Freudian Slips

Freudian slips can kill relationships - a friend of mine recently posted 'I am through with 6 years of married life'. I commented 'Hearty condolences to you and yours!’.

He hasn’t spoken to me ever since! :(

Book Review - Malar Manjam (Bed of Flowers), T.Janakiraman

Malar Manjam (Tamil for 'Bed of Flowers'), by T.Janakiraman

A typical T.J. novel with all the essential ingredients that spice up the story. Based on the two places that I inhabit in my life right now - Thanjavur and Triplicane - I found this a riveting book.

The plot is simple. Ramaiah is all that makes an ideal human being - soft-spoken, honest, assiduous, loyal and just. Unfortunately for him, one by one, all the four women that he marries die within a year or two of marriage. The last wife, however, dies while delivering a girl baby. On the verge of death, she asks him to get married again and also asks him to get their just-born baby to be given in marriage to their neighbour's son, Thangarajan.

Ramaiah is too dejected to get married for the fifth time and instead he chooses to devote his life for taking care of his daughter and getting her married to the boy as his wife wanted. Due to unfortunate  circumstances, he moves to Thanjavur town from his native place. His daughter grows as brilliant as she was destined to be and his good friend Krishna Nayakkar and another lawyer ask him to let his daughter Balambal be allowed to study further by moving to Chennai. Meanwhile, Bali (Balambal) also starts practising Bharathanatyam and becomes an excellent performance, though not giving any public performances yet. 

Once she moves to Chennai for higher studies the deep crevices in her mind open and she finds herself in direct conflict with her father's wishes, having fallen in love with the lawyer's grandson, Raja, with whom she became acquainted on their arrival in Thanjavur. She is unable to choose between Thangarajan and Raja and she feels that she is in love with them both.

Was Ramaiah able to keep his promise that he made to his wife on the verge of her death? Was Bali's love for Raja fruitful? Did Bali become a dancer? Whom did she marry?

All these questions are answered by the T.Janakiraman in his typical, simple and easily-flowing vernacular style. He always ensures success in the subtle elements of time, place and people's behaviour that makes any area-oriented story to become a success. Reading the book, I feel proud to be walking on all the areas where these characters would have walked once - or did they?!

Occasionally, you feel that being an avid reader of novels and such love stories, especially conversant with the style of T.J, you can guess the end of the story. T.J catches you by surprise and the end you are hoping for is not what you end up reading. Also, the end that we are hoping for is only the ante-climax. The speciality of T.J, where he doesn't start at the very beginning and end with a 'they-lived-happily-ever-after' kind of climaxes, is seen in this novel too. The story starts at one phase of the characters’ life and ends somewhere in the middle, like how we start a train journey from one station and step down at the other, though the train is on its journey always.

The novel ends with an entirely unexpected twist you won’t even guess in your dreams. Brings tears to your eyes, but saying more will be a spoiler. The best 'emotional thriller' of a book and a treat for T.J's readers. 584 pages of lovable read!

Another favorite poem

This is another favorite poem of mine, from Kamala Das' book 'Closure: Some Poems and A Conversation'.

~~

No Envy

Perched on the very edge
of life, and wearied
by it all,
do I envy any mortal
the pleasures his youth
may earn for him:
no, no, truly
I don't.

~~

Sleeping Scorpions

(A poem by Kamala Das, from the book 'Closure: Some Poems And A Conversation')

In my grandmother's house
a long time ago, there were
some sepia-tinted photographs
framed and hung on the walls.
Whenever i lifted one by its edge,
a scorpion stirred itself
from its stupor and raised
its tail. They hurt so
when they sting, cried
my grandmother, they have
a venom stored within...

The past is best when left alone.

Non-Violence

Dr. Arun Gandhi, grandson of Mahatma Gandhi and founder of the M.K.Gandhi Institute for Non-Violence, in his June 9 lecture at the University of Puerto Rico, shared the following story:

I was 16 years old and living with my parents at the institute my grandfather had founded 18 miles outside of Durban, South Africa, in the middle of the sugar plantations. We were deep in the country and had no neighbors, so my two sisters and I would always look forward to going to town to visit friends or go to the movies.

One day, my father asked me to drive him to town for an all-day conference, and I jumped at the chance. Since I was going to town, my mother gave me a list of groceries she needed and, since I had all day in town, my father asked me to take care of several pending chores, such as getting the car serviced. When I dropped my father off that morning, he said, "I will meet you here at 5:00 p.m., and we will go home together." After hurriedly completing my chores, I went straight to the nearest movie theatre. I got so engrossed in a John Wayne double-feature that I forgot the time. It was 5:30 before I remembered.

