November 20, 2008

Vaanaram Aaayiram - 0001

[Let me introduce my son Sriram, a brat and very adorable and loveable at that. he is now 4.5 years old, and picks up conversations very well. And my daughter - Akshata alias Manasa. Despite having such cute names, I prefer to call her "ammu"; she is going to be 2 soon.
My "Vaaranam Aayiram" - corrected to "Vaanaram Aayiram" - thanks to sweetheart! - series is going to deal with my conversations, experiences with him/her and the Chief Producer of these 2 products - my wife ]
Well, this conversation should have ideally been published on my wife's blog. And she is going to be *##**^ on me for this, oh boy!!!Come on dear, call this a guest post, and give a link from your blog. I will be grateful to you for bringing back traffic to my site}
Conversations with a young gentleman!
A conversation between brat and HD (= Hubby Dear - for my wife!)
HD: "I like you very much"
Brat: "really?"
HD: "I like ammu very much"
Brat: "I too like her...and amma?"
HD: "I like her so much than you two"
Brat thinks a while, and asks: "why do you both fight with each other?"
HD thinks "huh, what?"
...flabbergasted!
Says HD: "well, we dont fight, we only say things out loud"
Brat: "Illappa, I have seen you fighting..."
Thinks HD - "Ada paavi, ivlo note pannuviya nee?"
But says, "oh, have you? does that upset you?"
Brat: "yes, some times"
HD: "ok, we wil not fight when you see us"
Note to self. Be careful in front of the kids - what you say and what you do!
Later on conversation with "crazy"mum(ble)...
HD: "You know what? I had a conversation today..." and narrates the above episode...
Mum: ""I think we should tell him we fight, but still we love each other. Fighting is natural, and making up also is. Frequent fighting is not good"
HD: "You are right, thats when he will know about expressing himself...and that conflict and confronting is natural in life"
Mum "exactly...love you dear"
HD and Mum go to sleep happily, being producers of the mature understanding kid.

Pollution

This is a topic that came up in one of a meeting.
Someone wanted to have a celebration at their home and had an emotional reason for the same. She fervently pleaded for a 2-hour once in a year. Typical middle class brahminic coward he was - typical 'paappaan' whom carenonidhi admonishes often - instead of confronting the lady with his problems he talked of an advocate who came and complained to him about the noise and said he could file a nuisance case against the lady and her family. The reason was pollution. Noise pollution.
Well, am not going to talk about the community pollution this gentleman was prepetrating, and not the noise pollution the lady was accused of (no silly meaning please...). We have worse noise pollutions around to which we turn a deaf ear - literally. Like the air horn in all those "socially aware, socially responsible" IT companies buses that run on our city roads, like the air horn used by even government buses, like the multi-decibels generated by the diesel generator set, just outside the hospital, like so many instances.
Coming back to the meeting, another person got reminded of the pollution by this hospital and brought up the issue. The pollution caused by the adjoining hospital - Isabel Nursing Home in Mylapore. It was shocking to hear about this. This is a hospital of repute, about which I had been amazed in the past. Such disrespect to people around was and is intimidating.
The hospital waste disposal system chimney height is not enough to let off the burning waste fumes very high up in the air. Instead, the fumes are reaching to even first floor residents in our building. The intensity is so much that people have permanent breathing problems and the balcony is useless to dry clothes, as the black soot settles on it easily.
When this was brought up, I was quite taken aback. Because I have seen lot of things being very efficient in this hospitale, with very good doctors and a haven for lot of poor people. What was even more shocking is that including the gentleman who hid behind an advocate for filing a nuisance case - who is also being affected because of this - had not made legal representations to the hospital but had been enduring this for long.
Even more to come. Another lady, then narrated how things used to much worse earlier, when aborted foetuses wouldnt be disposed off properly, and the pit was not closed inside the hsopital properly, that often scavengers would come to feast on them, and drop off waste parts in the balcony of these people. It was downright horrifying, scary, nauseating!

October 02, 2008

Few Updates in my life.

My life has gone for several changes in the recent past. Changes are for good and for positive sense…

Ranging from playing the role of vendor manager at job to buying a car…

My happiness knows no bounds, when after a month of buying the car, I drove it today without fear to Triplicane. Considering the nightmare it is in Triplicane roads, I must say with pride, I drove reasonably well.

Had worked for 8.5 years in IT Service Provider companies, I made a job shift as a “IT Vendor Manager” in the Financial Sector. It has taken me almost 1 year to shrug the mindset of IT Service provider, to feel like a customer. Recently, I think I have started making a shift and am very comfy about it.

Next, my personal life…both my kids have grown up well…good enough to understand what we are saying and very playful. It has been extremely great…such sweet kids they are. I am getting all the attention I want from another girl, other than my wife, and I am very very happy about it, rather than being embarrassed – my little daughter. She is such a sweet little bundle, while my son very brilliant fellow. Has a great grasp of things and concludes things logically fast and extends them faster.

To top this all, my wife – such a sweetheart she is. I am making myself available at home to take care of kids and household, while juggling my job, because my wife has also started going for a job, and she is doing exactly the same. While she gave me the opportunity to be Mr. Mom, it has been extremely gratifying for me to experience the myriad tasks she had been doing with élan and flair so easily all these days. I have come to appreciate and admire her a lot, though I don’t openly express it, and pick up ego fights easily. But I think I should be in a position to get over with it to make her feel special again.

