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My Handbag�.the Survival Kit!

twinsmom — Sat, 06 Jun 2009 05:22:18 GMT

A woman and her handbag are inseparable. Once, a favourite blogger in another site had written about the things she found in her handbag. That had inspired me to write this. I have a decent collection of handbags. I suppose there is nothing strange about this as many women possess dozens of them, to match their clothes, moods and the occasion. But so far I have never picked up handbags to match my dresses or saris. I tote a handbag for its utility value rather than to make any fashion statement!

Ask any teacher (the females of the species) and she�ll tell you just how inevitable an attachment a handbag is! While I was teaching, my handbags used to be huge, strong and with as many compartments as possible. As for the contents� it was literally a storehouse. There would be half a dozen red ink pens, as many blues and blacks and an occasional green ( to fish out and offer to your supervisor when she fumbles around for one to sign your gate pass for early exit from school�!) You will find rectangular pieces cut out from old greeting cards and invitation cards, modified into timetable cards and exam times and such invaluable information. In our school, we used to have these �zero periods� to accommodate practice sessions of school activities. So, normal teaching periods would be chopped down, sending all timings and bells haywire. So it becomes essential to keep a record of the abridged timings�or you will be caught cooling your heels in the staffroom while there�s riot going on in the class where you are supposed to be!

Then, there�d be a list of student details. The administrative department and the Supervisors in the school used to take sadistic pleasure in demanding at the drop of a chalk, details of one�s class�like the number of Muslim, Christian and �other� students, the details of students� nationalities ( Indian, Pakistani, Bangladeshi, GCC countries, UAE nationals etc, etc, etc�), the list of chronic fee defaulters, list of phone numbers of problem cases, so it was a challenge to carry such details in a niche in your bag from where you can flick it out with a flourish and finish that tedious task and get back to the task of teaching�

There�d, then, be rulers, pencils, markers, erasers, sometimes even staplers and pair of scissors. There�d be odd assortments like handmade Teachers� Day cards, �I am Sorry� notes from contrite students, chocolates from students celebrating birthdays, keys to the classroom cupboard, and a whole lot of lost and found paraphernalia collected during the term�sheets of Panadol to share among your colleagues as and when headaches rage�

There�ll always be a copy of the handwritten question paper for the coming exam (which you meant to type out well in time�but�sigh!), the draft of the syllabus breakup you made in the beginning of the term, floppy diskets, CDs, sometimes even a half eaten biscuit that you quickly wrapped up in a piece of tissue and stowed in when the bell rang too soon at the end of the break and you were too busy clearing some student�s doubt�the current year�s school almanac� Sometimes even a 200ml water bottle finds its way into this survival kit! My husband used to say he was too scared to open my �school� handbag for fear of something springing out of it! He used to refer to it as a skip! One thing used to be conspicuous by its absence�MONEY! Teachers invariably carry little or no cash� maybe to drive home the point that we are ill-paid for the kind of work we do!

Old habits die hard� and even after quitting a teacher�s job, my handbag is still cluttered.
Instead of syllabus break up and question papers, I have bills, receipts, tickets, counterfoils. UAE malls have this funny habit of thrusting a fistful of coupons on you when you pay up after shopping. It starts with the Dubai shopping festival, then Sharjah Spring Festival, Summer Sales, School Reopening time, Christmas specials and ends with winter sales! Other than this there are promotions on Mall anniversaries! All those coupons are interred in my handbag, ( I have so far never won a single thing. When I scratch the �scratch and win� coupon all I get is dirt under my nail!) When my shoulders start protesting against the weight they have to bear, and I am forced to �spring clean� my handbag!

Spring cleaning the school handbag used to take place at regular intervals. Beginning of a new academic year, semester ends and the end of the academic year. But most of the clutter used to end up in the staff room locker (you just don�t know when a particular piece of paper may be required�!) or at home� till an irate husband, threw everything into the dustbin when you were in vacationing in India.

When my kids were young, my handbag used to have crayons, paper, medicines for all paediatric emergencies, packets of biscuits, chewies and wet-wipes. Now that they are grown up, I have only memories of those in them...

Cleaning the personal handbag involves a moral struggle. There are certain bills that I feel are unfit to pass under the eagle eye of the better half. Like a Dhs.75 bill for a lipstick, another 200 for a couple of books� Ignorance is bliss at times� when he is ignorant of such excesses on my part! Then there�d be coins, Indian and of UAE, lipsticks lost in the wilderness of the bag, addresses and phone numbers I was looking frantically for the previous week, feminine necessities, mobile, its charger, comb, a roll on perfume for emergencies, tissues, pens ( you will never find a teacher � ex or working- without at least two or three pens�) Panadol and Voveran by sheets and of course my wallet stuffed with medical cards, credit cards, ATM cards, license, photos of kids, husband, parents, business cards of husband, father, brother and whoever else gives it to you�more bills, counterfoils, receipts�

Buying a new handbag means transferring all these clutter into the new one. That is one reason I can�t be bothered to carry handbags matching my saris. For one thing, I have too many saris in various shades of green, blue, red and brown that it would be impossible to store all those matching purses and handbags in the limited storage space at home! So I always carry a universally matching black or beige handbag!

I admire women who find the time and energy to buy and remember to carry matching accessories. Some of my colleagues find time for matching sandals, shoes and bindis everyday. I love watching women at parties who are so color co-ordinated, they are a vision. But when it comes to emulating them�I am a colossal misfit. So I continue the way I am. Some call it clutter�.I call it comfort.

Funny� But My Frontal Lobe is working!

twinsmom — Sun, 31 May 2009 10:09:50 GMT

Humour is one genre I simply enjoy. I cherish my sense of humour and feel I owe it to my childhood of reading comics and my teenage years of reading P.G. Wodehouse , Richard Gordon, Henry Cecil and Art Buchwald at the insistence of my father� Even when I had my phase of addiction to Mills & Boon romances, I used to collect those issues where either the hero or the heroine had a good sense of humour � I still enjoy Tintins and Asterixes�and love the Americans for only one thing- their incredibly funny sitcoms. I can spend the entire day watching Everybody Loves Raymond or the latest on the cables like, According to Jim, Yes, Dear, Hope and Faith, Seinfeld� In the 80�s when we were in Iraq , the national TV used to air M.A.S.H and I would never miss an episode if I could help it�I fell for Alan Alda�s one-liners and his irrepressible wit. My dad had a collection of video cassettes of Mind Your Language, Different Strokes and That Webster Kid that honed our sense of Ha- Ha in our formative years. In fact, we can quote scenes from Mind Your Language in an easy flow of memories�

Reader�s Digest comes out with � humour special� issues. I had a great time. I normally pick up my copy of RD from the local Carrefour� but once, when we went to Deira City Centre, I could not resist browsing the shelves of a magazine corner there� There I hit paydirt when I found this issue and an additional Asian issue� Now who would buy two issues of the same magazine? I would and I did. Why would I do that? Because both were humour special issues and I wanted to know the difference.

The Asian Issue had a very interesting article on the scientific breakthroughs in the science of humour. �Scientists and humour!� you may think! And who says psychologists have no sense of humour? Here�s Dr. Ed Dunkelblau who says, �No one takes humour seriously!� Anyone who can come out with a great pun like that knows his business and Dr. Dunkelblau is a humour consultant and the former president for the Association for Applied and Therapeutic Humour. He and his colleagues are �probing minds and brains to locate our funny bones�.

No joke�.they have found out that humour is a whole brain experience with our �humour muscles� networking to send signals quickly to help us get the joke� get it?

It seems, we need very few of those muscles to understand simple slapstick� like laughing when someone slips on a banana peel and comes a cropper. But the brain needs to put in more effort to comprehend, jokes, cartoons and funny stories� Now I know why some people listen to a joke and look puzzled and worse� expectant� at the end of it! Idlers�.who can�t be bothered to work their own brains to understand the levity!

Using tools of neuroscience like MRI and PET scans and psychological research, these scientists are getting deeper and deeper into human brain�s capacity to react to humour.Their studies show that humour �helps us learn and keep us mentally loose, limber and creative�. Research with patients with damage to their frontal lobes and other brain regions showed that those with damaged frontal lobes did not �get� the humour, though they responded to the slapstick. This led to further research and the following conclusion has been drawn:
When we hear a joke, a language centre on the left side of our brain makes sense of words and send messages across to the right side of the brain. There the right frontal cortex delves into the regions that store emotions and social memories and shuffles the information till it clicks and we get the joke� Next a structure deep inside the brain pumps out a chemical called dopamine that makes us feel good and a primitive region near the base of our skull makes us laugh�.***
The funnier or more complex, the joke, the more the frontal lobes have to work� These great scientists believe that working those muscles can improve our mental agility and keep us mentally healthy� So go and enjoy the lighter side of life and you can laugh away mental atrophy!

Now� a bonus for those of my ilk�Scientists have also made an unexpected discovery: That men and women process funny differently. The analytical region of women�s brains was more active than the men�s� which suggests that women think more about whether something is humourous and that they don�t expect to laugh and so they enjoy it more when a joke works! For men, apparently, it is
� Hey � cartoon. Must be funny. Funny is good!� This apparently is the reason why comedians find women tougher audience�(information courtesy the American issue of RD).

