Oh Mademoiselle Mich !

when i go back to my hometown(avithatur.!),I realise its not the old tharavade (ancestrol home),lush green parambae (backyard), crystal blue thoode (streams) and kollams (ponds) i miss, but my childhood spent in the midst of all this.! my puerility had its own mystic charm ,thanks to a bunch of brashy cousins(my dad has 5 sibilings,so we were quiet a truckload.!!) who made these trips to my hometown soo soo memorable.! this blog is dedicated to one such brashy cousin(now she acts quiet ladylike) :: Michelle aka Mich..straight pointed nose on a nicely chiselled face,silky straight hair ,non-accented english and a mesmerizing smile.. oh boy so non-mallu like ,and a very firang name to complement it all.!!

raised as an army brat she would land in kerala every summers(well almost!) as a pakka North Indian,complete with a nice polished english and very very bad malayalam.. Mich sometimes i wonder why u didnt study to become a journalist..!it was a real discommode including her in all our tree climbing sessions,fishing trips to the paddy fields,hide-n-seek games etc for the simple reason :: she just didnt know fluent malayalam..Mich bet u remember ,all of us ganging up against u.. hehe..


All of us cousins (excitedly) :: "namale padhathe meen pidikyam pooanne,varanendoo?"(we going to the paddy fields,are u coming??)

Mich (confusion writ all over the face) :: "Mummyyy, these people are calling me names.! i dnt understand wht they sayin!!"

All of us :: "Hic.!"

(i normally get pushed in front cos back then i was the only one wit a decent knowledge of this foreign language,English.!so gathering us all the air around me n rehearsing n re-rehearsing i would blurt out the message coupled with giggles.!)

Moi :: "we go paddy fields,u come??"

Mich :: "Awrite but promise me u want put dragon flies inside my shirt.!"

All of us (with a guileful looks) :: *giggle*.. "avade ethamae kaniche tharam" (we'll show u when we reach there).. obviously she didn't understand wht we muttered under our breath.!


man childhood can be carefree and downright bitchy!! thank God i matured early ,cos now Mich I'm proud to have you around me..

* all the sleepless nights we spent talkin and bitchin on some inutile topic n the endless discussions we had (still have.!) on the perturbance of having a BF or the lack of it.!


* can't forget those wonderful trips along the length n breath of our malluLand.. rediscovering-our-roots-trip as we named it..! boy,remember that astrologer on kozhikode beach who predicted our miserable future n managed to scare th hell outta us.. brrrhh...!!


* "what am i going to do with my life" conversations that we've had many a days.! man i can't think of anybody else who totally understands my problems.. girl are we still stickin to our big-ass plan of teaching tribal kids in Kudaloor..??


* the altruistic way in which you parted wit your salwars n T's even thou im a good three sizes bigger than u and then silently prayin that i dnt tear up your outfits at the seam..!(i believe in travelling light and borrowing heavily from cousins.!)


* thanks to u, my sis keeps reminding me about how-not-like Mich i'm.! "why cant you speak to me the way Mich does!","why are u so impatient,you should see Mich..!","why cant you do block printing like the way Mich does..",nah,nah,nah.! grrr.!


* had the greatest of time shopping with you at all those local stores along pondi bazaar and commercial street.!


so Mich here's wishing you a very
Happy B'Day ..!

and aunty you growing old(i have a good one month left for my b'day..! he he.!) so b4 tormenting aunt's start muttering the "marriage" word we should find those tribal kids n teach them some mathematics n english..!


(hope u had a yumm-yumm b'day celebration at Tessy Anunty's place.. and pig this is the second time u celebrating ur b'day there with all her lovely cooking and delicious achappams n cakes.. moi soo soo J.! n monthe end ya,so gift currently put on hold.! :))

mallu's and the "sacred" drink!

a captivating headline in today's Malayalam Manorama (non mallu's :: its the mostly widely read newspaper in kerala.!)..