Things also have improves at home, with my mother and wife relationships improving and generally all of us in our family in good position – my sisters family and all.

It is good, and I hope it lasts for long time to come. Jus thought, I should chronicle this somewhere, and use this as opportunity to catch up with my writing flair again.

June 08, 2008

World Environment Day and Chennai Buses

I wonder what this organization in our citycalled TNPCB is doing to the blatant pollution of our dear Chennai. Maybe the point I am raising is also within the purview of this department as well...but then we know how spineless they are...(and addressless too...this website is not operational any more)
Almost every airbus operated by MTC, have only airhorns fitted in them. And, the IT Company buses also have only air horns. All of these run at breakneck speeds, characterised by their rash driving. They honk against the fellow users to bully them using these air horns. It just shocks the hell out of people who are on their two-wheelers.
This has been going on for quite sometime - noticeably for the past one year atleast. With my limited legal knowledge, this is ILLEGAL perhaps from the point of View of air horns - CCTP's purview. if not, atleast under TNPCB as the noise level is sure above the limit. Environment day could have been the used to make people aware of this. But then, "World Environment Day" came and went much like Gandhi jayanti, and the TNPCB was like TNCC...if you know what I mean!
What bothers me most is, this has escaped the attention of city activists, and TNPCB, and CCTP, and the (De)Press! While helmet issue got the right attention, this has gone unnoticed.
MTC can be directed to fit normal horns, in place of air horns through a simple G.O. Any activist / NGO / Press can help easily achieve this by taking it to right forum.
Private buses can be easily directed to adhere to norms.
Who will bell the cat!!!

meeting the bloggers...

Met some of the fellow bloggers at an informal meeting! At Chennai Citi Center!
Thanks to Dubukku...
I have not been blogging actively for quite sometime. Felt really good to be still recognised as a blogger. I have been avid reader of blogs, though not a blogger these days.
It was fun to meet people, considering that I had not socialised recently.

May 06, 2008

Simple Pleasures of Classroom Games

This on Book Cricket from Krish Ashok had got me all nostalgic.
So nostalgic, that I am almost blurting out "in our days...". However, considering the recent employee introduction note (sent by me to my HR for an internal communication to our employees), and considering the number of "youthful colleagues" in our company, am parking the "blurting out" bit for now.
Ok, ignoring that deviation, back into the topic of this post...rediscovering the simple pleasures of classroom games...i will list the classroom games am familiar with, while leave out the simple pleasures for you - readers of this blog (which most likely is my wife, my dear friend chakra, and myself) - to fantasise. Am also going to ignore the "vaaliba vayathu classroom games" like love-letter-giving, padam varainthu kaattuthal etc.
Book Cricket - detailed out to the core by Krish; however, a point to note here is that in our school we had a variation with bowlers coming in; the modality is that the batsman would be given the book by a bowler for every 6 flips. So we know how to track who took maximum wickets, and know how to award the "bookie of the match". Another important point to note is that the library period had the "encyclopaedia" book as the most popular one, because every gang had theirown book-cricket tournaments, and the encyclopaedia was the LORDS.
One-pitch-catch - This can be easily played in the class with a simple plastic ball, or even pingpong ball. Any of the essay notebooks or the record notebooks can become a bat. Was a popular one.
Name-Place-Animal-Thing - Excellent game to build vocabulary and expand knowledge of zoology and geography. And a good creative outlet for pushy bully people who did not know many animals or places starting in letters like 'X', 'Q' etc. Many actually invented lot of new places on earth, and new animals including fresh species. Some even stooped to the level of classifying plants as animals.
Tic-Tac-Toe - Very addictive; you know the mechanics...
Dot-Conection - 9x9 or 16x16 dot matrices are drawn, and the two opponents need to keep connecting one dot to adjacent dot. The objective is to keep drawing lines, and complete a small square. The one who draws the last line, gets to put the identification mark for himself/herself in that box - literaaly owning the box. One who gets the maximum number of boxes with their logo/symbol/id mark is the winner. The funpart is there are many situations where with one single line, one will get as many as 4 to 6 boxes.
Kings - the lunch-break game; do I need to tell more?
Hand Tennis / Round tennis - played with coverball and bare hands...good game for lazy bums like me who wanted to convince self that some good exercise is being obtained through this physically-strained game, rather than the really straining ones like actual tennis or cricket
Dumbcharades and pictorials were popular too
Ofcourse, there were those guys who would bring gilli, goli, bambaram to the class and play.
Any more games, you guys remember?

March 27, 2008

After a long break...

..the ahambaavam is back and peaking!
One year down the line, no major changes in status of Chennai, except for
  • unreasonable change in rentals by 20% for absolutely no apparent reason
  • Mr. Moron replaced by Ms.Can-I-Muzhi and Mr. Harakiri in Deadly Morons Konglomerate
  • Mr. Stal(l)in(g) is busy installing flyovers at junctions where a simple drive to remove encroachments and a simple move to replace the traffic policemen with working signals would do
  • And yes, we re having power holidays - scheduled powercuts by EB, and announced downtime for electric repair, rather than inefficiency by Power Ministry

Oh! Me and my lamenting...hopefully i catch up with my writing streak again and write blogs regularly.