A day in the life of LIFE

It once was, a cold gusty day,
The dry leaves were being blown away
The winds pumped the freshness into my face,
And at once showed me nature’s grace.

I tossed my umbrella into the high sky
And saw the droplets sink into my eyes
The autumn leaves danced with me
In tune with nature’s sound of music

As I was immersed in a world of my own,
Two beautiful eyes looked at me,
She smiled from the place where she stood
And wanted to partake in my glee

When I glanced over my shoulder to look at her,
She moved away with a shy smile,
The stage was set, I thought to myself
And then was prolonged silence for quite a while

We together appreciated nature’s beauty
And were thankful for the precious bounty
Good friends then on we did become
This was the beginning of things to come

For quite some time the camaraderie continued
And that was when things transformed
Feelings of enhanced comfort crept into the friendship
Much higher in plane than just common parlance

This was just a one sided change
And she once said she missed someone in the heart of hearts
As she whispered, I listened to the name
But the syllables uttered put me out of the game.

And as I reconciled to the facts of life,
Finding the much desired solace
I realized that I would no longer sigh
And mustered my courage to ask her why.

I seldom thought just as I spoke
In the bitter cold my breath just froze,
And as words of query filled me up,
The alarm clock, from slumber woke me up

I then looked out of the moist window
Stunned I was at the breath taking view

It was after all, a cold gusty day ,
The dry leaves were being blown away
The winds pumped the freshness into my face,
And at once showed me nature’s grace…..

I have been keeping you updated about my house shifting plans and finally after intense combing opetations like Walter Devaram of the STF, we zeroed in on a cozy comfy place,after rejecting many that were no better than 'kabootar khanas' [the small openings in old houses where pigeons live].

Friday was the day of the grand shifting and we were as geared up as Ronaldihno's free kick. After burning the midnight oil on Thursday for packing stuff, I woke up at 5 a.m. since the purohitar was to perform pooja at the new dwelling at 6 a.m. sharp.It's interesting to note that, Gauraw with his Hindi and The priest with his tamizh had actually managed to draw out a list of items needed. Things were about to be bungled when Gauraw's "Grihapravesham" was mis understood as "Giripravesham" based on which he was directed to the nearby "Senthil Tours and travels" who organize daily trips to the Annamalai Hills.

With Vermillion smeared on my forehead and a leaky kerosene stove on my kinetic [for conducting the milk boiling ritual], I thundered down the streets of T Nagar, with speeds 1/2500 that of Street Hawk. I was clinging onto my dhoti like dear life, lest I incur the wrath of the moral police who would have imagined that I trying to grab the attention of the damsels with vulgarity.

Nevertheless, the dhoti was important in portraying a clean and 'goody goody' image [Not that we aren't :(chuckle*)]of us in front of our new owner, a style also flaunted by our Hon. Finance Minister Mr. P Chidambaram and Ambi in the movie Anniyan.

A lot of paraphernalia for the pooja were already deposited with the owner who stays two floors below us. Despite this, we had missed out on a few vital components like match boxes,the holy bell, Mango leaves etc.

For an outsider, we were performing so many rituals that we almost appeared as a family that was shifting as against 4 bachelors from the movie 'Satte pe Satta'.

Now came the most daring acts of all. Reader discretion solicited. Clearing the mess that had accumulated over the past two years in the various shelves of the cupboard, kitchen and shoe racks was going to be an arduous task.

The quantum of dust emnating from my suitcases were as much as that of a supernova explosion that would have made even Osama Bin Laden proud. As i rummaged through old documents, I found one lease agreement dating back to the Indus Valley Civilization.

After four hours of focussed effort, there were huge piles of papers, hangers, clothes, water bottles, et. al that more resembled an earthquake survivor's belongings.

Finally we managed to load everything onto a 1952 make matador tempo and set off to the new place, which was on the third floor with no lift.. Here came Mr. Bluestar - The MBA (Moving Benches Around) flat mate's gyan and lingo of Supply Chain Management.