"tipturellae oru kalle shopendae madal venattae 20 pareke parikae patti, ee parake pattya allkaralee malayaligal yellaya na varatha kittendae "

(the walls of a bar in Tiptur crumbled which resulted in 20 people being gravely injured. The sources say among the injured there were no malayali's!)

oh boy i was laughin uncontrollably today morning, which resulted in me choking on the chapathi n channa curry.! we sure ve earned ourselves a decent name.."koodiyanmar" (drunkards.!).. the blame should be shouldered by our forefathers cos this is how we ended up earning that name( courtsey :: unrevealed sources!) ...

after sitting around on coconut trees for a couple of million years,with pretty much nothing to do except scratch themselves, the mallu apes (ok lets assume here that the division of human's happened in AD times only!) made the most important discovery that changed the way the world evolved,the discovery that would vault them past all the other species roaming earth :: TODDY (liquor made from coconut water).! so they discovered the sacred drink,got all sloshed and fell off the trees in an inebriated state..! this resulted in two things ::

-> mallu's started roaming the earth(this happened cos they fell off the trees and didnt know how to climb back.!) preaching "for drunkards shall save the world"! resulting in todays "athenas" and "styx"

-> since they were inebriated they started talking gibberish which evolved into the language malayalam (that explains why u guys don't understand the language.!)

( our drinking brawls are something u should see,happens a lot during weddings.! but nevertheless signing off is a Proud Mallu.! and othala gang moi got work.. damn ill miss blogging!)

araghhh..!!!

they came in hordes and then they yamped.!and i frankly want to know why they stay ,cos they are always pointing out in loud voices,that could very well be heard in other planets, about how much better north india is.!! listeneing to them talk about north india's super cool chiks,alloo paratha,allo gobbi,allo sabhzi,allo-anything,sophisctiacted life style,malls,weather et al ,u get the feeling that north india is some kinda blessed-by-God paradise and not the crowded,expensive,grimy place that faintly smells of hampster pee..!

here, without embellishment, is a conversation between two techies in the cafeteria...

Mr.North Indian (NI) :: Hi,im a north indian , can i join u for lunch??
Ms.Mallu South Indian (MSI):: Hi,im Ann!!(half expectin the NI to hand over a business card which says he's a NI )..Yes,you can sit.! btw is that ur name,NI??

Mr.NI (laughing uncontrollably):: Oh,Oh that was funny.!
Ms.MSI(bless me lord for im going to sin now) :: Aahhhh.! yeah we ve a brashy sense of humour.! *smirk*

Mr.NI(opening his dabbi) :: Hmm, i love the smell of aloo and roti's.!
Ms.MSI :: Hmmm..

Mr.NI(looking with ruth) :: Is that rice ?? How do u manage to eat rice everyday ?? I mean..
Ms.MSI :: Im a riceaholic u see..!!

Mr.NI :: All i see is people eating idli's,dosas's,rice,sambar,curds and rasam..! Dn't they get bored.!
Ms.MSI :: Ah,i gotta go now.!

(ok , i didnt face a situation like this but i bet it happens every single day to a fellow SI sitting somewhere,in some cafeteria,enjoyin his rice and sambar.!)

parody's of a jeune fille.!!

long long time back (ok not AD times!) a Dad walked around a gizmo store looking at all the different PC's on display...he looked at it with dreams in his eyes,he imagined his young daughter writting complicated C algo and helpin companies develop some great big contraptions that mankind has never seen.. he wanted her to become like him..! cogitating these wonderful thoughts he packed the PC and flew back to india..!
the little girl was dumbfounded after seeing this strange thing,but she preferred the TV over the PC..the dad went about explaining all the different wonderful things a PC could do,but the girl was completely oblivious and kept wondering wht this beast was doing on her study table.. sud-suddenly.."my booksssssss"...." where are my books?? "..the books were packed in the empty computer cartons and hived away in some safe corner.!
the following day with nothing substantial to do the girl decided to explore MS Word n Excel..she soon developed a hatred towards the big long "space" key, so she pulled it out and threw it on the floor, then the long row of F1,F2,F3 etc etc keys started bothering her cos she didnt know wht purpose it served(she still doesn't!) and went about the ardous task of pulling all the F keys(F keys..ahh i like the sound of it!!) and hurling it on the floor, 1,2,3,A,B,C and all the other keys met the similar fate and the floor looked like somebody had spilled alphabet soup..!
the dad realised one thing :: his little girl will have lotta problems writing "Hello World" .! boo-hoo!

the girl finished school as a mediocre educatee(she couldn't catch the colors,they were flyin too high!).. all around her people where talking a strange word "engineering",but being a bon vivant she wanted to become a chef(and the greatest one.!) or a writer or a professional bathroom singer..she mooted this idea but got some appalling responses "i'll teach you cooking,dnt ve to go to college for that","have u ever heard of an engg marryin a cook?","wht will all the ammama's and appapan's think?" blah blah blah..
i went ahead and joined BMS much to the amusement of my admonishing uncles ,aunts ,god-parents ,granparents, neighbours, Sister Susan, Principal RaviSingh and my sunday school teacher Father Edward.! those 4 yrs went like a whirlwind and never once did we touch our books let alone a PC..after stepping out i heard another strange word "software industry" ..this strange land beckoned me for i heard things like "fat wallet","trips abroad","saturday off"...hee-hoo..! just like the other denizens i too jumped into this bandwagon..!
arahhghhh..!! those keys which i had hurled on the ground had risen like a phoenix ,and came to haunt me.. they came tagged with a strange word CMLP.! $%^#$%.. sleepless nights punching all the bloody keys visible to the eye..man i should ve been nice to them 6 yrs back.!