Men and women bash each other up� Woman think men have the sense of humour of a nine year old boy� and men accuse that women do not have a sense of humour at all� But this according to Professor Regina Barecca this is a misconception� Women, according to Barecca, don�t like crude jokes, they don�t tell jokes (they tell stories) and women don�t enjoy humour that makes fun of others� physical shortcomings. By contrast, men make fun of everything. Women generally laugh at themselves�

Now all these discoveries make me feel good� For the time being I need not worry about my frontal lobe�.it is in shipshape� and like good wine, has improved with age�
Of course, I can control even that twitch at the corners of my lips when someone slips on a banana peel� but I definitely cannot control myself when I read�� What kind of fish performs brain operations? A neuro sturgeon !

Now that the technicalities of laughter is over, let me share some of the priceless gems I found in the two issues� I shall serve only the best� the one liners and the terse punchy ones� So get those frontal cortices of yours to work� and smile, grin, giggle, chortle, laugh and split a few stitches on your sides�!

What do the neurons in the brain use to talk to each other? Cellular phones!

Why don�t sharks attack lawyers? Professional courtesy!

Did you hear about the post office canceling its commemorative stamp honouring lawyers? It seems people were confused � they did not know which side to spit on. ( Marc galanter, Prof. Emeritus of Law at universityof Wisconsin- Madison)

Q: Give an example of stereotype. A: Sony.

LEGO has announced that they are shutting down their US factory and moving it to Mexico . LEGO employees say it is their fault because they made the factory too easy to take apart and rebuild somewhere else. ( Conan O� Brian)

Have you ever noticed that anybody going slower than you is an idiot and anyone going faster than you is a maniac? ( George Carlin)

In high school, my sister went out with the captain of the chess team. My parents loved him. They figured any guy that took hours to make a move was okay with them. ( Brian Kiley)

Women don�t want to hear what you think. Women want to hear what they think � in a deeper voice. ( Bill Cosby)

I went to a bookstore and asked the saleswoman, �Where�s the self- help section?� She said, if she told me it would defeat the purpose. ( Brian Kiley)

When I was in London , I went to buy some chocolates. The cashier was like,� That will be ten pounds.� I�m like, � Rub it in, why don�t you?� ( Carol Leifer)

As longer as there is algebra, there will be prayer in school. ( Larry Miller)

Dijon vu � the same mustard as yesterday.

Man who leaps off cliff jumps to conclusion.

Man who eats family photo is soon spitting image of his father.

Headlines news: Energizer Bunny in jail, charged with battery.

Did you hear about the dyslexic devil worshipper? He sold his soul to Santa.

*** These are from Reader's Digest

Parental Paranoia

twinsmom — Mon, 25 May 2009 03:48:29 GMT

Last Thursday afternoon, I was getting ready to go to the Dragon Mart in Dubai. The FM station 89.1 was running and it was the time for the hourly news. Busy, getting dressed, I just lent a distracted ear to it when suddenly a breaking news item sunk in and started sending panic signals all over my body. The report was that 5 or 6 Infosys engineers were killed in a bus accident on the Pune - Belagaum road. Common sense should have told me that my son could not have been on that bus. It was mid-week and in all probabilities, he must be sleeping, as he is on night shift. But common sense and motherly paranoia do not see eye to eye at such times. All kind of doubts stampeded my befuddled brain� Was Belagaum Pune road the one that leads to his office? I just know that he has to travel along some highway to his office. What if he had not gone by his bike (another source of constant worry for me) and opted to go by the office bus�what if that was the fateful bus�what if�what�what�what� I was going crazy.
I ran to the living room and prising the remote control out from an indignant nephew who was watching CN or Jetix or some high decibel gibberish, surfed all the news channels. Unaware of my mental agony, some were nonchalantly speculating on DMK supremo �Karuna� ( the media guys are real jokers��karuna� indeed! No wonder the guy upped and left for his home state where he will be referred to in a more reverent tone!) and his tactical horse trading, while others were busy yak-yakking with the Tom, Dick and Harry cricketer gurus about the impending IPL match�s outcome. Who cared about a bus accident that killed some young engineers!
The best way to console my palpitating heart would be to ring the fellow up and confirm all is well. With shaking fingers I dialed his number to be told in English, Hindi and Marathi that the Vodofone I was trying was out of reach. Not switched off, mind you, as is the case when he slumbers, but �out of range�. That means the guy was not sleeping he was out somewhere where there was no network.
PANIC�PANIC� PANIC�
What does a mother do under the circumstances? She takes her little black book in which she has noted meticulously down, the numbers of all his friends and flat-mates she had emotionally blackmailed him into revealing.
Interestingly, my son Karthik has given me the numbers of 4 other Karthiks and two other friends. Since Karthik1 (mine) did not respond, I try Karthik 2. He doesn�t respond either. Karthik 3 � ditto. For luck, I try the number of a �non-karthik�. His phone is busy. Before I suffer cardiac arrest, the 4th Karthik answers. When I ask him if I have woken him up, he is miffed. �I am in the office, auntie, he says.� I believe him as the network plays hide and seek as I quiz him about the accident- of which he knew nothing � Thanks to the bad network and my incoherence, not much sensible news is exchanged. And my landline starts ringing. It is my son, Karthik1. Quickly I bid goodbye to Karthik4 and ask my son Karthik1 if he is fine. � I was sleeping Mummy, why did you call?� he says sleepily. I blurt out about the bus accident and say, I just wanted to check if he was fine. �You know I will be sleeping at this time, Mummy� How can I be in any bus?� He sounds quite exasperated. Understandable as 3 pm is midnight in his schedule. I repeat the news of the accident and he groggily mutters,� Don�t get tensed up about things, Mummy�� Relief that he is okay though grumpy makes me snap back, � You will realize when you become a father!� and hang up.
He promptly went back to oblivion, for the next call I got from him was when he was in the office.
Though consoled that my offspring was fine, my heart was still agitated. The mother in me just could not leave things be. I surfed the channels again and again, all Hindi and English channels�then Malayalam news channels and finally, Kannada news in Udaya News Channel. I also rang up my neighbor who is from Belagaum and asked her to surf her Marathi news channels to see if there was any report of the accident.
It was time to drive to Dragon Mart and on the way, I made BIL turn on 89.1 FM again. But the news item was never repeated. IPL was the hot topic. It was only in the evening that my husband told me that he had come home and seen the news on Udaya News channel showing the Govt of Karnataka Volvo bus that had overturned killing 5 engineers of Infosys. Karthik called the next day with the news that they were fresh trainees who were travelling to Pune from Mysore for their posting.
Inside me it still hurts. It is not easy for any parent to accept the loss of a child. Losing a 22 or 23 year old whom you have given birth to and watched grow into a young man or woman is the greatest blow God can deal on a parent. Whenever I think of the parents of those 5 youths, my heart aches� it feels all heavy. I would not even try to console those parents. For, such loss in inconsolable. Only Time will heal the raw hurt and pain that must be coursing through the blood of all those parents. Like an ostrich burying its head to hide from adversity, I tried not to think of it the last two days. Today, I just googled for the news and hit the following report:
Five Infosys engineers killed in road accident
Karnataka Bureau
Six others die in two separate incidents in Belgaum, Karwar

Those dead were among 43 engineers who had just completed training in Mysore
Government announces compensation of Rs. 2.5 lakh each to the families of the deceased
Belgaum/Bangalore/Mysore: Five Infosys Technologies Limited employees died and 30 were injured when the Karnataka Road Transport Corporation bus (KA-01-F-8438) in which they were travelling from Mysore to Pune, overturned after hitting the road-divider near Shippur Cross under Sankeshwar police station limits, on the Bangalore-Pune National Highway No.4 at around 5.30 a.m. on Thursday.
A press release said that officials of the KSRTC rushed to the spot and made arrangements to shift the injured to to KLE Hospital in Belgaum city. They are stated to be out of danger.
The police said three passengers died on the spot while two others died of injuries later. The deceased have been identified as Ankita Vedprakash Arya (22) from Delhi, Kush Mishra (22) from Lucknow, Agnivesh Athidarshi (22) from Bihar, Tushar Agarwal (23) from Agra, and Rachit Mehrotra (22) from Jhansi.
The victims were among 43 software engineers who had just completed their training in Mysore and were posted to the company�s Pune unit. Accordingly, they were heading towards Pune to report for duty, in the air-conditioned bus belonging to Mysore depot of KSRTC. Infosys had hired the bus to transport its staff to Pune.
Official sources in the KSRTC said Ganapati, one of the crew in the bus, had suffered a facture in his leg and was under treatment at the hospital. The other crew member, Devaraj Gowda, was unhurt. Bangalore Staff Reporter writes:
Minister for Transport R. Ashok has condoled the death of the five engineers. He has directed officials to ensure medical help to all the injured. He also announced a compensation of Rs. 2.5 lakh each to the families of the deceased and has said that the medical expenditure of the injured passengers would be borne by the Government.
Mysore Special Correspondent reports:
Meanwhile, Infosys, in a statement, has expressed its deep regret over the accident involving its employees. The statement said: �It is with regret we state that five of our employees have been confirmed dead. Those who have been injured have been hospitalised and are reported to be in stable condition. Our sympathies and prayers are with the families of the deceased.
It added that support teams from Bangalore and Pune were on their way to the accident site to provide all necessary support to its employees and their families. Help desks had been set up at the Mysore, Bangalore and Pune development centres, and Infosys had been in touch with the families of the affected employees.
The help desk numbers are Mysore: (0821) 4071186 / (0821) 4071189; Bangalore: (080) 41140000 and Pune: (020) 3982855.
Reading this report did not make it any easier for me. Blogging about such a sombre news seems rather insensitive. But I just need to share my grief. My son may not understand my paranoia. Children will not. Such fear and panic we, parents, ( specially mothers) nurse inside us for years while we watch our kids grow in front of our eyes. I remember watching over my premature (born in the 7th month) twins during the first 2 years. If they slept in the cradle for too long I�d watch carefully for the chest movements to see if they breathed. I have even kept my finger under the noses of my sleeping twins to ensure myself that they are...well�alive and just sleeping. I have kept awake one whole night when my 16 year old son underwent surgery, and the doctor had connected a contraption to check the Oxygen saturation level, as he kept slipping off to some state of stupor during post op hours ( this same Karthik 1)� I still pray every morning as soon as I switch on my kitchen light and face the wide array of Gods I generally plead with to keep an eye on my twins� my heart still leaps into my mouth when they say they are going out sightseeing some place where there are mountains/ rivers/ sea/ traffic/ crowd etc etc� though I try not to transfer the panic into them. But I am sure after the second �take �care- okay �and- sms �me- when- you -reach -there � they must be getting the signals. These days, they tell where they have been more often rather than where they are planning to go.
Do fathers have such vibes? Do they undergo such bouts of panic? Or are they calm and indifferent and uncaring and callous and �so- just- like- a man� ? I don�t know. But I think I have occasionally seen flashes of anxiety in a certain father�s eyes when he tells me, � Chchod do yaar�Bachche bade hogaye�Sab teek hi hoga�. But the mother in me is never ready to just �Chchod do�. I guess only mothers will understand this.

