Dear Blog Readers
As i am suffering from cold,headache and fever, i kindly request you to grant me leave for a day or two.
Doctors certificate will be provided if the prevailing rates are not too high.
Thanking You
Yours Sincerely
Prabukarthik
Right now i’m listening to this awesome piece. Just goes to show there is enough in this world to cherish and enjoy even the chips are down.
Going by the title of this post, if any of you imagined a motivational song sequence where PK, with the help of a good-looking heroine, some senti lyrics, a few extras and riveting BGMs quickly learns the way of the kitchen and starts a tiffin center on his own name, you guys are watching too many Rajini movies I tell you.
KTC is but a tiffin center run by some nice soul with an open air kitchen in Anna Nagar 2nd Avenue right next to Hot Chips.
I did not know all these vital stats till my friend Ramanathan asked me that fateful question.”KTC is famous, you did not know?” Me not knowing a well-known middle-class tiffin center? It runs in my blood. My dad was one of those types who will walk kilometers in scorching Madurai weather for that single glass of “Jigir Thanda” in South Masi Road.
So after 17 kilometres of civilized torture in the name of Chennai traffic, I find this KTC.Turns out a kayendhi bhavan with an address.
With a dosai master who looked like he had taken his last bath as recently as last Diwali and the faint aroma of a leaking drainage somewhere nearby adding to the ambience, I soon figured out expecting cleanliness in this place is like expecting Shakeela to win an Oscar for best acting.
The buttery dosai was ok. What caught my eye was the way the dosai master handled them. Not very different from the way Sehwag treated the most innocuous of all bowlers. A series of lofted strokes, a rasping pull and a delectable late-cut, and all the six dosais were ready to be served.
But what caught me out panting was when I got rash and ordered a Podi Dosai. I got this big cake of Chili Idly Powder neatly wrapped in a thin layer which passed for the dosai. I was a raging bulldog crying big time when I was half way through. A pity I had just two legs. Another pair of legs and a tail and I would have gladly run all the way from Anna Nagar to home just to give vent to all the heat generated.
Nothing serious happened. A belching series and a visit to the most important place at home and I was back to my normal self. And to all those who know cooking as much as I know, come near me and I’ll tell you a secret for the best, most economical dinner on a week day.
Go to the nearest shop and get a packet of Brittania Good Day along with a banana.
But the version to be told when your Amma or wife or husband returns back is this,”Oh nee illena enna? I had a great time. I made a fabulous uppuma with kotsu. A pity you missed that. Neeyum dhaaan ithanai varushama pannare, oru naalavadhu ipdi pannirukiya?”
How would they know that our style of uppuma is actually made by Brittania!.
Honestly, I could not think of a better dinner given our sub-zero skill-sets and what more you can crunch this thing one handed, sitting on a sofa happily watching our Super Star say “Lakalakalakalaka….” in one of those four hundred thousand channels.
Naalai vidumurai. Catch you on Sunday then….
Dinesh addresses me PK. My colleague Mahim calls me “Filter Coffee PK” based on the divine drink I take twice every day. Now I am really glad that I am getting addressed by initials. I remember only local bigwigs, MLAs and Dadas were addressed with such respect and healthy fear. Add my illustrious late father’s initials and I become PKR. Remember MGR, NTR, KKSSR, PTR, Mu. Ka, JJ?
But I am sure not many are so lucky when it comes to the pranks of the name shortening algorithm that works across the world especially in India after the IT revolution.
A colleague of mine always introduces himself like, “I am Padmanabhan, but you can also call me Paddy“. How modern and generous you might think. The fact is he has resigned to this fate after seeing a few US clients pronounce his name.
What beats me is that some South Indian Thamizh people take enormous pride in their shortened namaharanams.
One Chakkaravarthy is happy that he is fondly called ‘Chucks’. I thought it just sucks.
Zuneira, another colleague of mine has been reduced to a simple Zu but gets stretched to Zoo when she is called at from a distance.
One guy in a different office within chennai in our company was referred to as ‘Oops’. As I was admiring his devotion to Object Oriented Programming paradigm, I was told his name the way his parents saw it was “Uppiliyappan”. What a name!
One Bhoopalan is called Bhups and pronounced with all the right intention as …. I leave it open for there are many readers who are of the opinion that when it comes to saintly good language and behavior, first there is Buddha, and then there is PK.
But it is not to be construed that I am against this name compression funda as a rule. Coming to think of it, Can any of you imagine Richie Benaud trying to say, “ And the new batsman is Vengipurappu Venkata Sai Laxman?”
By the time Richie gets the Venkeeepuurraa appu part right, Laxman with the kind of form he is in nowadays, would have come and gone. It is in Laxman’s own interests that he is referred to as VVS even though his initials made my late father always refer to him as “Nallennai Laxman”.