all the keys on the keyboard,
i dnt know what im doing and im soo soo bored,
then came a man with a cigarette in his hand,
he looked at us n waved a C-Linux magic wand.!
confusing problems to solve, test cases to pass,
i looked straight into his eyes and said "you can kiss my ass"!

well off course i didnt say that.! but my hatred towards the keys is deep-rooted.!

(i stayed back home today.! oprah winfrey show + wonder years in the morning,movie planned for the afternoon and badminton in the evening.! ahhh.!! fish curry+rice for lunch..yum,yum and what does the food-court menu read today.??*wicked grin*..othala gang,ha ha ha.!)

joys of betti otta.!

long time ago a hebetudinous(mugged up that spelling yday.!) dude came up with a saying: "there is nothin in this world called free lunch".. either the half-wit didnt ve friends who treated him or he was kanjuse enough not to spend a penny from his pocket which resulted in him havin no friends..!
now replace lunch with free dinner + free booze.! yabba dabba do..!
day:: friday , place::lemon grass , courtsey :: afthab and shariq!
two othala members treated us last friday and boy did we ve fun.. 3 drunkards,one dudeja , chilli chicken , chicken butter masala, chicken kabab n chicken fried rice(did i hear a chicken cry?? no no it must ve been the drunkards.!!) .. yaked yaked yaked till the waiter told us to shut our traps! shucks.! u see monica lewinsky respondin to "stop-flashin-your-tongs-to-presidents" instruction is better obeyed then "shut your traps,u distubing people" instruction to us.! so we wagged our tongues,laughed,hooted ,leched(ok only i did that, but that guy was so darn cute.!couldn take my eyes off him...kavita u agree right??) and disturbed everybody near our table..!
guys i had a ball...hope to see more of it.. dankuu's.!! shariq was acting rather weird after the treat.. did we really burn a hole.?? hmmm...

betti otta(the quality i mean.!) has really evolved from my humble school days to now, but the joy still remains the same.. so i sat reminiscing(sound track :: "with a little help from my friends" by beatles)..
school days:: save for the 2bucks that mom gave me every week nothin much devolved from her purse to my purse..now, back in those times "purse" meant that small little pouch on the sides of your school bag.. that 2bucks was a thin line between pushing your cycle back home and feeling the wind in your hair..since i ve a congenital problem of loosing anything and everything(2 buck coin is way too small for my eyes.!) i had to learn the art of balancing a punctured cycle while holdin the handle of my friends cycle..!this might give u peoples the economical crunch i had to endure.. so when its a special day(b'day)you land up with 20 bucks in your purse,these days its not much but back in those times u walked around like Uncle Scrouge boasting to friends about the booty and promising them that orange flavoured ice-lolly.!a treat was 1 by 10 pepsi,3 by 10 vegetable puff,ice-lolly and thotapurii magoes with salt.! yumm,yumm..paris hilton this is Simple Life.!


college days:: in college anything and everythin, however insignificant it was ended up in a treat..! "macha treat" soon turned into a cliche..! the treats that i enjoyed can be divided thus..

1)sem-exam treat:: this happens when a screwball passes his sem paper with a 15+35 score,and God forbid if it read something like 1+49 then he's done for.!! multiply that by 8 cos in a class of 60 that probability was high.!!
2)new bike/bf/gf/mobile/bag/jeans/shoes/record book/undies.. just about anything that had the new,clean,uncontaminated sheen to it!
3)mobile treat:: this happened in our final sem when some sexually frustrated guys(read mobile squad) raided classrooms n confiscated our mobiles.! some dude's invested in second hand phones to stay connected, so people like us who suffered the ignominy of being cut off from the outside world nursed our ire by takin a treat.!
4)important days:: be it b'days,star b'days,goldfish's death anniversary,today-was-the-day-he-looked-at-me-for-the-first-time anniversary blah,blah,blah,often ended in 20 odd guys gormandizing in aunty's paratha shop.! man i sooooo miss those parathas and chikanjee !:(

last heard a certain Mr.BalveerReddy(head-honcho of the mobile squad) is cooling his heels somewhere in Tihar jail, thanks to a frustrated dude who tipped-off the IncomeTax Raid guys about the loot..!!

we came,we played and we conquered..!well almost(3rd spot).!

