Rocking on with life

Yeah, the title is a giveaway!

Saw the Hindi movie "Rock On" last night with the cousins. A movie with a difference about four guys from a college rock band, going their separate ways, then reuniting after a decade for a concert. There seem to be more and more of these beat movies coming out from Bollywood recently. Kudos to these guys!

This movie will probably strike a "chord" with guys/gals in the mid thirties, who went to colleges 10-15 years ago, with college cultural festivals, where there would be a rock concert competition of sorts!

This post is not a review of the movie. It is more about the nuances of the film and a possible "genre" and its appeal.

If you are not a rock music fan and the subtle or open references to Metallica, Enter Sandman, Beatles, Lennon, McCartney, Ono, Green day, Deep purple etc., do not ring any bells, do not be alarmed. You will experience the movie, as a window to a "world" that is mesmerizing! Music, at the end of the day is a really, really powerful medium, that cuts across boundaries, rather large boundaries.

If you grew up listenting to rock music, this movie provides more than a refreshing look at music, rock, concerts, group dynamics, the experience of attending a rock concert! To top things off, if you happened to dedicate your Ph.D. thesis to Bob Dylan, the way "Rock On" has songs that fit hindi words into hard rock, at places, with a folk ballad style, will just bring tears to your eyes.

The nostalgia alone, will be worth this movie. You have to hand it to the director, music directors and the actors. They are able to hit long dormant neurons, and revive them, just by touching your subconsious in one too many places. Take for example the focus on the tattoo in the back of one of the groups lead singer's neck, or the Bille Joe Armstrong look alike, who strums his guitar in similar fashion from one of the competing groups in the final contest!

Farhan Aktar was fantastic. Arjun Rampal was even better. Have never seen such a controlled acting performance from him. They even mimic Freddie and May in some shots where they both share the microphone on stage. You can hear "smoke on the water", slowed down to a barely recognizable tempo in the background! They have condensed, and fed rock music to the masses, within the space of a movie. Very nicely done!

The thing I liked most was how they picturized the audience in a rock concert. At the end of the day, the question from a non rock fan would be "why go to a concert and hear the same thing that you heard over and over again in the music CD?". The answer lies, in the audience. To this day, I cannot forget the tens of thousands of people, with lighters and candles moving their hands across, in a Pink Floyd concert in Philadelphia, in 1994. To sum up that experience:

I was there!!!

After watching the movie, we came home and are now revisiting my 200 strong CD collection from my college days, which have been moved from one apartment to another, one home to the next for the last 15 years! We have not really played anything from that collection, at least after our first daughter was born. Finally feel vindicated for refusing to sell that collection over all these years.

Every one of those CD's has a history and it makes me remember places, people, crowds, songs, and more importantly myself!

Rock on, woke up a dormant part of me, much like it did for the protogonist in the movie.

ps. Spent an hour searching for the Pink Floyd concert ticket stub in my old shoebox. Could not find it! Way too many memorabilia in that box....dangerous memorabilia! The location of the shoe box within the house, was classified information in itself, now it is out in the open. Much fun will be had, over the coming days with the contents of the shoe box.

pps. San's rock music education has begun!

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Rita Reeeeta Rïëeeeta Iscreeeeeaaaaaaammmm !!!

The man, if you could call him that, with his pencil thin moustache and pants that hug his legs to show their bow, would come screaming towards you, pushing a small wooden box with a lid that was covered in an old cloth, with those four letters in big blue lettering, RITA.

This by far, is the best memory of our time at the beach, etched deep into my head.

As a small boy who would visit the Madras Marina beach with his mother, or granfather, the highlights would always be:

1. Eating Rita kuchchi ice (gelato on a stick?)
2. Flying a kaathadi (beach kite, the ones with two sets of boxes and a short triangular tail)
3. Collecting shells on the edge of the waves
4. standing in knee deep water in the waves
5. running around Gandhi statue
6. chasing my brother on the sand
7. watching the horses and camels as they gave rides to people (never rode on them)
8. playing catch with a tennis ball
9. eating soan papdi
10. bringing the beach home with us in our pants, shirts, bags etc. and getting a scolding for spreading sand over the entire house!