So the massage, I am sorry the message here is when it comes to shortening names, please do so judiciously without changing the gender, culture, race, religion, and noun of the person addressed.
Mani the great ratnam get his due share of honor and respect from TIME
“You never get to enter the same river twice” said some Zen monk probably under the influence of Old Monk. Monks apart, I am sure you never get to shave with the same blade twice. Because it is blunter, its edges broader than your previous swipe at your cheek. I, endowed with the thickest set of forest cover on the cheeks after the equatorial forests, absolutely need to swipe once in 2 days lest I look like Al-Umma terrorist or Da Vinci depending upon whether you hate me or like me.
Speaking of Da Vinci, I think he looks very similar to Jesus Christ in that Grand Entrance we used to have in Carmel Garden – my Alma mater.
Oh my God, what I have I written here! If only Dan Brown gets to read this….
Dan Brown: Darling, I have found the plot for my next novel
Wife: Oh that Kashmir K-Word secret stuff that The Times of India wrote about on April Fool’s day?
Dan: Hey, that sounds plausible and boring. I am going to unearth something even more incredulous. It is the connection between Da Vinci and Jesus Christ. I think Da Vinci and Jesus Christ are twin brothers!
Wife: Jesus!!!
Dan: That’s right. You see it’s like this. Jesus and Da Vinci are twins, that explains their supernatural abilities. Both have beards and long hair. I’m convinced. My hero Robert Langdon is jobless, so he goes about researching Da Vinci so that he can also write something like “How to think like Da Vinci” and make pots of money. Then he finds that Jesus and Da Vinci are twins, Mary Magdalene is their mother.
Wife: But Dan..
Dan: I know I know. That’s fine darling, the research showed that Jesus married Mary when I researched for Da Vinci Code. But new research shows this.
Wife: But when did you research?
Dan: Stop it! I have the story,thats it. Robert Langdon researches on Da Vinci, comes up with the fact that they are twins separated by a curse and made to live centuries apart. In the end they are united by a song not very different from the one that Dharmendra sings in that Hindi film when he sees his brother in the climax. Langdon find the history records were re-written. He uses quick sort algorithms to decode this.
Wife: But those stuffs come in bloody computer science courses.
Dan: Darling, but how long can I write about Fibonacci Sequence, Anagram, pentagram, Telegram? It has to be different this time. So all these algorithm books that you can find untouched in book shops for years will find their place in my book shelf from now on. I am even wondering if Donald Knuth who wrote “The Art of Computer Programming” is any way related to Da Vinci.
Dan’s Wife falls unconscious.
Dan, if only you get to read this post and decide to come up with a novel based on this, please do send me my due. We will enter into some understanding.
We can do something about Zen Monks, Old Monks and Razor blades whose sharpness is as permanent as a senior policeman’s pot belly.
Thank you. May God Bless you. Amen.
I start from office early and strangely feel confused where to go. Anyway I decide to come home. I enter the apartment complex, park my bike, walk to the door and ring the bell. Oops, it will be great if the doors can recognize the house people automatically and open accordingly sensing if someone’s inside or not. (‘Abba! oru project kedaichuruchu da’ I can hear some IIT ians whisper.)
Since I am all for simplicity and modesty, I walk back all the way to my bike and retrieve the keys. I open the door and I am greeted by something as loud as an Adoor Gopalakrishnan’s Malayalam movie made on a budget which did not afford a music director.
“Man this is too much,” I mutter to myself. I badly needed some sound effects.
Had Amma been there it surely would‘ve been “Dress change pannu, Kai Kaal kazhvu, pasikudha? Office ethanai manikku pone?” For moms, their children are always kutti even if they are seen as “yanai kutti” by outside world.
I rarely watch TV but if I do its always intellectual stuff, so now I switch on Sun Music now. One would be surprised at the kind of trivia these VJs can come up with.
“Andha nadigaikku cycle ottave theriyadhaam. Indha padathukaga, kadhaiku thevai nu pattadhinale, director eduthu sonnadhinale dhaan otta kathukitangalam”
My god now I can imagine how tough cycle riding should be for young women. To hell with Kalpana Chawla, this is guts man! It’s strange why Gods always discriminate against dream world damsels.
Just as I place the dosai kal and ignite the stove(pasikudhu ma), I am not sure if the burner had caught fire, so I lift the dosa kal and move my hand closer and ‘boom’, the fire kisses my skin. Hot, blowing kiss it was. This is the difference between “real time experience” and the “fake” that Andhra guys in T Nagar mansions always talk about after attending interviews in s/w companies.