"the invention of Throwball was not an accident.It was developed with a reason. I can now throw kachada into the dustbin with a greater accuracy.!!! "

three months back if someone had told me "ann lets play throwball" , i would ve gone wtf..! i'd rather prance around in a pretty frock chasing butterflies.! that was one of my favourite sport back in my chadi days, these days butterflies are as rare as mallu's in pluto(now thats wht i call "rare").. so when the opportunity came knocking in the form of a MT Throwball mail i took the plunge..! other than the spelling i didn't know anything about this weird game, oh yes there was a ball that was to be tossed around.. ahh i knew that,no kidding.!!

day 1:: we went for the tourny like the underdogs..ahem.!the who's who of the corporate world had descended on kanteerva grounds,complete with jerseys and coach n all the extra-frills.!the first match was against company XYZ..my legs were shuddering cos i didnt know a thing about the rules..all i knew was if by sheer luck the ball landed in ur hands it hd to be thrown back.. the best thing about throwball is it's a sans-lines game,unlike the other games where u hava hazzar lines going from here-to-there-to-back and confusing the hell outta you..! one line which tells u the boundary and thats it.! catch all the ballz that u predict would fall inside and throw it back.. as simple as ABC.! we won the game in straight sets,thanks to some exceptional spin by some of my team-mates... and then we went into a win-win spree.. beat company ABC and EFJ.. and peoples it was all straight sets.! :) yabba-dabba-doo,we were in the semi's.!

day 2:: "does anyone have moov??","pass me that reliefspray.!".. boy i underestimated the power of throwball.! i was sore all over.! to add to that i couldn't sleep the previous night,thanks to two cans of RedBull.! bloody.! the corporate guys who came for the tourny had kissed etiquettes good-bye.! howling,hooting,cheering,whistling,swearing.. they were doing it all.! reminded me of college b'ball tourny's.! *nostalgia takes over*.. sniff,sniff.! between all this i witnessed a rather quaint incident ...company ABC had a player(no 10) who was physically disabled,boy her serves were just mind-boggling.!these are the people self-help books talk about..!determination,inspiration,motivation..her eyes displayed it all.! hats-off to u.!
we played HIJ and lost.! damn,it was a close match but we went on to win the next one which landed us the third place.! phew.! a medal and ceritficate later, we patted ourselves for the exceptional game we played.! and of course the resolution to win the next tourny..i tried a few basketball type throws but damn the net.! :(

homeAlone(){ System.out.println("I'm Loving it :)");}

yes,i do Java programming.. man im such a show-off..!! but the fact is i couldn think of an appropriate heading.!!

having been under my mom's eyes,ears,nose,hands etc etc for close to two plus decades ,a home-alone type situation leaves me acting like an ape who chanced upon fire, it feels like God personally gift-wraped the moon and placed it under my pillow..ok those comparisons were ewehhh but in simple words i was happy with a capital H..!

so when everybody packed up there bags n left for chennai(i stayed back cos of a throwball tourny, Mich i'll make up for it awrite so cut that frown.!!!) i thought about all i could do in the next 48hrs.. btw more on the ThrowBall tourny in my next post.!
my teenage hormones ve tamed down so there was no booze-+- XratedMovie party like in the good ole college days, but i did do the things i had always wanted to do,like::

1)run around the house a la pamela style,with extra inches of clothing off-course..i dnt want our neighbour Susan aunty to think there was a shakila shooting happenin.!
2)play loud music.. be it Adnan Sami or Madona or Yesudas,if it played above volume 3 my mom would start her whinning n trust me hearing the feeble music from the music system is much better than hearing my mom whine..!
3)cook my own food with only one mouth to feed.. no mom around to say "cleaning after cooking is mandatory" , no slim-tall-trim sis saying "look at tht teeny-weeny bit of fat at the corner,no wonder u are so fat" and the "no wonder u are so Fat" is always said scoffingly .! but i like to call myself muscular... my dad always eats the things i make with a ignorance-is-bliss look in his eyes and a prayer on his lips.!!
4) press the remote button from 1 to 75 and then the reverse order.. with the volume high off course.. i like to hear the switch from news to music to kannada to mallu to hindi to an evangelist tryin hard to hypnotise a devotee..! ahhhh.!
5) eat lunch,breakfast,dinner,snack(in the same order.!) on the carpet.. sometimes i feel my mom cares more about the carpet than her daughter's happiness.. and to think of it ,its not even persian.!
6)walk around in my night dress till 2 in the afternoon.. oh boy i dare not do that when she's around.!!
7)chill beer with some A-rated dvd's..my dad doesn't count his beer cans..!:)and the A movie part is just cheap-thrills,ve to indulge my friends thanks to the censorship committee faggots..!
when u ve a conservative mom and a liberal dad u end up boozing at home.!