We formed a human chain with one on each floor and employing the services of two labourers, finally managed to shift almost everything while Dr. Vaigasi maintained strict vigil down below. I have a celebrity neighbor in Mr. Illiyaraja, a genius whom I admire for his musical panache.

And as I settle down to go to sleep on my first day in this new place with a blend of the musty odour of paint, dust and distemper, I assure myself that my "Mahal ho Sapno ka" is not far away...

7 days to go before I have the limitless sky as my roof and the boundless air as my walls. Yes, after a dramatic breakdown of the third round table talks, we have been left with just about a week to vacate the premises of Syndicate Residency.

The cause for the breakdown is that the residents of E-14 who were to make way for us to shift in from A-11, have extended what was supposed to be a sojourn by two more months. In the mean time, I have been brokering with a colleague who is on a three month assignment in Australia and lives in the same colony to lend ‘her’ flat to us till the E-14 royalty vacates what was supposed to have been ‘our’ abode.

I shall know the result of that by Thursday. [fingers crossed].

Back up options are being put in place( knowing the fickle minded human emotion and the twist of destiny).

I think Usha Uthup uncle (refer previous post) is really cross with me… ‘Uncle’ If you are reading this, please have a heart and spare us the agony of shifting out of the colony.. I promise you, I will find a handsome Rolls Royce for your cute Limousine.

But as I see #36, A-11, blurring away in the background, I will be moving out with nostalgia after having spent a good 2 years in the place..

The trivia about the house is that is has been lucky for visa applicants..
Starting from Sagar Vasani to Ritesh Agarwal, it has been a guest house for people from MVIT and the rest of the Bangalore junta, owing to its proximity to the U.S. Consulate. ‘Badey Bhaiyya’ a.k.a Abhishek, my ex- flatmate even got his H1 B visa from this very house.

In the melee, Dr. Vaishak has been the most affected, having moved in to stay with us 5 days ago, he has to shift again. I am sure, he can help us get contacts with some high profile patients at the Madras Medical College.

The owner had given us time till June 20, but this morning he called to inform that on consultation with his wife, the coming Sunday is a good day for him to move in.. I was in half a mind to tell him about the breach of agreement, but, at the end of the day, the humanitarian feel a bachelor is supposed to have for a ‘family man’ took the better of me.

The Kannada adage which says “Bekkige chellata, Ilige prana sankata” holds true in this case… [ merry making for Cat is life trouble for Mouse]. Well, excuse me for the translation, but I was trying to stay as verbatim as possible.

And amidst all this, a colleague passes a number of another broker who has “good” contacts.

I am reminded of the house hunt we had exactly two years ago, on the hostile streets of Chennai where we knew none in an alien land. Now, atleast I know a few people to network with.

Meanwhile Samaritan Sibil (of Birlasoft Mallu fame)has agreed to take me in, in case I am rendered homeless.

In the words of the Alchemist, I am flowing with the river of life, and the Bay of Bengal is not far away. However , you know what to do, if you find a tall, lanky and smart guy in glasses wandering around T Nagar, Chennai during the next couple of days…

Give me a home, and I shall give you an exclusive blog post [with images]-not a bad bargain eh..?. In the mean time, let me sign off with the words of Uppen Patel, (of 36 China Town fame), “Long Drive pe Chale” ?

OK here goes.. The twenty something feeling has taken over me. thankfully it's come before I realise that I've missed the bus...

Well, a statutory warning for those coming to Chennai for prospective partner search.. Let me tell you that you would be wasting your time...

It's was one of those routine summer days when you would want to take those extra twenty winks in the morning after warm sultry nights have robbed you of your quota of rest [shucks Arjun Singh's lingo is getting to me]. Things obviously cannot get better when you have a Medico from John's and an MBA from Blue Star trying to sell A/C s to Eskimos with the rider that cooling the snow would would help their future generations build good quality igloos.. Yes, i know am rattling off at a tangent, but this is what happens on a daily routine with my two other flat mates who discuss issues of international importance up to 1 a.m. in the morning.