Just as I pour dosa maavu, even it out across the dosai kal and look for oil, the oil is just sitting elsewhere. I don’t know where. Blog readers of old times might know that I am very particular about Gingely Oil from Virudhunagar brothers. There in that shelf I find two Oil dabbas and boy what is what? I should ask Amma to distinguish between “kadalai ennai” (I whole-heartedly hate for dosais) and Nalla ennai (I whole-heartedly love”).
By the time I take the right bottle fortuitously and pour, the dosai has a tanned look. More tanned than the bikini clad Latin American babes and less tanned than the Caribbean ones.
Sun music is now playing “Egiri kudhithen” from Boys and this is one song I don’t wanna miss. They used some 65 cameras for this one song right? With amma, I have taken dosais while talking to my buddies over phone, while doing silly text chats with some too-hot-to-handle gals in the chat rooms and while watching cricket matches. We all have priorities don’t we?
Life is much simpler today. ”Egiri kudicha kudhikattum, dosai taar ayidum“ I say to myself.
This “egiri kudhikaradhu” is another farce. When I professed my love, it was never like seeing God. I was seeing empty walls and waiting for the results to be announced knowing fully well the outcome beforehand. Blame it on naiveté.
There I finish 3 or 4 dosais and am not sure if I need one more. All ammas are engineers. They know exactly the size of the dosais that day, the water the child had drunk, how hungry her child would have been based on what was given for lunch and all those mission critical parameters. But they also are the chief perpetrators of the n=n+1 theory. There is always a question of “Innum onnu?” irrespective of the number already consumed.
Now that I am not sure, to be on the safer side, I switch off the gas cylinder, move the dosai maavu to the fridge, clean my plate and then sit to write this.
On Sunday, one of my friend was mentioning about this Sidin.
I am glad i followed visithra’s blog and got this link. Absolutely hilarious. One of the best posts i have ever read.
En eniye Tamil ilaigyarkale, Mallu Chettangale, Telugu Singangale, idhu ungalukku dhaan
http://sidin.blogspot.com/2004/05/travails-of-single-south-indian-men-of.html
Verizon’s aptitude test for freshers on May 21, 2005 in Meenakshi College was the talking point of the town. Verizon offers a fabulous salary for a fresher (3 Lakhs). It’s true that Verizon has about 1000 openings. But the numbers that turned up was about 15000 I was told. Even conservative estimate put it above 10000. And Verizon had quite a standard criteria – 70% and above from x,xii, Graduation( BE) and Post-graduation (MCAs). The test was limited to 2004 & 2005 pass outs alone. My friends’ roomie, an ME candidate, who had gone to the venue at about 6 in the morning had to face a crowd who had come all over the country with their luggage and assembled at the place even before that.
Ithanai padicha pasanga, nalla velai illamal ivlo pera?
It is true that there are lots of openings in the IT industry. It is also true that the opportunities are good. But many people do not take into account the supply side of the resource factor in India. To me frankly, it is all a bit scary. This Indian IT industry is heavily dependent on the outsourcing phenomenon. Even the most optimistic will not bet anything beyond 2007-2008. But none of the realities are taken into consideration when parents send their children spending lakhs for some BE/MCA. Those who finish and who manage to get a job do not think twice about getting a housing loan for 20 lakhs that has a repayment period of 20 years.
I don’t want to sound pessimistic but ennamo enakku bayama irukku. All this does not feel healthy at all.
This scenario also puts in perspective about my qualification, skill sets and the salary for the kind of work I do. Reality bites. Its high time i shaped up.
Last but not the least, I am also told that Verizon will also be conducting similar mega-exams in Bangalore before calling the short listed for interview and selecting the required 1000 + candidates.
I feel like humming this “Vishwanathan velai venum” from Kadhalikka Neramillai…
குனித்த புருவமும், கொவ்வைச் செவ் வாயில் குமிண் சிரிப்பும் பனித்த சடையும் பவளம் போல் மேனியில் பால் வெண்ணீறும் இனித்த முடைய எடுத்த பொற் பாதமும் காணப்பெற்றால் மனித்தப் பிறவியும் வேண்டுவதே இம்மா நிலத்தே
The fact that i still remember the song after a good 15 years since i wrote this for a school exam speaks a lot about the power of cinema as a mass media.
The “Rakamma” song and its violin interlude, the starcast, the budget, Santosh Sivan’s splendid cinematography, Rajni and Mamooty’s performance were some of the highlights of the film. Girls my age would like to remember this as Arvind Swami’s debut movie.
Those days, I was busy worshipping the likes of Mani Ratnam, P C Sreeram, Santosh Sivan (who came to work in this film after a national award for “Perunthachan”, a malayalam movie).