COUPLE OF OLD ONE'S

There are two reasons for keeping my blog inactive......one obviously is my slackness towards blogging and the other is that i want all my readers to read my first blog.But life has to move on and so should my blog.i will post my two articles which have been published in two magazines of my institute.

( This is a poem written for the" Fourth estate" magazine and therefore many informal and IITM lingo terms are used. please bear with that. Also, this incident has happened truly and happened truly to me during saarang 2004. Bear with this childish poem..........)

A PAGE FROM THE DIARY OF A GUILTY VOLUNTEER…………..

I came to IIT,

In search of beauty

But to my pity,

No one was pretty.

The nature around is a big gain;

The acads here are a real pain.

Frustrated,

I wanted to become a seer,

But in the end became a volunteer.

Yes, saarang is fast approaching,

And I quickly needed coaching

To guide me through the choice of volship,

That will further ensure a coordship.

“Becoming a GA vol is Ghor Aparadh,

Working for ambience

Will lead to ambulance,

Go to hospi coord

And you will be reserving a hospital bed:”

These words as sharp as sword,

Were spoken by the fourth estate coord.

Excited about the grub coupons

I tried to make my pen do gimmicks,

Ended up using hazaar fight,

Unable to withstand seniors might.

Then I realized, to bask in its glory,

Someone needed to be extraordinary.

Disappointed.

Yet I slowly started to “love life”

But the fourth estate saarang special came as a knife—

On its back page was my name,

Giving me undeserved fame.

At last, I was a saarang volunteer

Gaining nothing, loosing everything,

I was a saarang volunteer.

(This article was published in magazine "contour2005" which is a IITM civil depatment magazine.once again bear with the IITM references made.........)

IT’S ALL THE SAME.

Early in the morning I arrived at the main gate of the campus of IIT Madras. I was given a warm welcome by the security personnel holding an instrument which I thought was a computer aided electronic friskometer(!). Within a flash of a second it scanned all my belongings and the following results were displayed on the screen:-

ITEM ---- SEARCH RESULTS

WEAPONS OF MASS DESTRUCTION ---NEGATIVE

ANTHRAX POWDER ---- NEGATIVE

GUNS ‘N’ ROSES ------ NEGATIVE

“Guns and Roses! Would roses ever lead to any chaos? ” was my spontaneous reaction.

The security personnel replied in a casual but CLEAR ENGLISH –

“ Roses are colorful but the thorns are harmful, sir.”

Shocked with his poetic genius, I asked him to guide me to the hostel of My cousin. After feeding in the necessary particulars into the computer, there came the display-

Cross GC and a mile

Hostel’s name is NILE.

And then

Room no; one two three

This info is for free

( This is what happens if the Dean is an ardent fan of poetry. )

Anyway, there is a surprise, not only in literature of it but also in its content.

HOSTEL NILE!

“Yes sir, hostel Nile. You read it correct. We ran out of names of all significant Indian rivers and therefore, had to start picking foreign names.

Slowly absorbing all these poetic shocks, I could reach the hostel Nile, but to my disappointment I found no one there except for this boy.

Myself: where have all the people gone, so early in the morning?

Boy: All of them are in the LIBRARY.

Seeing my stunned face he continued…do you know where library is?

M: yes, of course…, it is somewhere near the Sharavathi hostel, right?

B(slightly irritated):that is not how we describe our library.

He started leading me to the library and while on the way,

B: The library of IIT Madras is the biggest one in Asia consisting of two big palatial buildings each five floors high, constructed in four different phases. The top of the building is at a height of 17 metres above the sea level and the latitude of the building is……………………..went on and on until we reached the destination.

M: ok, but tell me why so early in the morning?

B: The LIBFEST is going on.

M: oh my goodness! Now what’s that about?

B: this is a fiercely competed intra college meet where events like Spot-the-book, hide and seek are unique and stand out for themselves.

WAIT A MINUTE! Am I in our very own IITM? Many pearls have been added to its crown ever since it is established. Growing technological inputs,

Scientific research and many such factors have cemented its position as one of the premier institutes of technology.