Gyan ranges from the strategies sea horses use for attracting their mates, to why P.C. Chidambaram should get himself involved in the Stock Market Crash. And poor Gauraw – the fourth roomie, amidst all this tries to portray that he is blissfully asleep with Bhojpuri love songs ringing in his head.

The story so far..

A small town boy [ I bet you can’t call Bangalore that] comes to a smaller town wrongly called a metro, and looks forward to meet smart colleagues of the fairer sex at the workplace and around the colony. But what he gets are only stories of competing companies having better crowds and he listens wide eyed to similar stories from far away lands.

I am sure all those who are single and ready to mingle can relate themselves to the situation described above.

When I came into Chennai, I was showered with oodles of love and care by the Usha Uthup aunty in the flat opposite to ours [definitely lesser in the glamour and make up than her original counter part]. I was even offered a spare fridge that the family was not using, then. I however declined the same and this was replaced by a supply of periodic delicacies that were prepared by them during the various festivals. For quite sometime, I was puzzled about such extra courtesies but then soon realized that Usha Uthup aunty had a prospective cute little daughter who resembled a limousine on the Chennai roads. [am sorry, but I haven’t yet reached the limits of my endurance, in my quest for finding a partner for propagation of the human species]. From the very next instance, Usha Uthup aunty has found me scampering into my burrows the moment she has sighted me, and has been left wondering why…Usha Uthup uncle has always been critical of bachelors and views them as potential anti family elements whose only aims in life are to smoke, listen to rock and booze till intoxication makes them attain their split personalities of Remo, as portrayed in the movie Anniyan.. Who ever forgot that all the so called “Uncles” were also bachelors at one point in time? Added to this, the uncles have the misconception that any “smart” individual who speaks to his daughters has the sole objective of translating his status from “Uncle” to “grandfather”. But what continues to puzzle me, is the perennial stand off between Usha Uthup uncle and Usha Uthup aunty regarding their take on “smart” bachelors. It’s almost like Manmohan and Musharraf with respect to their stand on Siachen..Guess this is a well orchestrated plan to trap gullible profiles.

Things have remained the same for the last two years but this morning I woke up in a lowly mood only to get delayed getting ready to office. But as I combed my hair in the Balcony mirror, I found a drastically different Chennai with a doe eyed beauty who happened to be in IT, in jeans and T shirt walking by. And as I got down the stairs, and walked to the parking lot to get my Kinetic Honda to office, she walked past again, and boy o boy, I was made to believe that today was my lucky day. Then she looked into my eyes, smiled like Radha did to Mowgli in Jungle Book, and asked me out to Barista this evening.

No ! it did not happen that way. She just walked past with disdain and moved away…And I am sure the good ones here are already taken and it’s not before long that a pulsar guy with “macho” er muscles whisks her away in front of my eyes…

Till then, I am singing to myself, “Jhalak Dikhlaa jaa, ek baar aaja aaja ”, [oh no, i must be possessed...check this] with a baseball cap and a black – red jacket adorning Himesh Reshmiya’s two day stubble look, hoping my luck will change…Also hope twinkle beauty parlor is not going to sue me for copying their copied ideas. Meanwhile, Sea horses are luckier…

एषा तु भाषा देवभाषा सुरभाषा गीर्वाण वाणी च ।

सम्स्क्ऱ्त पठनम् यः करिष्यति तस्य जन्मम् पावनम् भविष्यति ॥

The purest of all languages, the language of the Gods and Mortals is Samskritham and those who have an opportunity to study the language are truly blessed...


For those of you who have not even remotely heard of Sanskrit, it is the language that has had its foundation in the roots of the human civilazation.

The language has found mention in all the ancient and revered religious texts and scriptures of Hinduism and many also opine that Sanskrit has had a considerable influence on other languages of the world including Latin and German.
In fact I had received a forward on e-mail talking about the root level similarity between words of the various languages and their origin traced to their Sanskrit counterparts.