By the time I ran to the garage and got the car and hurried to where my father was waiting for me, it was almost 6:00. He anxiously asked me, "Why were you late?" 

I was so ashamed of telling him I was watching a John Wayne western movie that I said, "The car wasn't ready, so I had to wait," not realizing that he had already called the garage.

When he caught me in the lie, he said: "There's something wrong in the way I brought you up that didn't give you the confidence to tell me the truth. In order to figure out where I went wrong with you, I'm going to walk home 18 miles and think about it."

So, dressed in his suit and dress shoes, he began to walk home in the dark on mostly unpaved, unlit roads. I couldn't leave him, so for five-and-a-half hours I drove behind him, watching my father go through this agony for a stupid lie that I uttered. I decided then and there that I was never going to lie again. 

I often think about that episode and wonder, if he had punished me the way we punish our children, whether I would have learned a lesson at all. I don't think so. I would have suffered the punishment and gone on doing the same thing. But this single non-violent action was so powerful that it is still as if it happened yesterday.

That is the power of non-violence!

30th January 1948 to 30th January 2012

More than six decades since he was shot dead, but his ideology lives on and keeps energizing the repressed people the world over.

Salute to the Father of the Nation, Mahatma Gandhi, on his death anniversary!

Advertisements - Why I love to hate them!

22nd December '11
 The other day I had asked a friend of mine for the local office address of consumer complaints and grievance redressal forum. My friend seemed a little bemused at the nomenclature. To simplify matters for him, I rephrased my question and asked him in simple terms as to where the ‘consumer court’ is. He seemed to be clear about the question though, I couldn’t say the same about the answer. Yes, he didn’t have a clue as to where this ‘consumer court’ was located in a nearby area. Not that he knew any offices in the far-off areas either.

To conceal his failure to provide me answer as well as out of sheer curiosity, he wanted to know as to why I wanted to know about the consumer court. I told him that I have a complaint that I would like to register with them. He became even more curious and started quizzing about the nature of the complaint, the motive and so on.

Since, he was my good friend (not just that, if I hadn’t given him the answer he wouldn’t have left me in peace) I decided to share the complaint with him. I told him that I was expecting to hit a jackpot in the form of a svelte and sultry woman as my girlfriend by way of using one of the much touted body-sprays, but it was never to be that way. He looked askance at me. Was I mad?! – this is what was in his mind and eyes, though he - for the sake of courtesy – did ask ‘You are just kidding, aren’t you?’

This question annoyed me no limits! Here I am, with a serious complaint over one of the most-disappointing results (two weeks of using that brand of body-spray and no woman fell for me yet) and there my friend is asking whether I am joking.

I decided to make matters clearer to him and explained as to how I saw a television advertisement in which a skinny-simpleton is turned into a mighty hunk once he sprays this magic potion (let my Asterix and Obelix, and of course the Druid Getafix forgive me!) all over his skin-clad skeleton-sack of a body. And not to miss out the number of physically-fit girls in inadequate dresses that suddenly throng him and start measuring his biceps and triceps, shoulders and what-not, with their bright nail-polish applied long fingers, while whispering whatever-they-said into that hunk’s ears through the lascivious red-lips (I wonder how come they could afford to dip their lips in such red/violet/blue paints, but wait, am digressing).

I also told my friend as to how a lovelorn loner like me decided to try this magical spray which turns any simpleton into a heartthrob hunk that can woo women aplenty. But I wasn’t greedy. Neither did I want such bulging musculature, nor did I want so many seductive women. I, for one, am so content with that somnolent half-inch flab around my waist, which I am trying to get rid by way of some 10 minutes of walk - in whichever day of the week it is possible – but which I am feeding unfailingly on a hourly basis with regular amount of oily ‘samosas’ and cheese-sandwiches and chocolate strips and what-not. Also, I didn’t want a red-hot woman in a nap-time attire.

I just wanted a pretty-face (OK, a very very pretty face) with little interest for men’s muscles (otherwise how can I expect her to love me?!) to hang around with and show-off to my colleagues and other married friends of mine and add some barrels of oils to the fire in their belly and increase the faren-heat (pun intended) of their sighs too. But neither worked.

My friend was already aghast listening to this. Something in his eyes told me that he wasn’t going to support me in this war of mine against that company for gifting me such a disappointment. Nevertheless, I decided to recall the other episodes that pushed me to file a complaint against the product and the company.

