless lineage. Very different from the red and white curb where the same rules apply but they steal only one kidney. Then there is the more common blue and white about which no one is quite sure. Then there is a grey with dog poop stains not to be mistaken for the grey with urine stains. And so on. 

But there are always accompanying rules for each color code for the harried user. Stated very clearly. In Hebrew. Or perhaps ancient Aramaic. But some of them are so complex that it makes no difference in which language they are posted. Here is a smattering of the more straight forward ones that I have decoded:

•        You can park only on the right side of this street unless you own an apartment on this street. (English: At Tel Aviv real estate prices, LOL)
•        You can park only on the left side of this street unless you are a tenant and if your landlord was born on a full moon Thursday while a partial solar eclipse was happening over Easter Islands. (English: Keep driving, ROFLMAO)
•        You can park here if your idea of fun on a Thursday night is to retrieve your impounded car from the city office after paying a $100 fine to a lady with an attitude and an unlit cigarette hanging from her mouth sitting inside a blue, dimly lit, rusting cage. (English: OK to Park)

Add to this the complex one way system in which all streets slowly lead you away from Tel Aviv. In anticlockwise circles. On many nights, I have parked in Damascus and hitched a ride home from some sympathetic ISIS fighters. They even confided that they don’t mess with the Israelis because they know they can never park their tanks in Tel Aviv without getting a ticket.

But the situation isn’t all that bad, really. There are many parking lots available that charge a ransom but compensate by having interesting lot attendants. One of them in the lot close to our apartment offered a good rate but his only condition was, and I wish I was making this up, that I talk to him every night after I parked my car. There was one who kept asking me for lens cleaning solution every time I walked past the booth. And I don’t even wear glasses. Then there was the other guy who insisted that he had to physically sign the ticket but then had no pen on him. And asking me to sit in his booth, went in search of a pen at ten in the night. Good times. And every morning there would be the cone-of-shame sitting on my car. The cone of shame is a big, black, worn out traffic cone which cries out to all and sundry that the owner of the car it was occupying had cheated on parking fees and may be morally bankrupt. They may as well have tattooed “parking fee cheat” on my forearm like they did in the eighties movies. But you can’t expect class or subtlety from parking attendants can you?

After dealing with these people for a week, my colleagues recommended that I pay a monthly rate and get it over with. Although they did warn me that I had to drive a bargain myself. And then burst into uncontrolled laughter. Thus on a Friday afternoon, I was negotiating with a lot attendant that looked like a young Moammar Gaddafi having a bad hair day. I would type in my offer ($20, a bottle of lens cleaning solution and 30 minutes of quality talk time with the attendant between 8:30 and 9:00pm on weeknights) on his sticky cellphone. He would snigger, shake his head and type in his counter offer ($36,899.99, my left kidney and unlimited talk time plus free sms). After a few iterations, we settled on an amount that I’m too ashamed to type here. I’m not saying that I overpaid but I’m confident that with the amount I paid, cancer could have been cured and world poverty erased with the leftover change. Or the equivalent of a 2BHK apartment in Puzhuthivakkam with world class amenities (English: about 18 hours of power supply, twice a week).

But on the positive side, I tactfully negotiated to not have to talk to the attendants. Only sing and dance with them. For right after I ‘clinched’ the parking deal, the lot attendants have all turned very professional and friendly. One of them that looks like a middle-aged Jesus with a fanny pack around his waist even dances with my son every night singing an allegedly Bollywood song that goes like “Jimmy jimmy…aah aaja aaja”. And then asks me to talk to him.