Later, we got Kwality ice creams showing up in a shinier plastic/metal box with a well defined lid, an umbrella on top, serving everything from the plain orange or grape to Chocobar and Choconut ice cream. Guess that was the end of Rita!

Anyways, it is time to pinch myself and return to the glorious present day Chennaipattinam. We managed to hit the Marina twice in the 10 days we spent at Madras. The first time, we ended up near the University, and that was not a pleasant experience. The sand is too dirty in this area and there are people throwing half eaten fish on the sand. You cannot walk bare feet in this part of the beach. In our house, we don't even consider that a trip to the beach. Yeah, we are picky. To me, my brother, and sister, the equation simply reads :

Beach = Gandhi statue!

By the time we made it to the waves, the MIL, SIL and her two kids dropped out at a halfway point, and it got dark when we really made it to the water. After a meager 10 minutes in the waves, we had to return because it was too dark. Still not a complete washout, but we blamed it on the call taxi who took forever to get from West Mambalam to the Marina!

The second time, we came to the beach from our house in Mandaveli, in all of 10 minutes. We used to walk/bike to the beach when we were kids and once in a while, use the 21 or 21N buses. Devanathan street, Pumping station, Matriculation School and Santhome, four stops in 10 minutes! (I have no idea if these bus numbers still exist, or if the buses stop at these places, but they do in my head and will do so for a long long time!)

We came early, with my brother and his family in his little Maruti, spent a lot of time on the waves, ran near Gandhi Selai for old times sake, ate Soan Papdi, watched the kids play, and finally made our way back after spending a good two hours at the beach!

Sadly, there was no "Rita" ice cream!

It is no secret that I love beaches and we are so glad that both Jr. and the Little One love the beach as much as daddy, if not more!

Outside of the wedding, this was the best day spent in Madras. I love California beaches because they are clean, but the water is too cold for us to stand in the waves. The Madras Marina, is nowhere as clean as it was when we were little kids, but is still not bad considering how many people live in the city now and how many visit the beach, but the water is just the right temperature for my feet!

And yes, there are pictures!

"Horsies", not the ones that give rides to kids, but we saw many of them!

The kids enjoying a spin on what we called the "ranga raatinam", except these days there are plastic cars and bikes and in those days there were wooden ducks or ponies. This was not on my top ten list because my parents would never let us go on the raatinams!

Jr. walking the little one and her cousin. Of all the people, I miss my nephew the most after returning to the states. Last year he was a six month old boy. This year, he is a two year old toddler! He called me ippa (his speak for Periappa) when I wore pants, and Anna (brother) when I wore shorts.

It was the greatest compliment to a guy who is worried about looking 42 when he is really not yet finished 36! My nephew would also call Sangeetha "aatha", because he heard me call her Sangeetha, and all he could manage was the "aatha" part, which means "mother"! San, my mom, my brother were all upset that I got to enjoy this!

Everytime he would scream "Anna, Anna, Annaaaaah!!" it brought an automatic smile to my lips! I really miss that kid now! Going forward, I plan to wear only shorts at home on future India trips.

Jr. decided to take up a job as "Boat Inspector" for a few minutes, but once she found that the boats smelled "eeewww", she ran back to us.

This beach is really a gift!

Soan Papdi.... mmmmmmmmmmmm... yummy... ate as much as I could and went to instant heaven! Hundreds of thousands of Indians live in California and all they could think of is build temples and have concerts with Amitabh and family! Bah! Someone needs to worry about sprinkling the local beaches with Soan Papdi-walas! Maybe that someone is me?

The little one, is really a beach person, like her dad! Just refused to come out of the waves. Reminded me of, well.. Me!

A mom and daughters moment...

If you happen to live in Chennai, you have no idea how blessed you are! You have the Marina, and living in so called "sunny" California, on the coast, we still envy you!