The day after witnessing this ad on the TV, I promptly landed up at my departmental store and asked for this particular body-spray. To my dismay, the store didn’t have the stock. I tried with another shop, but ill-luck chased me, with no stocks being available there as well. I was so sure that this product works for sure. Otherwise, how else do you explain the scarcity of the product in the market? Are there so many lovelorn loners like me – I wondered.

After spending some 20 minutes walk here and there, sweating out half a gallon as a result of the sultry (I meant the heat) climate and sending inside a couple of chocolate strips for the purpose of giving company to that half-inch-flab-around-the-waist-of-mine, I finally found my magic potion (again, expect Asterix, Obelix and Getafix to forgive me) hidden deep inside the shelves of a old shop in another area. How happy I felt that day!!! Even Columbus wouldn’t have felt that glad when he discovered India (or, is that America?!).

I promptly came home, applied it in the same way as the skinny-skeleton-to-be-turned-into-a-hunk did and started to my workplace. To my dismay, no one noticed the fragrance at the office. I wasn’t disheartened since my office is a male-chauvinistic, ouch, male-dominated place and hardly half a dozen women work there. Even half of that half-a-dozen is already married or engaged or in-a-relationship already. So my probability for success rests with the three women that aren’t married or engaged or not-in-a-relationship-already. I tried to try my luck with them. So, I just went around to their cubicles asking for some staplers, stationery or with serious doubts about how to make delicious aloo-tikki, though I don’t intend to make aloo-tikki on my own, in this birth. Now, to my dismay (again) none of the three felt any difference. The only feedback relating to my spray’s fragrance (!) came when one of those three ‘musk’eteers asked me to stand at a distance telling that I was smelling foul with sweat! What a disappointment!

I didn’t give up on my perfume yet. May be, my mistake that I hadn’t applied adequate amounts of my magic potion. I decided to try my luck the next day, with an increased dosage (or should it be sprayage?!). The moment I entered the lift, Lady Luck was smiling at me in the form of one of those three Charlies’ Angels. Yes, one of the three women was inside the lift and none else! My lucky day – I mumbled within and got inside the lift. The moment I was inside, she scrunched her nose and her eyes went crinkled. I was sure that the magic spray was working with her and she was starting to show the effects and she was showing signs of nausea, but wait a minute, wasn’t she supposed to simply swoon at me rather than threaten to puke inside the lift???

I was quite confounded at the way she ran off the elevator once we reached the floor. I decided to visit the next ‘angel’ in her cubicle. Unfortunately (it wasn’t to be), she had caught cold and with a blocked nose all that she could smell was only the cold balms. Still she managed to ask me the purpose of my visit and the slight smell that was beating her nostrils. I was sure that this was the girl meant to be and decided to linger on for a while, when my perfume could penetrate her phlegm covered nostrils and do its magic!

Then came the last straw, er, I mean, the last angel. I, for a moment, oscillated in my choice between these two. What if, the third one chooses me right there? Should I wait for the second person’s nose to get cured and let her be caught in my aroma and then decide? Or should I hit it out with the third person, provided she swoons for me? Pat came a noise/voice that shredded all my dreams – along with it, my hopes - to pieces. The third angel shouted, ‘Balu, (our office boy) how many times have I told you not to spray the air-freshener in such heavy amount? See, this whole place kills me with the stench of the room-spray. Please shut the a/c and open the windows’.

Could I have told her that it wasn’t the room-freshener but a romantic freshener, supposed to enliven my life by wooing in any of those three, free women?! And then this explains as to why the first woman scurried from the elevator and why nobody sat next to me in the bus!

Came back home alone, as always and decided to kill the time watching TV. Much to my irritation the first frame in the TV was that of that skinny-skeleton guy turning a hunk again and being surrounded by seductive women.

This is it. I decided not to take this anymore and sue that body-spray manufacturing company for misleading me and making me a laughing stock in front of my could-have-been-prospective-life-partners. That is the reason for my searching for the consumer forum.

My friend heard all this patiently and promised me that he will get the details and call me back the next day. Ever since that day, neither does this guy call me nor is he at his house whenever I try to visit him. Not just him, there are a couple of my other friends too that have done the same. Does any of you reading this know where the consumer forum in my area is?! Please let me know.

I still have a long list of products to raise complaints about – a toothpaste that didn’t make even a old-lady with fake teeth think of kissing me, a chewing gum that only makes chomping noise that disgusts even my ugly office-assistant, a dozen shirts that have lost their color and fabric after just a few washes that it only feels coarse when I touch them but doesn’t feel like heaven, a face-wash that has just added to my skin-allergy and a few others too. Can you please tell me as to where the consumer forum is?

Hello, are you reading this? Hello! Hello! Helloooooooooooooooooooooo!