Handwriting or Headwriting?

twinsmom — Sat, 20 Dec 2008 07:18:23 GMT

On the 16th of November, Gulf News ran this story:
http://rds.yahoo.com/_ylt=A0geu6Qha0xJ8w8BGpZXNyoA;_ylu=X3oDMTEzbjJqMzN uBHNlYwNzcgRwb3MDMQRjb2xvA2FjMgR2dGlkA1IyMDRfMTIw/SIG=137hh79ec/EXP=1229831329/**http%3a//www.mg.co.za/article/2008-11-15-indian-court-raps-doctor-for-bad-handwriting
I chuckled as I read this. Why is it that doctors write so badly? Can they actually decipher their own handwriting in a prescription if they were asked read it after a month? Did they write their MBBS exams in that handwriting? If yes, do you think the evaluators of their papers would have made head or tail of what was written? Is it mandatory for a qualified doctor to write in an indecipherable script?
As usual I googled out for info and got this in response: http://rds.yahoo.com/_ylt=A0geu5RxbkxJ1GIBY.JXNyoA;_ylu=X3oDMTEzbjJqMzN uBHNlYwNzcgRwb3MDMQRjb2xvA2FjMgR2dGlkA1IyMDRfMTIw/SIG=132k9paaf/EXP=1229832177/**http%3a//www.doctorsecrets.com/secrets-in-medicine/why-doctors-write-so-bad.html
Hmmm� When I was a child, the necessity to cultivate a good handwriting was tressed upon both at home at school. We had to write half a page of English, Malayalam and Hindi in what was called our �transcription� notebooks. It used to be checked relentlessly by the nuns and red lines stretched across pages with �chicken scratch� styles , scribbles and scrawls. Holidays were worse. On the first morning of the 2 month summer vacation, Mom would descend on us with an improvised all subject notebooks ( unused pages torn out from the notebooks used in that academic year sewn with a piece of twine) and issue orders to start writing one page of English, one page of Hindi and then some Math problems. After that we have to do some English and Hindi grammar exercises. My unfortunate siblings had to do even Sanskrit grammar. I used to escape because I had taken Malayalam as my second language and the intricacies of its grammar was untested waters for my parents, and so I was asked to revise on my own! No torture of �ramaha ramou ramaaha� for me!
Handwriting had to be neat and beautiful. Of the five of us three have good handwriting. My second brother�s handwriting was not as good as the eldest one�s� and my younger brother had the makings of a doctor if his handwriting was an indicator of his future� only, he became a �computer doc� started curing computers of their maladies!

My parents have enviably good handwriting. Dad�s was small and neat( he can hardly write now after his stroke) but my Mom�s is amazing. She writes in her inimically perfect style whether it is English, Malayalam, Hindi or Tamil. And her handwriting has not changed in the past 40 years as far as I know. Mine has undergone various transitions, of which I shall elaborate later. My maternal grandma had a beautiful handwriting too� and grandpa had a difficult one small and spiky and as he grew old it became very difficult to make out what he would cram into a postcard. My maternal aunt and uncle both have lovely handwriting � neat, clear and well spaced and formed.
My paternal grandfather had the habit of writing in a wonderfully calligraphic style. I remember him use a stylus fitted into a slot at the head of a brightly coloured wooden holder. I used to admire his name written so stylishly; C.R Balasubramania Iyer. and sigh with envy�
My own handwriting has undergone several changes over the years� trying to imitate the good ones I have come across� But, though mine is clear, it is hardly beautiful. After marriage I found that in my sasural handwriting was hardly cared for. I keep telling Appa ( my FIL) that he should start writing pages everyday to improve his handwriting. I find it so difficult to read what he writes at times� My husband has the worst handwriting in his family� he writes in an awful amalgam of capital and small letters in a childish print style! My only fear used to be that my twins might inherit his handwriting� but they, thankfully, didn�t. Of the twins, one writes better than the other�
When we were young, adults would often comment, � Thalayilezhuthu maadiri irukku� (Your handwriting looks like your fate!)
I suppose, good handwriting is a dying art. First of all, parents do not have the time to sit and make their kids write well� Teachers have crowded classrooms and hectic schedules and monitoring 30 to 40 handwriting styles is a Herculean task. Besides, ever since the computer has emerged as an essential part of families in the Middle and upper classes of the society, the art of writing in the traditional way has become pass�. Though students are expected to write neatly and clearly, there is no insistence on the correct formation of letters and numbers. Of course, there are always exceptions� some students write so beautifully that it is a pleasure to go through their work. There is a standing joke among teachers that very low achievers with good handwriting get good marks in the board exams curtsey, their handwriting!
Here I found some examples of handwriting used these days.
http://rds.yahoo.com/_ylt=A0geu6r.gkxJ6CcB6BhXNyoA;_ylu=X3oDMTEzbjJqMzN uBHNlYwNzcgRwb3MDMQRjb2xvA2FjMgR2dGlkA1IyMDRfMTIw/SIG=11udh1o5t/EXP=1229837438/**http%3a//www.drawyourworld.com/dnealian.html
I wonder why is it that we stick to Times New Roman or Arial while typing. Why can we not use a more personalized font for all our communications? Given a choice I�d set this as my personal font: This font reflects my personality!
Or this: This font reflects my personality! Or this: This font reflects my personality!
May be this: This font reflects my personality!
Or this: This font reflects my personality!
Or this: This font reflects my personality!
But chances are, I won�t be bothered to. It will be Times New Roman if I am using my PC and Calibri if I am working on my laptop� Don�t blame me� It is �de fault� of the system�hee�hee�hee� pun intended!
We used to cherish our fountain pens. To possess a Hero pen used to be the ultimate luck. The Hero with its sharp pointy nib would ensure cute rounded letters� whereas, those with broad nib ends would write bold but unsuitable for students. My grandfather had dip pens in multi colours�He also had waterman pens that were kept in areas taboo for us! There were the Sheaffers, again out of our reach� And the most coveted possession was an orange red Brahmam pen. My uncle is the custodian of that antique now!
My husband, with his very commonplace handwriting has a penchant for collecting pens. He has Sheaffers, Waterman and an array of Cross� I wanted to get him a Mont Blanc for our 25th anniversary�but ended up giving him something he really needs a GPRS thingummy that will navigate for him when I am not around! My BIL has a set of Mont Blanc� They are just divine�worth every fil you spend on them� Sigh!
The advent of ballpoint pens or Biros, I think, was the most sensational breakthrough in the art of writing in modern times� Thanks to Lazlo Biro, the Hungarian editor, we have today the easiest means to putting our thoughts in black and white�or red�.or blue! Cheap and �use and throw� pens have invaded the classrooms and studies� Initially there used to be restrictions regarding the use of biros in exams� but today, they are synonymous to writing. The rollerballs , the felt tipped, the micro tipped and the multi-coloured ones have revolutionized the field of writing.
The only comforting thought is that a good pen does not make a good writer� unless the writer uses his creative juices in place of ink, nothing worthwhile will issue forth of even a Mont Blanc� So doctors, use a measly biro� but be legible. Okay, we shall tolerate your hiding your identity with a mask on crucial times� like OP theatres�.but do write clearly for, the ambiguity in SUP ( superior) and SUPP ( suppository) can result in great discomfort for the patient� like REPS ( repetitions) and RESP ( respirations) or �qod� ( every other day) and �qoh� ( every other hour) �
All in fun, followers of Hippcrates! I admire your noble profession� even nurtured the dreams of becoming one eons ago � ( but my handwriting turned out to be the detrimental factor! Hee� hee�hee� Couldn�t help the parting shot!)

An Open Letter to My Niece

twinsmom — Thu, 11 Dec 2008 05:27:15 GMT

Dear Niece,
A month or so back, while we were returning from a party you asked me if I was patriotic. Your very tone had warned me that I was in for debate for which I was hardly in a mood, so I had asked you why you asked. You then audaciously told me that at home you, your brother and your cousin ( Did you say your mummy as well? I don�t clearly remember�but I hope not!) were one group as against your papa and Mukund Uncle. That they stated that they were patriotic but you didn�t think so. You again asked me if I was and I said, yes, I am patriotic. You laughed derisively and said, if I am patriotic what I am doing for India. I tried to explain to you that one doesn�t have to do something concrete to show one�s patriotic feelings. I said, I still stand in attention whenever I hear the national anthem� and that I take pride in my country�s heritage and culture. You refused to be convinced. I said, even though your papa and your Periyappa do not reside in India and work there they are all playing a part in the Indian economy. You with that cocky confidence the life in an affluent country like UAE has instilled in you, mocked at me and your Papa saying that we are pretenders. I, not savouring the unpleasant taste your attitude left in my mouth, begged to differ and closed the conversation.