24 hrs left, time's running out.. the Sliver CD awaits me and damn i need to clean that chicken stew i spilled on the carpet.!
but the silence is killin me .!!

and thus we wed..!!

leelamma aunty ponders over the dowry, looks at her husband,a rather quaint man and smirks. they had expected the prospective groom and family to quote a more pocket-size amount, after all her daughter minumole "is" a BSc ,MSc and a BEd(thrown in as an afterthought,which resulted in the poor girl experiencing one more year of drudgery under the hands of Sister Susan of XYZ college!)... minumole's turmoil has just begun..

these days girls in Malluland dnt go thru the olde worlde tradition of gathering up degrees,sitting thru a pennau kannal (girl watching!) etc thanks to shaadi.com and the likes ,but it had its own fun moments for us cousins who ve witnessed many such visits and who silently thank our stars that it is almost nonextant.!

pennau kannal normally starts when girls hits 20.. she is paraded around in silk sarees(now if her Appachan is a Gulf returnee then designer ones rule the roost.!) and the degrees against her name are chanted in one single breath lest the listener miss out the B's and M's that make up her credentials..the girl walks around with a copious amount of Cuticura Talc Powder dusted on her face.. u see we mallu's believe is the adage "the fairer the better/prettier/economical etc etc".. the whiff of its fragrance following her every step.. now the problem with Cuticura Talc is it cakes thanks to the humid weather in kerala so the humble karchief doubles up as a mini powder case..Ammachi's of Bijumon(BTech) from US, Shiju(MBBS) from UK, Babu from Dubai and on rare occasions Jomon from Irinjalakuda (my hometown..!) keep a watchful eye in pallis(church) and marriage pandals to see if there are any potentials roaming around..! once the bait is found the ceremony begins.. a broker,normally a bespectacled man in white mundu-shirt sets up the meeting between the two families... now this happens after the tharavad parre(family name) is analyzed , secret spies(normally cousins ,chin-wagging aunts and helpful neighbours) gather all possible info about the family in question and endless rounds of chayya and biscuit meetings with all possible combination of relatives over the dowry to be given and gold to be purchased is done.!

:: orapikalle .. ok in Bush land they call it meet the in-laws!!
the grooms mother recites the customary "Our father" and "10 Hail mary" and the whole clan(mother,father,sister,brother,Sheela Aunty, Jibbymon, Ammama ,Mathai uncle etc etc) squeeze into 3-4 white ambassadors(washed and polished) and set out to meet the in-laws.. chai,biscuit ,acchapam,koylapam,unniappam, and assorted biscuits from Jijo Bakery bedeck the dinning table.. the prospective bride sits decked up in gold and steal glances at the groom.. the provoked groom who sits like a constipated humming bird asks stupid questions like peera enthae??(whats your name) #$%#! ladies sit around the dinning table and chat, the younger ones prance around with mouthful of biscuits,men sit on the verandha discussing the harvest and weather and they part ways with the dates of the wedding and dowry amount fixed..! much gossiping follows after that.. "did you see that gold chain Bency Chechi had around her neck?? easily 10 pavan " , "Jose Chetan's son is working in Florida,BTech,good alliance for Rosemol" blah blah.!

:: kalyanam (wedding!)
"all that glitters is indeed gold".. Allukas jewellers, Kalyan Silks and Shooby Studio make good business during weddings.. chicken olathiyathae,pork curry,fish fry, duck roast,chemmen fry all cooked with fat and oil and ghee..enough to clog the drains of Kengeri.. humid climate and the masalas in curries and the oil drenched chicken,not a really great combination i must say..! all this washed down by whiskey/rum/brandy... that explins why we mallu's don't die of cholestrol. you see the drinks melt out all the fat taken in with tht chicken leg..!

footnote :: othala gang this is for you guys,the discussion we had yday in cafeteria got me thinking..! u need to see it to believe it ,but this whole wedding tradition is fast fading .. sigh!! think soon it will all become a memory.. othala now your turn to write about shetty weddings..!