You have THE Marina!!! Go on, go to the beach and take a bow!

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The smell of School !

I guess school is going to start soon! That means every store has a "school" sale with things from notebooks, backpacks, shoes, down to the toilet items we found for "dorm" residents.

While the stores are busy selling anything and everything in the name of a "back to school" sale, what interested me was the smells as we walked through a section of the local Target store.

It was weird. I can easily understand one thought process jumping over to another, in my head. It is almost routine, as is obvious by the rambling in this space.

Have you, ever had a smell jump over and create a flashback smell in your head? It happened to me. I was in the notebook section and was taking a whiff of that smell which for some reason reminded me of those little erasers we used to have in 1st standard. The little orange or green ones, which have an outer shell that looks like a hippo or elephant or rhino, and you open the animal in the middle and inside is a nice cylindrical scented eraser! Remember those?

So there I am, in the middle of this aisle, with my nose held high, trying to savor that smell for a few more fleeting seconds, when all of a sudden, there is a smell jump! I suddenly smell fresh notebooks and brown paper, the ones we used to cover all our 192 page classwork and homework notebooks with, just two days before school started. That instantly brought a flood of memories.

Till I can remember, our school used to give out the books from the "school book store", three or four days before school started. This way we could cover all the texts, notebooks etc, with brown paper covers. These large sheets of brown paper would cover at least 4 of the 192 page std notebooks. Later in life they introduced the long "Assignment" notebook, which would make sure that we wasted enough of this paper.

My parents would theorize that the school must be in cahoots with the brown paper manufacturer association because they would mandate all kids wrap the notebooks! If we did not comply, we would get "blackmarks". Yes! you got that right. There was a chart in every classroom called the "Blackmark chart". 10 signatures from the teachers, and you get to go to the principals office!

In different sections, this chart would show different trends. In rooms where the kids were all dorks and extremely competitive, the chart would be near empty! In rooms where kids would pride themselves on getting in trouble, it would be a race to get to the maximum limit of 30, at which point you got to stand outside the principals office the whole day, get the occasional insult from the PT master and life would go on!

As usual, I digress! What were we talking about? Ah, yes, the smell of 30% fresh notebooks, 30% brownpaper, mixed with another 10% of glue (the green goopy maida flour glue!). Add to that the smells of new plastic lined school bags from the local "Amma Fancy store", new Bata canvas shoes, the unique smell of white shoe polish that we would apply in multiple coats, the smell of the new school belt, the smell of school uniforms, fresh from the "Artland" tailor shop, etc. etc., and you start wondering "Looks like it was not a bad childhood after all. So many great memories!".

Well, I even get a flashback smell, of the dreaded hair full of coconut oil, which my mom or aunts or grandma (in some cases all of them) would come and apply to support me on my first day of school, which would instantly turn me into mosquito man (kid you not, you could visibly see a mosquito halo around my head with all that oil) and make my friends joke, "enna da, ennai kadaiyave thalaiyile thookindu vare?" (What gives? It looks like you are carrying an entire oil store on your head!).

Just as those memories vanished into the background, saw that Jr. was smelling everything as well, just like dear old daddy!

Hopefully, we made her childhood experience of getting ready for school a memorable one. Who knows, a few decades from now, there might be a Jr. blogpost on school shopping and the smell of school supplies at Target!

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The only thing worse than PMS, is AMS

After a recent enquiry by Jr. and the Little one along the lines of "Are you okay daddy? Are you still bleeding?" and the snide comments from the wife and MIL about how women have periods a days a month while daddy has periods almost every day!

Of course, they were alluding to the nose bleeds and the one thing that has gotten it this far is the AMS, my abbreviation for the American Medical System.

At the risk of boring the gentle junta that scrolls past this space, this has to be explained!

A typical conversation with the appointment nurse is:

Me: (nasal voice, coughing) I need to see a doctor. I have blah, blah, BlaH and blAH! I think I am dying!