Days back, we witnessed an unparalleled tragedy in Mumbai. I have been to Mumbai only twice� I do not even remember what landmarks I saw during those trips. The pictures I have in my mind of Mumbai have all been gleaned from Hindi movies and news channels. I have no emotional attachment to the place� Yet, I spent almost 50 of the 60 traumatic hours undergone by the people of Mumbai, glued to the TV screen� my heart bleeding, flinching and beating hard as I watched a city being ravaged by heartless terrorist animals!

I sat there bereft of speech as courageous police officers led from the front and fell pray to terrorists� bullets� I sat there looking for traces of the so called �netas� among the crowds of common man� I sat there wondering where the �senas� of MNS and the likes had holed up while �Indian� (mind you� not merely marathi� but those from all parts of India�) soldiers, commandos and policemen valiantly fought for 60 hours� I sat there in disgust when politicians tried vociferously to campaign while a city burnt� while they slung mud at others and pompously claimed their own tenure to have been better� they sounded as childish, stupid and inane as you, dear niece, did when you asked me if I was patriotic.

I reiterate� I am patriotic. So you asked me what I did to show my patriotism� I stood up in front of the TV screen, bowing my head in silence with the denizens of Mumbai�and your uncle, Periyappa, was right beside me. We grieved in our hearts, we still do, with the kith and kin of the unsuspecting victims of the wild animals let loose on us from neighbouring jungles with the intent to kill.

I join in the public outcry against the likes of R. R. Patil, Vilasrao Deshmukh, V. S. Achuthanandan, Naqvi and even L K Advani, who couldn�t find it in him to postpone a campaign in order to participate in an all party meeting summoned at such a time of national crisis� I wish there is accountability for such behaviour� I wish the common man would realize just how much these elected donkeys are making fools of us� Anger surges in my veins� anger that demands some positive action�

This anger, this silence and the tears that rolled down my cheeks as the Last Post sounded from the bugles as a Gajendra Singh or an Unnikrishnan or a Hemant Karkare was laid to rest� that is another shade of my patriotic sentiments. It is blazing red in colour, not unlike the flames that erupted from the iconic Taj Hotel� brown like the dried blood on the floors of CST and the rooms of the Trident, Taj and Nariman House� it is dark like the skin and uniform of the brave commandos who faced death defiantly� it is a raw green in its pain� BUT IT IS NOT YELLOW� like the skins of the politicians who are fighting for their chair�

Yes�I am deeply patriotic, dear niece� perhaps you�ll understand the feelings once you go back to the land of your birth and LIVE there� This land where we are temporary residents is safe, clean and rich� I enjoy its blessings and salute its leaders...yet, you are just passing through here. You don�t belong here. Any day, you can be asked to leave. When you have to roost at the end of the day, you may have to go back to the country where your parents were born and brought up� where I was born and brought up� Be it any corner of that vast heavenly land, you�ll realize, that�s home� That realization is the essence of being an Indian.

In the meantime, I�ll wait for you to grow up and mature before engaging in pompous debates for the sake of debating!

Affectionately ,
Periyamma.

Victim of Stereotyping

twinsmom — Thu, 02 Oct 2008 09:28:21 GMT

Once we went to the Burjuman Centre. Actually we had an appointment elsewhere at about 11.30 and not wanting take any risk with the traffic, we left home early�.and ended up too early for the appointment. Since Burjuman was nearby, we decided to drop in.

We entered the Nike shop and I as usual got curious glances from the filipina salesgirls. What would a sari clad middle aged dame want in a Nike showroom? I asked for football jerseys. Without batting an eyelid ( very professional of her�) she asked me , � For gents or ladies, Madame?� I couldn�t help giggling. Obviously I didn�t look the football jersey kind at all. For gents, of course, I said�for my sons. She smiled and led me to the area where Barcelona jerseys vied with Juventa�s.

I didn�t find the kind my son wanted, thanked her and walked out. Next, at the Adidas shop, they had every other club than Manchester United. Disappointed, we both walked on. Then I saw it� the Virgin Mega Store. I remembered that the twins had asked for original DVDs of Prison Break. A very reluctant RP followed me into the shop. He knows I go haywire inside that shop. Virgin Mega Store personnel in Mall of the Emirates and Deira City Centre are familiar with me� But this was the first time in Burjuman. As I waltzed alone towards the English DVD section a red uniform clad youth started trailing me. First, he told me, Ma�am, No Hindi titles here. As I looked at him surprised, he added condescendingly, �This is the English Section, Ma�am.�

I glanced at his name tag and said, �I know, Adrian. If you can help get me the first season of Prison Break�.� I could see him mentally shrug as he told me, �Sorry, we are sold out.� Then as the salesman in him surfaced, he said, �We have the second season, though.� I said okay and picked up the second season. I felt like telling him I have already watched the complete first season with my twin sons and half of the second, but why should I bother, I thought.
The suddenly my eyes fell on the seventh and eighth seasons of Everybody Loves Raymond. Now I am an avid fan of the series and own all the 6 seasons. With a whoop of joy, I picked up both. I could see my poor husband wince right behind me. I handed all the three collections to Adrian and asked him if he could check out at their branches in the Mall of Emirates and Deira City Centre if they have the first season of Prison Break so that I could pick it up from there. He disappeared for a while and brought back the news that it was available in Mercato Mall and he could get us a copy in two or three days. I gave him RP�s mobile number and name and told him to give a ring as soon as he got it.
As I was about to turn back, he told me Ma�am we have the latest Hindi hits and pointed and enunciated with a heavy accent � Jhoom Barabar Jhoom�and�� I said serenely, sorry I am not hooked to Hindi movies. Then, as we both moved towards the counter, I said, � Adrian, appearances can be deceptive, right?� he had the decency to look ashamed.
At the counter, there was another youth, an African by birth obviously, who saw my collection and said, �Good choice, ma'am�And I nodded to him, �Yeah, I know.�
I hope Adrian learnt a lesson that day. You cannot stereotype people or take an arrogant attitude. My wearing sari had nothing to do with his duty as a salesman. Where is it said that only jeans clad people can enjoy American sitcoms and English movies? He was young� and I was ready to forgive him� But, if he acts snooty, the next time I am in the shop� I�d give him a piece of my mind!

Friday the Thirteenth

twinsmom — Wed, 18 Jun 2008 03:36:57 GMT

Last Friday was the most dreaded date�Friday the thirteenth, a day of bad luck. It seems the fear of Friday the Thirteenth is called �paraskave-dekatria-phobia� (sounds worse than mere dread for a bad day doesn�t it?) It is Greek for the words�Friday, 13 and phobia�The origin of the superstition is unclear, many believing that it refers to the13th of October, 1307, a Friday, the date they arrested many knight Templars in France.

It was to be a day of misfortune for the travel sector for, it was estimated that nearly a billion dollar sales wouldl be lost as people don�t travel on Friday the 13th.
It is associated with the last supper, when Judas the thirteenth guest denounced Jesus who was crucified on a Friday.
I did a little bit of reading on the matter as I was intrigued by the day and date. Here are some interesting facts:
Now, �13� is considered a very unlucky number. It is believed that if 13 people sit down to dine together, the first one to leave the table will die that year, or all will die within the year. In France, it is customary to have a �quartorzieme� or a fourteenth guest in hand in case of any one dropping out of a dinner party invitation.
Many cities don�t have a 13th street or 13th avenue�many hotels don�t have 13th floor, ( I mean �they rename the 13th as 14th�of course). Hospitals with multiple operation theatres don�t have a no.13. A witch�s coven is supposed to have 13 members.
Funny how the school multiplication tables end with twelve times twelve�

There are some very interesting theories about the fear of 13. One is that primitive man started counting his ten fingers and then his two feet and was comfortable with 12. Anything beyond that was terrifying for him�( which, I feel is a bit far fetched because, I wonder what happened to his toes�.did he develop toes as he progressed with counting?!!)
But the date was luckier with the ancient Egyptians and the Chinese both of whom considered it auspicious�

There is a school of thought that suggests that 13 has been deliberately vilified by founders of patriarchal society who felt it represented feminity�13 is considered an auspicious number in the prehistoric goddess worshipping cultures where 13 represented the menstrual cycle of the goddess and the lunar year was represented by 13x 28 = 364 days.

I also chanced upon a folk lore from the Vikings regarding this:
Loki, the Evil One
Twelve gods were invited to a banquet at Valhalla. Loki, the Evil One, god of mischief, had been left off the guest list but crashed the party, bringing the total number of attendees to 13. True to character, Loki raised hell by inciting Hod, the blind god of winter, to attack Balder the Good, who was a favorite of the gods. Hod took a spear of mistletoe offered by Loki and obediently hurled it at Balder, killing him instantly. All Valhalla grieved. And although one might take the moral of this story to be "Beware of uninvited guests bearing mistletoe," the Norse themselves apparently concluded that 13 people at a dinner party is just plain bad luck.