The topic of Sanskrit is often associated with only religion and saffronization and this I believe has been a major stumbling block in it achieving popularity for the same among the masses. The tough tongue twisting pronounciations have further added to it's non-acceptability.

My stand about the perfection in the language is vindicated by the fact that I communicate on Orkut, with a gentleman by name Carlos Barbosa from Portugal,in Sanskrit. Mr. Carlos speaks immaculate Sanskrit and does not know fluent English and neither do I know "fluent Portuguese". Talk about people from distant lands according such high status to a language that has almost become extinct in the tongues of the natives.


The Government's effort has been laudable in offering Sanskrit as a language of study in Schools, despite strong predominance of Hindi as the primary language other than English and the regional language. The reason for which many of my friends in school took up the languge was because of the easy scoring pattern and nothing beyond that. In fact many struggle to remember the shabdas and sutras of Sanskrit grammar, and often don't enjoy memories of the same.

For me, sanskrit was much more than scoring marks. Thanks to the high quality knowledge transfer from my gurus who imparted Sanskrit as my first language from class six to twelve. i often found myself using self composed Sanskrit subhashitas as opening four liners for all my debates and to find the judges mesmerized just by simple words fitting the poetic metre was truly a sight to see. The force of declamation in the language makes even the simplest of statements sound big and feel nice.

Interesting trivia is that the 14 sutras of Sanskrit grammar originated from the sounds of Lord Shiva's "Damru" [musical instrument] and Panini the reknowned grammarian ably noted these to give the language the grammatical structure that has been followed through ages, and is even till date accpeted by experts as the most perfectly coded grammar.

Allow me to illustrate one such grammatical peculiarity of words in Sanskrit. This was passed onto me by my teacher in class IX. The word in contention is :

चतुरंगतग्यः!

the end syllable is not coded in the right way since i could not find it in the transliterator software, online.

The uniqueness of this word is that it retains a congruent meaning even after each preceding syllable is deleted

Let me explain.

the word itself chaturangatagnyaha means one who is an expert in playing the game of dice also known as pagade

when syllable 'cha' is removed, we are left with turangatagnyaha meaning one who is an expert in the matter of horses.

Let's go a little further. the word minus "tu" leaves rangatagnyaha meaning stage artist. removal of "ra" gives angatagnyaha meaning doctor. deleting "an" gives gatagnyaha describing a person who knows the past. Subtracting "ga" we get tagnyaha meaning an expert, in whichever field that might be.

Hold on...it's not over yet...we don't have hanging syllables here. Finally removing "ta" we get gnyaha [jaanati iti gnyaha]meaning one who is conscious of knowledge.

In fact the reverberations of the language are supposed to awaken the latent sub conscious mind and lead to spiritual improvement. Technology is chipping in with its bit to save the language. Tools like the one I used to convert English to Devanagari are gaining popularity and I can only hope this leads to preserving and enriching the language further.

It gives me pleasure to note the fact that only village in the whole world where spoken Sanskrit is widely predominant as a means of communication amidst people of various strata and vocations, is Mattur, a village near Shimoga in the state of Karnataka, which incidentally is also home to a sizeable Sankethipopulation [the community to which I belong]. Mattur was featured on the serial Surabhi and I still am making plans to visit the place with such intellectual and liguistic evolution.

I dedicate this post to my "Gurus" and "Gurunis" who have gifted me the opportunity to pursue this wonderful language and they include Shri Sri Harsha Sir (class 6 and 7), Shrimati T.G. Karuna ma'm(class 8,9,10, VVS Sardar Patel High School), Shri Venkatesh K.S. Sir (class 11 and 12, MES college) and Srimathi Shree Srivatsa ma'm(class 11 and 12, MES college)and of course Shri Ganapathy Mahodayaha from Akshara the body that conducts workshops in spoken Sanskrit.

Signing off on this post, let us all contribute to the development of the language that has given the world the most expressive medium of communication, i.e. SPEECH...

जयतु भारतम् । जयतु सम्स्क्ऱ्तम् । जयतु मनुकुलम् ।