Hospital person: Do you want to see your "Primary physician?"

Me : Yes. That would be fine!

HP : Who is your primary physician?

Me : I dont know. I have probably met him or her once. I usually go to Urgent care. (this is true because, I get to go to a hospital only after 5 or on weekends and the regular doctors work 9-5!)

HP : Let me look up your primary care physician. Ah, there it is.. it is Dr. Azer-Chen-maniam!

Me : Oh! Can I see him today?

HP : I am sorry. The earliest appointment I have for him is on July 32nd!

Me : But it is June 20th today and July 32nd is like ....

HP : yeah! He is very busy and is very heavily booked!

Me : Are you telling me that people actually know when they are going to fall sick in advance and booked appointments in the future?

HP : (has probably been trained to answer this in front of a mirror without flinching a hundred times, as part of qualifying for the job). Sir, people usually schedule advance appointments with primary physicians for regular checkups, post checkup after they have gone to urgent care, etc.

Me : Is there any other doc. in the facility I can see today?

HP : Let me check.. Can I put you on hold?

Me : (about to open mouth and realizing that HP was asking a rhetorical question.. I was already listening to music that would put any elevator to shame!)

HP : Thanks for holding. Actually we have doctor David-Rama-Park with an opening at 10:00 AM day after tomorrow. Will that work?

Me : I dont think I can wait that long! (by now reminded of great grandmother and her saying things like "saavukku vaadanna paththukku varan" which literally means, we invite him for a funeral and he shows up for the 10th day ceremony)

HP : In that case I suggest you go to Urgent care again.

Me : Is there ANYWAY I can see a doctor, with an appointment, as soon as I am sick?

HP : Yes. There IS a way. You see, we have some appointments reserved every day with rotating doctors in the out patient department called "same day appointments". They are not movable to other times and are first come first served. So if you call in at 8:30-9:00 AM, you might get a same day appointment..

Me : thanks for letting me know that!

HP : Anytime. I hope you feel better!

Except for the last four lines, this has been the typical conversation for the last few years! Only this time I burst out and found out about the "same day" stuff. Not great, but still better than nothing.

Now, why is this dude complaining like this about the system? Why can't he learn to deal with it? you may ask!

The answer lies in a small name board on a single story building, that used to be on St. Mary's Road in R.A. Puram, Chennai, which simply read:

Dr. S. Jagadeesan
M.B.B.S

Just five houses away from ours, Dr. known in our family fondly as "Jaga", was a towering personality (probably because he seemed huge and most of my memories of him are from when I was a kid!). With his big face and even bigger cooling glass / spectacles and his booming voice he would make me cower either out of respect, fear or both.

He was in true sense our "family" doctor. Grandpa, grandma, parents, uncles, aunts, siblings, cousins, a total of 20+ people in our house alone, were all Dr. Jaga's patients. He knew everyone, their history(not just medical, but real history), hereditary problems within the family tree, family gossip, etc. etc. He was pretty much the only doc. we visited unless he recommended us to see some specialist guys like ENT's, Dentists etc.

He would take one look at me and go "Enna Sundararama? patta padaikkara veiyalla vilayadittu gold spot kudichchiya?" (did you play in the hot sun and drink a cold drink right away?) and I would be thinking "How the hell does he know that?" and he would read my mind and say "I just saw you yesterday drinking gold spot in the store across the street, as I walked out of the clinic and thought I would be seeing you here soon!".

I have so many memories of how he "cured" me of things, be it Jaundice, Madras-eye, chicken pox, etc. etc.. Let us just say it is a long list!

After I came to the USA, my parents called me one week out of the blue and told me "Jaga" passed away. I cried for two days just thinking about him every now and then. Just before my first flight to the US (which was also my first flight!), he spoke to me for half an hour and told me to carry a bunch of medicines with me, just in case. Then he gave me an MMR vaccine almost last minute, because people in the US are picky and insist on it. He said "unakku than ella vyadhiyum at least oru daravai vanduduththe.. you have built up good immunity by now!" (you have got all the major ailments at least once..) and continued "So I never gave you an MMR. Also it is not normal here, but I think they require it there. You will have a mild fever and feel sore for a day. Better here than just after you reach US!" So thoughtful....