Now Friday has its own share of superstitions. It is believed that one must not cut nails on a Friday ( in fact, Tam-brahms still hold on to this�and also don�t get a hair cut on a Friday)
Ships don�t sail on a Friday. This may be because of the following incident, says David Emery in Urban Legends and Folklore. The British government, in an attempt to do away with the myth that Friday is unlucky, commissioned a ship and named her �Friday� and launched her on a Friday, selected her crew on a Friday and even hired a man named Jim Friday to be her captain. H.M.S. Friday embarked on her maiden journey on a Friday�.to be mysteriously lost and never to be seen or heard from again! So much for their attempts!

NASA once decided not to succumb to such �unscientific frailty� and launched Apollo 13 in April 1970 at 1313 hours�and on April 13th an oxygen fuel tank exploded�.(enabling cinematic history called Apollo 13th). In 1981, NASA had to cancel a launch scheduled for Friday the 13th due to some technical glitch.

It is said that Fear of Friday the 13th is the most widespread superstition in the USA, with almost 21 million Americans suffering from a morbid fear for this day and date. Many do not go to work on this day, or eat out or plan a wedding on this date.
Now can we manipulate our calendars to do avoid Friday the 13ths? We can�t. Every year will have one, two or three Friday the 13th in it. 1981, 1984 and 1988 had three each�

So did they day spell doom and misfortune to you? It was a very ordinary day for me� I was about to change the bed sheet�but I didn�t�Heh�heh! A clear cut example of subconscious susceptibility to superstition�? No way� I did the reading up on this topic much later�!

Good Old News!

twinsmom — Sun, 15 Jun 2008 07:51:25 GMT

�Iyam aakashvani� Samprathi Vaarthaaha shruyantham�.Pravachaka(ha) Baladevananda Sagaraha!�
These were the first lines I learnt byheart in Sanskrit other than the slokas I had learnt as a child. This is the beginning of the Sanskrit news bulletin on All India Radio. After this, for all I know, Baladevananda Sagara might have been using Latin and Greek �.till he finished up with �Idi vaarthaaha!� Though I could not understand much of Sanskrit� this news session meant much to me!
Like these exquisite nostalgic memories of childhood nights when once we were all tucked in, the lights would be off and my grandfather would switch on the huge Murphy radio and a stylish voice would speak: This is All India Radio. The news read by Lathika Rathnam� ( I am not sure if she was Lathika, Lothika or Jothika�. But her surname was definitely Rathnam)� And listening to her clipped voice, I�d drift off to sleep, dreaming of my own voice replacing hers. There are other voices deeply embedded in my brain and heart. The debonair voice announcing, ��the news read by Melville De Mello� or the desi touch in �Yeh Aakashvaani hai. Ab aap Deoki Nandan Pandey se samachar suniye!�

Once TVs invaded our homes, the Murphy and the Philips radios became show pieces and we started �watching� news. While listening to the radio news, the newsreader remained an enigma�an unseen presence giving us the good, bad and the ugly of the happenings around the world, but Doordarshan news gave us the visual angle to the whole thing. Often, there would be comments on the news readers� looks, hair style and attire�rather than register the actual news�
But those readers are still very vivid in my memory. Who can forget the likes of Komal G. B. Singh and Salma Sultan! The very name Neethi Ravindran and Rini Khanna not only brings back their faces�but makes their voices echo inside the cockles of one�s heart. So many of them� with unforgettable faces and voices� Geethanjali Aiyer, Rama Pandey, Usha Albuquerque, Manjari Joshi, Sangeetha Bedi, Minu Talwar, Sukanya Balakrishnan, Avinash Kaur Sareen� all Doordarshan news� femme fatales� While There were the dashing males ( some for looks�some for the timbre in their voice�.) - Tejeshwar Sngh, J. V. Raman, Shammy Narang, Ramu Damodaran, Bhaskar Bhattacharya and the best of them all� Sunit Tandon! They had an aura about them� there was a dignity in the way they presented news.

Today, television news no longer attracts me. For one, nobody watches DD news at home. I don�t have access to DD news channels in Sharjah. So, what is left is the cacophony of private the news channels who are in the rat race to enhance their viewership by hook or crook! News presentation has become synonymous with ugly sensationalization!
Everything starts with a �Breaking News� tag or �Flash News� tag! Telecasting some inane news item every half an hour, again and again leaves a very bad taste in my mouth.

I mean, who�s bothered if Aishwarya weds a blasted tree or Gere smooches Shilpa in the public�or some inspector general drapes himself in a saree and dances and sings� It starts early in the morning and goes on and on and on till late night�news items hitting the screen 50 to 60 times � There is a saying in Tamil��Arachcha maavaye arakkaradu� (grinding the dough again and again�) That is what these young men and ladies do, using a funny amalgam called Hinglish and treat both English and Hindi with murderous instincts�

What gets my goat is their �licence to libel� as one news reader (Nidhi Razdan )puts it in the Week� In the name of investigative reporting , much violation of the code of conduct is carried out! Of course a Barkha Dutt, Rajdeep Sardesai or a Srinivasan Jain do come out as very clean exceptions to the rule� But the presenters who pronounce judgment on the happenings around the world do jar the senses! Sometimes they are so very rude to the specialists and guest speakers whom they snub before their opinion has been fully rendered. If you don�t have more than 30 seconds for a person, why do you ask for his opinion�? I believe sometimes they set up suspects and miscreants to talk to them in the studio and then turn them over to the police, shocking the people who agreed to talk to them in the first place. It's all about showbizz!

Down south such tactics seem to be missing. News is presented the traditional manner�With sedate, seated readers ( unlike the young and restless ones standing in front of huge screens, literally emoting their way through news reporting in melodramatic and bombastic language!) present news� The hype and glamour of certain main stream private news channels are missing here. Doordarshan, I suppose, still continues to report in the traditional manner�though they have also modernized their modus operandi� My sons loathe these channels that sensationalise every trivial item that come their way. They still prefer DD news and the newspapers for information gathering. They may be a minority among the present day youngsters who like the glitz and glamour of the media world�

Gone are the days of radio news. Very few people listen to the radio now- a- days. My father in law is one such person who cannot drift off to sleep without listening to the AIR news bulletin after lunch and late at night! I am sure there are millions of his ilk around India, where the addiction to TV hasn�t taken away the charm of the Radio shows. So we still listen to Yuva Vani, Subha****ham and carnatic music, thanks to Appa.
I remember with a fond heart, the static which gives way to � Vande Maatharam� and then the Radio would be there at the background like the unseen presence of my mother, to comfort, console and generate a feeling of well being!
North � East- West- South = News� But today it is an acronym of Nonsensical � Exaggerated � Whacky � Sensationalisation! What a penalty for progress!

The Mirage in a Writer's Life

twinsmom — Thu, 05 Jun 2008 03:57:46 GMT

Once the newspaper had a very interesting piece of news for me. It was about a Bangladeshi who had found a novel way of ensuring peace and quiet for himself. Salim Hussain Gaus, a carpenter and writer in the making, had found an innovative way of avoiding company by building himself a wooden platform atop a�.palm tree! The 25 year old had built the platform and a winch operated by a pulley to haul himself up to a height of 30 metres, where he spent a good part of the day reading and writing. Quite creative, wasn�t he?

Well� writers have been accused of not coming down from their ivory towers and Gaus� innovative way of avoiding company only vindicates the theory of ivory towers. Probably, it is calmer up there and peaceful enough to pursue one�s literary pursuits.

If Wordsworth is to be believed, poetry is �the spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings from emotions recollected in tranquility.� In fact, not just poetry, any kind of creative writing is. �Tranquility� is the operable word here. The powerful feelings overflowing spontaneously while one tries to write are... murderous ones! Especially, in a scenario like the following:

A bulb flashes in the creative room of your brain, illuminating for the fraction of a second, a thread of an idea you feel you can work on. Before it gets lost in the labyrinth-like archives of your brain, you want to pen it down. So you begin feverishly capturing that flash of genius onto hardcopy.
�Rrrrrring!� goes the nasally mechanical or mechanically nasal tone of the telephone.

You feel like giving Alexander Graham Bell a piece of your distraught mind for inventing the confounded contraption. You ignore the ring which makes it increase its decibel level to such a level that your � starting its spontaneous overflow� idea is gettng drowned in the noise. You pause, putting your mind on hold and pick up the call�only to listen to the dead tone.

Gratefully you return to penning down the leftover scraps from memory�and it starts ringing again. Ok, you think� let me get this over with. It is a distant relative who wants you to catch upon her life in the past half year. You listen , you grunt, humph, smile audibly�anything except click your tongue in impatience�which is actually what you want to do. Finally, the caller gets another call, so decides to ring up.

You get back to the �spontaneous overflow� which is reduced to a pathetic trickle! Still many a mickle makes a muckle and all that jazz�and you try to work on that trickle�Slowly the trickle becomes a flow and you sigh satisfied�when the doorbell rings!
It is the acquaintance you met last month in some get- together and you had invited casually to look you up! "I was just passing by. Are you busy?"
Busy? Me? No�! Not at this time of daybreak�By the time you finish up acting the friendly host - plastic smiles, aching cheeks et al., the spontaneous overflow has vanished� lost like the files in the government departments.

And they accuse us of creating ivory towers�what we need are Isolation Wards where we can work on that �spontaneous overflow� because there�s no tranquility worth writing home about!
If a two-bit blogger like me can feel so strongly, just imagine what the Wordsworths, Conan Doyles and Dan Browns would have felt� Janaab, I rest my case!

No wonder, Gausbhai is forced to winch himself up� Naturally, there�s no hullabaloo up the palm tree�and the view of the world is more benign from up there! Lucky Salim Hussain Ghaus! Our watch man keeps the terrace door locked�sigh!