But Did IITM really change? When I see a student running around with a floppy diskette desperate to get a print out just few seconds before the dead line of submission, or when I see non-stop burning of candles during the Quiz week in the hostels, the nostalgia of this place would rush into my veins. IT’S ALL THE SAME……... The Lingo of IITM, the intra hostel rivalries, the student body election or whatever, it’s all been the same whether in 1960 or today in 2020.

MY FIRST BLOG

This is my first blog. The feeling that anything i write here is so close to the entire world scares me. I wanted to create a blog from a long time but something pulled me back. Ironically, now when I start doing this i am not in good spirits. How insane is it to sit before a set of emotionless articles interconnected with a bunch of wires and scribble arbitrarily just few hours after knowing that someone who loved you the most has passed away.
I dedicate my first blog to this great lady who definitely deserves much more than this.........
She was born in the month of July in 1918 in a remote village in Andhra pradesh(India).India was in the shackles of Great Britain. British rule proved detrimental to the society depriving the rural children from getting a good formal school education. And it is uncommon to send a girl to near by town for any education. So, the immediate option was to lsend a girl away after performing her marraige.So,At the age of 15 she was married to a man,but he was much older than her. Moreover,He was a widower and had a son. But still she was considered lucky because he was a very respectable and a noble Jamindaar.

Her next phase of life was that of a typical housewife . Look after all the needs of the house and household people and “cook”. Yes, cooking was one relentless activity that used to go on because these words of her husband used to ring in her years”Any person who comes to our house must eat satisfactorily and only then will I eat”.....Days passed by..... Soon she was pregnant and gave birth to a girl .May be it was either the lack of awareness or for the want of a boy ,she became pregnant very frequently giving birth to five girls (one boy was born dead) in a row and finally giving birth to two boys.

The long journey laid ahead.Her roles began to multiply in number. As a step mother, as a mother of children of various ages,as a devoted wife and as an active member in the joint family……...extreme hardwork.Not getting carried away by her husband’s extreme generosity, she started looking into the future and realized the need of the hour is to save something for the better future of her children.Little she knew that this thought of hers would sustain the family. The worse was to come soon. Her step son got married ( to lady X,say) andhe started taking over the burden of the family. Unfortunately, all of a sudden he passed away of tuberculosis (reportedly).This is the time around which India just got its Independence and the Judicial system was not yet well established. This made it easy for the lady X and their parents to wage a legal war and snatch all the property that this family possessed......(obviously through unfair ways). But the worse was yet to come. At the age of 52 ,unable to withstand a sudden financial loss, her husband died of a heart attack just before the marriage of their eldest daughter……..

At the age of 34,just loosing her husband and was without a male support to a family with girls aged 16,14,12,8,7 years and boys 2 years and 6 months old ,only a lady of steel nerves and unparalleled courage can survive. In the years to follow it was hard work coupled withmental strength and great managerial skills she came through the difficult times.Some major setbacks she suffered after that…….

• Just when the eldest daughter became old enough to stand on her feet and earn something for the family, the unexpected happened. She suffered from Cholera and soon died.
• Another major incident which shows the empathizing attitude of this lady is to give away her elder son to another woman (who is a close relative to their family) when the latter pleaded her to give her a support in her old age (and thereby carryon their surname)in the form of a son. Just when eldest son of family was coming good, he was sent away only because she knew the fate of a family without a male support. (Although, after that her son remained as close to his mother as before, till this date)

What happened from those trying times till today is history which can be best narrated only by her. But one incident would stand in my memory for ever.When suggested by someone, about sending her twobys to a village nearby to do some agricultural work and thus add some revenue to the family in the process, she, rather than getting tempted for the short term gain, visualised the long-term damage that would occur to her children’s career. Had she agreed to that offer, may be, I would have been a farmer’s son in a remote village, but certainly not leading a comfortable life as I am now.

Yes, I am one of those lucky grandchildren she has had, in fact, the youngest of all . Today at the age of 87,when she embarked on her holy passage to heaven, She should be proud of all the Diaspora of her family living all across the world .

I dedicate this article to this great lady, MY grandmother, who is the most exemplary lady that I have (/would) ever seen(/see).

May her soul rest in peace………..

PUNCHLINE: Women, I always thought, are more powerful than men.