It is possible that I keep complaining about the system here, because I miss Dr. Jaga! I was pampered by a doctor who knew how to fix me in a few minutes or within a few hours with the right threat, advice,and or medicine. The fact that he knew me was definitely as much a factor there as how much he knew his medicine!

That perhaps was the magic "Jaga" touch!

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Tie up loose ends..

There is a phrase in Tamizh "mottai thalaikkum muzhangaalukkum mudichchu podaadhey" which literally translated means "don't tie a knot between your tonsured head and your ankles"

This could have been our wise sages saying "don't have your head up your @$$" in a nice politically correct way or there is some other cryptic reference. They must have been wise sages, because a tonsured head should be way better than a head full of hair, for said purpose. This phrase is used by granny's to convey the message "Don't try to link unrelated things!" and used by me to say "Don't insult Karl Pearson and his correlation coefficient!".

Now what loose ends is this post going to tie up? Nostalgia, IT, people and perceptions.

Why? Well, a comment on the previous post, a followup comment and an analysis of the comment by s.b., that is why!

Nostalgia for me has always been associated with something more than just reminescing or flashbacks. Often times it puts things in a different perspective. Reminds me of (oh oh! there we go again!) a short story we had as part of our Non-Detailed Text book (NDT as we used to call it). It was "The Pepper Tree" by Dal Stevens(either I do not know the correct spelling for the author or it is not a popular story because Google does not give me a link!).

In this story, the author goes back to his childhood home, only to find that the huge pepper tree that he remembered as a child is nothing impresive when he is a grown man! Can personally relate to this. The high compound wall from which I fell and got eight stitches as a child was all of 3 1/2 feet tall. I kind of felt stupid when showing it to the family on our last India trip!

Now for another nostalgic event involving IT People. My friend Suresh was visiting Boston for a conference. He was in a suburban train station where there was only one other person, another desi. Here is the conversation (as narrated to me by Suresh after his trip, as much as I can remember)

2nd Desi Dude : Sir, neenga endha Platform? (Sir, which Platform are you?)
Confused Suresh : Sir, there is only two Platforms here. One to go that way, one to go this way. I am going to Boston.
2nd Desi Dude : I mean which Platform do you work on?
Confused Suresh : What makes you think I work for the Platform? Do I look like a transit railway employee? I am a chemical Engineer!
2nd Desi Dude: Sorry Sir. I thought you were also IT!

This was 1997 or 1996 (don't remember) and it was an okay icebreaker between two Desi's to ask "Which platform?" and expect an answer like "windows" or "linux" or god knows what those Platforms are! Chemical and Materials Engineers would of course have a lightbulb moment. Still remember rolling on the ground laughing when he came back and narrated this. There were so many Desi IT dudes who descended in those years that they would generalize any Desi in the US to be an IT dude!!

Today, the IT sector in general seems to be getting a brunt of abuse by Desi's. All problems are to be traced back to the IT people! This reminds me of Raj's post on finding the right scapegoat and making it stick. That reminds me of .......

When I was a small boy we would hear on the radio, auto rickshaw mounted election campaign loudspeakers, stuff like "we will eliminate the forward caste. Down with the Brahmins." etc. etc. If you are from a lower middle class Brahmin family, you do start wondering what all the fuss is about. It was fashionable in the (A, AIA, B, BIA, C, CIA, etc. etc.. )D(M)K parties to do at least some Brahmin bashing as a forward to any election speech.

Today it is customary for people to indulge in IT bashing along similar lines.

In any case, "I am not IT people" was to tell folks that I am a materials engineer and not a software person and therefore not qualified to represent the views of "IT people".

As for IT being blamed for everything, well, Raj's post puts that in perspective. You might have to squint a little and read it to catch the perspective, but it is there!

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