Photgraphs �memories Frozen In Time!

twinsmom — Wed, 04 Jun 2008 13:50:04 GMT

Some people think that there is nothing more torturous than being foisted with someone�s family album and having to go through the who�s who of their family tree. Well�.I am an exception. I love going through albums� even that of semi acquaintances and strangers� Sometimes it makes good conversational gambits and icebreakers when you are hard up for conversation.

All of us love going through our own family albums� not everyday, perhaps, but on certain occasions when we don�t have anything better to do�or on rainy days, when you are cooped up inside the house with nothing better to do� or when your kids are at their pestilential best!

Last time I was in India, I went through the many volumes of albums we have collected over two or three generations and it was as though the past was coming out in flash backs� each photograph associated with a particular memory of places� people and occasions�

These memories, like Hindi movies, are in different tones� Some Black and white� some Eastman colour, and the others in the present day digital colours� But the most valuable ones are in the well worn cardboard covered old albums� the sepia toned photographs- so traditional� so distant in time and style that they are like relics�
Like the ridiculous ones with nervous newly weds in their wedding fineries � the man seated with legs crossed looking all professorial in his grey suit and tie and the woman in her dark silk sari and puff-sleeved blouse standing next to him� looking too terrified even to smile� Or the new born baby on top of a table in the studio�stark naked�with a scenery in the background and a puzzled look on its face or siblings of various ages trying in vain to control their laughter !

These pictures sit snugly in place in the tiny triangular pockets that hold their corners.
Then there are the graying or sepia toned group photos of uncles, aunts and cousins once, twice or thrice removed�all looking so happy to be within focus! As one jogs down memory lane, you see with awe how much hair someone had, how quaint the style of dressing was at a particular time� and how different people look now.
I, once, took a black and white photograph of mine to the staff room and circulated it among my friends�along with some pictures taken recently� No one noticed that it was my picture till some sharp eyed friend exclaimed, �Look at this�. Is this you?� and when I nodded came out with � My! You seem to be suffering from Samosa Deficiency Syndrome!� ( I used to brunch on samosas from the school canteen during the breaks!)

The wedding albums are a treat� Especially when you watch it with your spouse� It is like getting married all over again�in a very private ceremony of course! You start giggling and commenting�then you start recapturing whatever happened on that auspicious day� share gossip about various people in the background�and you just feel all newly married again�

I hate those photographs where everybody is lined up and forced to say �Cheese�� it is so abnormal! Or pseudo normal! Photographs should be taken at unguarded moments� to catch that vibrancy and vivacity. Especially pictures of kids. Catch them unawares and you have such lovely memories associated with the result- better any day than that of a studio photograph of your kids in their Sunday best and �Say Cheese� smiles.

Technology has its own advantages� Today, there is so much of professionalism involved in taking photographs. Au contraire�the phrase �child�s play� comes to my mind when I see parents handing their digital cameras to their 4 and 5 year olds to take pictures of theirs� My Dad never trusted any of us with his camera� ever! No one dared to ask since dropping a camera, albeit accidentally, was tantamount to criminal offense and was beyond any mercy! Besides, there was too much of technicalities there, in focusing, exposure, flash bulbs and whatnot! Today, cameras are user friendly � I mean toddler friendly!

Recently, I happened to see the wedding albums of my friend�s son and I was gob-smacked by the sea change in that sector. Two humongous volumes which weighed a ton- each! The pages of the albums were the photos� enlarged and in matt finish. Some were in glorious shades of digital colours and others deliberately black and white and even a contrived sepia� I told myself�this is worth getting married. I whistled in appreciation and a said, it must have cost 10 K? �3 whistles!� came the reply! WOW! People are spending 30K on a mere wedding album? I visualized my own wedding album 24 years old� The one in black and white with both RP and I looking like babes in the wood surrounded by newly acquired in laws and a hundred million new relatives! Of course, we are not so antediluvian�So we also have our album of colour photos� which are yielding to pressures of time (unlike us ) and turning sickly yellowish� the two of us still looking so scrawny and so gauche�

Then there are the albums that are closest to one�s heart� of one�s kids. Whatever the world may say, there is a lot of truth in the adage �Kakkakku than kunju ponkunju�
( For the crow, its baby is the most beautiful!) For, don�t we cherish the photos of our sons and daughters as they smiled, cried, got fed, bathed, got hair cut, and even potty-trained ( honestly�. To my twin sons� embarrassment, I have proof of them on their �thrones��.which they call as gross as the ones in which they are stark naked!) � On those days of new parenthood, each fancies himself as innovative and creative as Santhosh Sivan and clicks away gloriously, every waking moment of the first child� In fact, the first child gets more snapshots to his credit than the following ones� I wonder if the parents will have the energy or the time to remember to take out their camera with their 4th or 5th offspring!

Grandparents are good collectors of one�s kids� photographs � They just love getting a nonstop supply of their grand children�s photos� and they love posing for photos with the grandchildren�. And the expression on their faces? A combination of guilt that they never took such pictures with their own kids� and the delight and thrill of holding / carrying the grandchildren in their arms!

The art of maintaining albums is becoming pass�. Thanks to digital cameras and the art of downloading pictures oneself and writing them on CDs� the joy of a traditional photo session is gone. In fact, I despise even that terminology� Imagine �writing� your photos? It is, I suppose, better than �burning� your photos� what happened to the �positive� world of � developing� or �getting prints�? And, worse than that, there is no fun anymore� No longer do we have those few that we tuck under the better ones- the ones which show us in our true form� with an ultra large flared nostril� or the one where your ears stick out like those of Mr. Spock�or the generous flabs of cellulite captured in celluloid� or caught in an odd angle by the candid camera� Today, we just delete a bad picture� with a couple of clicks� And lose so many opportunities to chuckle and grimace over! The flip- side of technology!

�and I hate the idea of storing pictures on CDs�. Of course, they may have more shelf life� But turning the leaves of an album is more emotionally satisfying than watching a slideshow on TV or the PC screen! I read somewhere that the quality of virtual images or �Data� stored on a CD may undergo changes with time and exposure to sunlight etc, etc� but I cant imagine the pictures stored getting �character� like the ones on regular albums� The paternal uncle who looks formidable� the cousin who poses like Rishi Kapoor in Rafoo Chakkar� your own parents looking incredibly and vulnerably young� the fading picture of a deer taken as long shot from the picnic ground� �nibbled by silver fish� memories that have been frozen in time� that tugs at your heart strings when you leaf through them� I still cherish all those albums in the dark corners of the huge cupboards� As I flip through them I feel like singing� It�s yesterday once more!

Memory (that )Sticks

twinsmom — Sat, 15 Mar 2008 08:40:23 GMT

I have great admiration for people with great memory power. My Dad would always use a Sanskrit term �ekasandhigrahi� for those extraordinarily brilliant people who could remember the things they have read, taught or heard once. I suppose in English they are called people with �Photographic memories�! Though there were none of that caliber in my friend circle when I was a student, there were some who effortlessly remembered what they revised whereas, the others �like me� would strain the grey cells to regurgitate what it had assimilated earlier. My sons who are endowed with a generous amount of brainpower do claim that they are leagues behind some whose mental make up have this �ekasandhigrahi�istic prowess.
I have a flair for remembering mobile numbers� only if it matters to me. I can at the moment recall the numbers about 15 mobile numbers with area codes and a couple of dozens of local numbers- friends�, relatives�, local cinemas, restaurants, groceries etc, etc. My kids have changed their SIM cards thrice in the last one year, from the Tamil Nadu one to the Karnataka one to the current corporate number they use� But, somehow, I am able to absorb the change and register the new number the moment I start using it. Now comes the funny part. If anyone asks my land line number, I�ll pause albeit a couple of seconds before reeling the number off. Initially I had found my own mobile number impossible to memorize, but, with my son�s help I learnt to split it into comfortable units which I could recall easily.
I am also good at remembering roads and landmarks even after a lapse of months before we go to the place again. But I can never remember recipes of new dishes I try out� especially the ingredients and the quantities� I can remember every single Hindi song that I had learnt when I was a teenager� but I find it impossible to remember the lyrics of any recent song� however much I like them. I remember all the slokas and sthothrams I have learnt in my Tam-Bram home of the 60�s and 70�s� I can not memorize any today�
To keep your brain in good working condition I suppose you have to keep using it. The brain is one machine that will never wear down with use. Today, when I am getting trained in the use of an abacus to manipulate additions, subtractions, multiplications and divisions� I realize the importance of brainpower. There was a seminar on brain power and we were asked to speed-write numbers 1 to 9 and then 0 as fast as we could � Seemed childish. Then we were asked to hold the pencil in our left hands and write the same. Immediately there were loud groans in the room. �Impossible�, I said to the resource person. �I can not write with my left hand!� You can, he said firmly. And�I did. The first time it was not neat� the numbers looked crooked and I wrote 5 rows of the numbers in 2 minutes! Then, after a break and some pep talk from him, we tried again� This time I was able to write 7 rows and in a neater manner. �Nothing is impossible for your brain, he said� It is all in your mindset� And your perseverance skills� the more you activate your brain cells, the more they will remain active�� I have started believing him�what seemed impossible a week back is quite easily possible for my fingers now. I have started questioning the proverb, �You can�t teach old dogs new tricks!� You can�.it all depends on the dog�s mindset!
When we were kids, my Dad once brought home a set of books called Memorax System. It was all about shortcuts to aid learning. How to visualize mental pictures and associate them with the concepts you are learning. We were asked to go through the book and apply it in our learning! We found the technical language used so difficult that we stowed the books in the recess of the bookshelf�
But that doesn�t mean we did not use shortcuts to remember formulae and definitions. To survive one�s student life, one has to have some personal code of remembering stuff� It is all a question of trial and error for those who are anything but �ekasandhigrahis�! These permutations and combinations of codes worked in History where we had to remember dates� Things like VIBGYOR ( Richard Of York Gave Battle In Vain ) and Rhymes like �Thirty days hath September� were useful. I read an article by Bob Pease who has given a mnemonic used by medical students for remembering all the nerves in the head. It goes like this : "On Old Olympus' Topmost Top, A Fat-Eared German Viewed A Hop."

I remember reading somewhere about a teacher telling a particularly dull student to use �Twinkle, Twinkle little star. Power is equal to I Squared R. After the test, when he asked the student if he had remembered the formula, the student had scratched his head and said, I thought and thought and finally recalled the poem you told me, Little star in the sky�Power is equal to R squared I !
Mothers are the most innovative mnemonic generators. I have seen well meaning moms giving all kinds of tips and associated words to their kids to remember dictation words, spellings and formulae. My sister in law uses words which sound like Kannada words to form mental pictures in her kids� mind. So long as it works, anything goes.
As kids, we used to play Pallanguzhi which actually prompts you to use a lot of mental calculations. With my kids I used to play Memory cards with around fifty pairs of cards to be placed face down and each player opening two at a time to claim pairs. If your cards don�t match, you replace it in the same place. The idea is to remember where you have seen a particular card. My kids beat me hollow every time we played this!
The other day, my sister rang me. She couldn�t control her laughter when she recounted what her son Aditya had done in his Tamil test. He came from school with his Tamil paper and told his mother that he had lost a mark in the question for writing meanings. For the word �Magizhchi', instead of writing �Aanandam� he had written �Kolangal�! Talk about TV influencing kids� mind! So much for mnemonics�.! The brain sure is a funny machine!
I keep doing my crosswords and Sudoku religiously every morning. I feel that I am exercising my brain when I am doing this. My grandfather used to quote stanzas of verse from the poetry of Wordsworth, Keats and Shelley� Both my father and my grandfather could recite the Elegy Written Upon a Country Churchyard, so beautifully that out of sheer envy, I learnt it by heart�.Still I can remember only a few stanzas of it today� My grandfather remembered the whole poem when he was in his eighties� Are we degenerating as a generation? Today, CBSE does not insist on students learning poetry by heart. My generation has learnt many a poem with punctuation, to be reproduced verbatim on our answer sheets during exams, often enabling us to score a full 5 marks making that arduous task of learning it as given in the textbook, well worth it. Today, kids need not do that. Today, they don�t even need to learn the grammatical definitions. They learn grammar through usage. They end up using double negatives and argue that it doesn�t sound wrong� Or use a Simple Past tense where we were insisted upon to use the Past Perfect� And some don�t know the difference between an adjective and an adverb� a pronoun and a proverb� the parts of speech and figure of speech. We used to parse and analyze sentences. In fact, every summer holidays, the day would start with an hour of English grammar exercises to be followed by math tables and other practice work allotted by parents� to be finished before you start playing with friends� Today, kids argue that they have a Spell Check option in their computer�so why should they bother learning spellings!
But kids today use their brains effectively when it comes to computer games. I feel that the capacity of today�s youngsters to learn by rote is phenomenal. I have had girls write paragraphs from Max Mueller and Dr. Zakir Hussain�s Presidential speech verbatim in their answer sheets. When I asked them how they could do it, they said the paragraphs were so complicated to understand, it was easier to memorize as it is than write in their own words� The same kids lose marks when I tell them to complete a sentence using an adverbial clause!
There are people who reel off the value of pi to 14 decimal places� My parents� generation know the entire Vishnusahasranamam and Venkateshwara Suprabhatam and such long stuff by heart� Many of my generation can manage it� but our kids? I seriously doubt if they even know what it is all about. Parenting has undergone a sea change� Learning has become user-friendly� Will human brain shrink in average size as generations come after generations? I hope not� I am sure there will be other ways and means of enhancing the keeping of our grey cells well oiled and not creaking!
For the time being I am out to ensure that my memory sticks�to me!

What D'ya Call It?

twinsmom — Thu, 28 Feb 2008 07:53:25 GMT

What do you call the condition when you can't log in to your fav blogspace and relate to the invisible compassionate hundreds of friends ...? What do you call it when you are too tired at the end of the day that you don't have the strength to even shut doen the computer that has been left running...?
What do you call it when the whole day you are scurrying around from place to place in a pace you have been in recent times not used to...? What do you call it when a sinking feeling hits the pit of your stomach when you open the blog page and find yourself out dated...?

Dilemma!

What do you call it when you make breakfast and watch your son eat it with great relish...?
What do you call it when he groans as he finishes lunch and says, Mom...you are making me fat...! What do you call it when he tries out a new T shirt and looks at you queastioningly for opinion...? What do you call it when he hugs you and tells you he wants to spend every minute enjoying the brief holiday with you...?
Joy! PUre Unadulterated joy!

Now you know why blogging has taken the back seat????
Am out of action till 5th.
Cheerio!

A Celebration Of Mother Tongue

twinsmom — Thu, 21 Feb 2008 07:19:47 GMT

Remember an old story where a perfect polyglot comes to the court of the emperor Krishnadeva Raya and challenges the king to identify his mother tongue? The pundit is so good in using all the known languages that the courtiers are unable to expose him. Enter Tenali Rama, the �vikata kavi� ( a palindrome�) who promises to expose the linguist the next day. That night, while the guest sleeps, a bucket of ice � cold water is poured on him and the pundit jumps up yelling in his mother tongue. The next morning, Tenali Rama tells the emperor what the linguist�s mother tongue is, thus saving his king�s face!

Scene 2: Remember �My Fair Lady� and the scene of the Embassy Ball where Eliza Doolittle makes her appearance and Prof. Higgins� Hungarian student Zoltan Karapthy, who has accompanied the Queen of Transylvania, threatens to expose her identity� since �she could not be English as she speaks English too perfectly�� and how after a dance with Eliza, he declares that she is definitely a Hungarian Princess!

These are two cases where the influence of one�s mother tongue is dramatically
( no pun intended) brought out. As a student of English Language I have learnt about the �interference of mother tongue in second language learning. But as a teacher I have experienced that the easiest way of teaching children is through their mother tongue� Contradictory, I know� but true.

Today, the 21^st of February is a day for celebrating the demotic or vernacular languages for today is the International Mother Language Day, as declared by UNESCO.

This is their reason why:
The International Mother Language Day is being observed every year in UNESCO's Member States and at its Headquarters to promote linguistic and cultural diversity and multilingualism.
Languages are at the very heart of UNESCO's objectives. They are the most powerful instruments of preserving and developing our tangible and intangible heritage.
All moves to promote the dissemination of mother tongues will serve not only to encourage linguistic diversity and multilingual education but also to development fuller awareness of linguistic and cultural traditions throughout the world and to inspire solidarity based on understanding, tolerance and dialogue.

A country like India has several hundreds ( 1576 according to the 1991 census) of mother tongues. Officially, there are 22 regional languages including Sindhi, Kokborok, Konkani and Nepalese� It is news to me that there languages called Maithili, Meitei, Santhali and Dogri� More intriguing names are given by Wikipedia �like Gondi , Bhili and Khandesi �

I have been fascinated by languages since my student days. I can read, write and speak, Tamil ( my mother tongue) Malayalam ( the language I learnt as our family has settled down in Kerala� I can speak in at least four dialects of Malayalam�) English which I studied and strove to perfect� Hindi, which I had to learn to survive after marriage as my husband�s family used it as their lingua franca� and Kannada, the language used in my in law�s side�
The Tamil I speak is not pure, it is more of a Palghat dialect, the �palakkaattaan tamizh� as humourously portrayed in Tamil movies� My Kannada is also not pure because much of it I picked up from my sister in law who happens to be from Udupi�so it has that Mangalooru Kannada flavour plus tinges of the Bhadravathi Kannada which has a raw flavour to it� which is a rough and �common� dialect compared to the sweeter Mangalore Kannada�

My husband can manage smatterings of Bengali and Punjabi�

I have a list of languages I would like to learn� at least to speak and understand.

1) Telugu. The language sounds so majestic. May be I am influenced by images of actors like Somayajulu and N. T Rama Rao whose dialogue delivery has always fascinated me.

2) Punjabi. It is a very peppy language� and a very flirtatious one� I just love listening to Punjabis chattering in their language� there seems to be so much of
bonhomie to it!

3) Bengali. It seems to be a very intense and dramatic language�

4) French. My French is pathetic and pronunciation atrocious. French, I believe is the most difficult language to learn� mainly because of the pronunciation. But my secret dream is to learn the language�. Who knows? May be by next year this time I may even start using the language� n�est �ce pas?

5) Arabic. As I watch the family dramas in the Arabic channels, there is a thirst for learning the language. Sounds very dramatic and intriguing� it has a certain majesty to it� I wish the local channels would subtitle their Arabic serials in English like the have Arabic subtitles for all English movies and sitcoms� maybe I�d pick up the language� Since Hindi and even Malayalam are the colloquial languages in the UAE, we Indians need not bother about learning Arabic�

My husband used to make fun of Malayalam� saying the language sounds like a few pebbles rattling inside a tin can� But I personally feel that he is missing out on a lot by not picking up the nuances of the language. I feel that the quality of comic scenes is the best in Malayalam amongst all South Indian languages. The comic scenes are brash and crude in other languages� maybe because there is profuse use of abusive language or swear words� whereas in Malayalam, such cuss words are used only by the villains� or a belligerent hero. The chuckles and guffaws come out of a different kind of humour. I still burst out laughing whenever I think of Innocent who quips � P. T. Ushakkendinaa caaru? Odiyaa porey!� ( Why does P T Usha need a car� She can run�no?)

When my sons first started speaking they used neither Tamil nor Kannada� they spoke Hindi. This was because we were in Baghdad at that time and in an Indian Camp where all kinds of language were used. The one year old twins had their own gobbledegook that excluded everyone- even me. Alarmed, we consulted many a paediatrician who told us not to use too many languages at home� and so we switched over to Hindi which was widely used. In six months, they started talking. They continued using Hindi, though they understood Tamil and Kannada� Once they joined Ramakrishna Vidyashala in Mysore, their Kannada improved a lot. During the 4 years in Coimbatore where they pursued their Engineering course, they became proficient in Tamil and I am happy�Who knows ? A daughter in law from Kerala might teach them Malayalam�

Language is the supreme gift mankind has bestowed on itself. And a celebration of one�s mother tongue is, I think, a beautiful idea. Every one of us should learn our mother tongue. Till a few years back, it was considered fashionable for parents to claim that their kids did not know �Malyaalam� or spoke TAMIL with an accent. There is nothing more irritating than an English accent in your mother tongue� more deplorable than an English with a regional accent. One can understand and even laud the efforts taken to learn a foreign language and try to speak it albeit with an accent.
Not every foreigner speaks like he picked it up from Oxford or as Americanese� A Spaniard speaks English with a Spanish accent�an Arab speaks with an Arab accent� A Chinese or a Japanese speak with distinct accents� then why do we make deprecatory references to the way Indians speak English? Why do we put on a contrived accent and end up sounding phoney?

Okay, so we do not know how to speak it like the Queen�s English ought to be spoken� but speaking your mother- tongue like a pseudo- English or American accent is like insulting one�s own mother � a heinous crime.

At the same time, I pooh- pooh the idea that there should not be any English Medium schools. English is a necessity. All those radical politicians who conduct protests and resort to riots and destruction for the cause of regional languages are hypocrites� mere hogs for limelight� Children pick up languages easily� the mother tongue is easier to pick up as they are exposed to it at home�In fact, we must insist that kids pick up their mother tongue at home. Then a second and third language should be taught at school. In that, one has to be English� that is being practical.

So on this International Mother Language Day let us celebrate the greatness of our mother tongue� ( pity I couldn�t type this out in Tamil or Malayalam!)

A Smokescreen For Underperformance�

twinsmom — Wed, 20 Feb 2008 08:53:03 GMT

I remember the excuses we used to give for underperforming or failing in tests�

The most common ones used to be �It was out of syllabus� or �the teacher showed partiality� So and so has been given full marks �and she has cut my marks though I have written the same answer�� We even used to try the time-tested one, � The paper was too lengthy and there was no time to finish all the answers.�

Now- a -days, kids are more savvy. They know that parenting is a new kettle of fish, what with all these 'psychological angle' to raising kids� Parents can be easily emotionally blackmailed�so we find generations of new excuses: �The teacher didn�t explain it� or �the teacher said it was not important� or �some other teacher set the paper�� and �there�s favouritism going on at school� and I am the victim.� The classic ones like, �My friend borrowed my notes and didn't return it� , �I forgot my pencil (pen...geometry box�) and no one lent me theirs� and even the brazen � I didn�t know we had a test today� are in vogue. And for those �fixated- on- child- psychology� parents, the bold kids can get away even with � It is boring�� or � It is too difficult� or �Don�t pressurize me� or even a very smart �My teacher says I have a learning disorder��

Street-smart kids would never say, �The TV disturbs me� meaning the parents� watching TV programs hinder their studies because that would result in the forfeiture of their own TV time� TV and music have become the background for serious study� Like my young nephew who insists on JETIX in the background while he writes his homework� or many teens who have their MP3 players or I Pods wired into their aural orifices while �concentrating on studying��

Any way, kids have another excuse to add to their Excuse Bank� Scientists have declared recently, in London, that smoking parents can affect the academic performances of their kids� Hah! I thought, on reading the news. In my days, parents smoked ( fumed and even blazed�) after seeing our academic performance. Teenagers exposed to passive smoking are likely to fail as exposure to secondhand smoke can interfere with academic performance� What a corny statement� What about �first hand smoke� then?
As a parent I find the analysis very disturbing� for the study says nearly 60 percent of children are exposed to smoke at home� I can�t calm myself saying�oh, it is a problem in theLondon homes� My brother smokes inside the house� and he has two school going kids � My brother in law smokes inside the house� and he has kids studying � Though their academic performance has not much been affected by a smoking parent, yet, I can imagine the impact of this news in some homes�
Imagine the scene. As usual, the father comes to know that his son is studying in a crucial board class when he sees the report card� The grades reflected on the report card are hardly praiseworthy� So the father decides it is time to don that �concerned and grave air� and tries to fix the son with a �Et tu Brute� look. The son looks cool and ready to parry any shot.
Father: This is your performance this term? Pathetic! How will you get admission in any reputed college if you go this way? Haven�t you get all the books you need? You go for tuitions� When I was like you, we never had all these comforts� yet, I�
Son: Mumble�mumble�
Father what�s that?
Son: I said, Grandpa didn�t smoke.
Father: What?
Son: You don�t even know ? You are responsible for my bad performance� You smoke inside the house and that affects my academic performance...Don�t you read the newspaper? It has been proven!

Or,

Why is it that you haven�t done well in Hindi?� "Oh papa� On the eve of my Hindi exam, you had some office problem and you were smoking and smoking�.I knew I wouldn�t do well in my Hindi exam that day itself�"

Hey! Parents� it is really time to throw the cigarette packets and the ashtrays out or you will end up wearing an albatross around your neck�Remember, kids , like elephants, have long memory� and when one is turning 80 who wants to be reminded by his fifty five year old son that he didn�t get his promotion because his father had smoked inside the house making a passive smoker out of him!
Another buck has been passed successfully!

The Old Order Changeth�

twinsmom — Tue, 19 Feb 2008 02:10:23 GMT

I am saddened to hear about the Supreme Court approval for the demolition of Appu Ghar. There is a twinge somewhere inside my heart� Not that I had a close association with the place. I think I might have been there twice. The first time in my teens, when I was visiting cousins�

In my shady past I have had the temerity of representing the Kerala State Junior Women�s Cricket team in the under sixteen interstate matches in Chandigarh� (The skeleton of that match rattles in my closet as I was bowled out for a duck as an opener�and there was shame and scandal in the family where brothers were university cricket team captains and the family were diehard fans of the game� I�d rather not talk about it at the moment.) The best part of that Punjab trip was that on our way back, my Dad�s cousin managed to coax the team manager to let me and my Mom, who was accompanying us 12 girls, as �coach� ( as there was a last minute deficit of personnel), to stay back and spend a week in Delhi. My mom and I can never forget those wonderful days we got to spend with Dad�s 5 cousins and their families. My first Diwali Mela� my first fruit chaat eaten in a public place� my first adult movie ( with scenes of explicit lovemaking�) my first visit to Appu Ghar� my first glimpse of my ultimate hero Amithabh Bachchan�s house in Gulmohar Park where two of my uncles resided� Visit to the Taj, Lodhi Gardens, the Parliament�Aahhh! That holiday was the stuff dreams are made of! Ahhh� digression! I was reminiscing about Appu Ghar�

I remember the huge gates of Appu Ghar and how my mouth fell open at the sight of a huge hot air balloon� and of course, Appu� I can not recollect the rides� I have selective amnesia when it comes to things that make me sick�and theme park rides top the list� I remember � people�. lots of them� milling around� Mother Dairy ice cream stall (?) Balloons that drifted up when they lost hold of precious little hands� The entry fee was something like fifty rupees� and I was mighty impressed that my uncle was loaded enough to treat almost a dozen of us�

I don�t really remember my trip to Appu Ghar when we went after a decade with my twins who were one or two years old� By that time I had good memories of Baghdad�s Luna Park etched in my memory, though my dread for rides continued� Now, after a couple of dozen years, when there are theme parks galore�where I still feel my presence is a waste of good money as I still refuse to go on the rides or get into water� my heart still aches a little when I hear about Appu Ghar being demolished to make space for the Metro and for constructing the Supreme Court Lawyers� Chambers�

This is the price we pay for progress� It is nature� Old things get demolished�and get replaced by new steel, chrome and glass monstrosities�But Appu Ghar was an iconic site� Even for a non- Delhiite like me� I wonder what those who grew up spending their weekends, school trips and picnics there would be feeling now�

During my trip to Europe, I saw just how much the Swiss, the Italians and the French cared for their heritage� Buildings and structures that date back centuries are preserved as national heritage� One hardly saw any chrome/ steel and glass structure � and Paris looked so ancient and appealing to one�s aesthetic sense� and modern structures did not outshine the old�They merge� they coexist without dreams of eradicating each other�

But here,� aesthetic sense� nostalgia� heritage�( okay� I stand corrected� Appu Ghar is no heritage site�but it meant a lot to so many kids and so many adults who were kids at heart! ) � all alien terms in the marathon for modernity� One can not do anything but wring one�s hand helplessly� and perhaps murmur like the great king Arthur�: The old order changeth, yielding place to new, And God fulfills Himself in many ways