Monday, March 19, 2012

Life List and Bucket List


Shri TNC Rangarajan shares with us links to a specimen of an ambitious Life List (goals you are fully committed to accomplishing before a specific date), and his own Bucket List (things you would like to do during your lifetime).

The individual’s Life List includes: learn to fly a plane, participate in a talk show, live in wilderness for some time, save a human life, star in a commercial, etc. The aspirant fixes a deadline, 25 May 2017.

Some of Rangarajan-ji’s goals are: love and be loved; see family happy, healthy and prosperous; have one healthy meal a day (a tall order for me though); have one good belly laugh a day, etc.

Thanks TNC. With this wake-up call, I now switch my allegiance from ‘Mind is the Worst Enemy of Man’ to ‘Mind is the Master of the Universe’, and set my own interim targets:

Going to bed half an hour late shall no longer constitute a valid reason to skip next morning Kriya or walk for the lady of the house (LOH) and me. Our morning walks, known to start on a happy note with mundane matters, shall not hereafter gradually warm up into arguments, and end in a silent march back home.

A full month in advance of our five-day family vacation to beaches in Florida, we had suspended our regular visit to Santa Clara Senior Centre for gym, swim, and spa. We will now resume it, and I will teach LOH what I had learnt from my village pond – how to swim.  Doesn’t matter, it will lack technical finesse. As we head for Phoenix next month, she will be fully prepared to demonstrate to our elder son her prowess, in the swimming pool of his newly acquired house.  An occasion she is looking forward to.

A long stay in the US necessitates repeated visits to my bank while in Bangalore. Hereafter, the fresh arrival of mouth-watering sweets at Adayar Anand Bhavan, next door, shall not alter my resolve not to sneak in. And in US, visits to Santa Clara Library shall not be designed to check out a little before 3.30 pm, when Stan’s Donut shop, in front, closes for the day.

With our innate ‘weakness’ for visiting temples, I shall persuade LOH to cover new temples, and not repeat the same temples. Badrinath, Kedarnath, Vaishno Devi, Puri Jagannath, Dwaraka, Srisailam, are temples we look forward to having darshan at. That reminds me. Chanting of Vishnu Sahasranamam while still in the bathroom to save time will stop forthwith. I will respect LOH that everything has a place, and a place for everything.

Adaptability thy name, they say. Before dialing any 1-800 number, I shall rehearse my date of birth, residential address, telephone numbers, or Social Security number, so that he/she no longer holds the line as I rush upstairs to hunt from various locations. Also I shall memorize the new equivalents: A for Albert, B for Bob, C for Charlie, instead of: A for Anoop, B for Batra, and C for Chaturvedi.

V.V. Sundaram
17 March 2012

Monday, March 12, 2012

Mahabharata Over Dinner


It is not a fight of Mahabharata proportions over property or assets and liabilities. Just that the great epic emerged in the warm-up conversation among an invited group last evening. The trigger?  The Upanishad Ganga being aired from 11 March.

By way of anticipatory bail, I must add that the finer aspects of the epic are not my forte, in anything. I just have a superficial knowledge. What I essay here is just the gist of what transpired – nothing more, nothing less.

Most of the invitees were in 30s and 40s, had their upbringing in India and moved to the US for a living. Only my wife and I belonged to the senior category.

Any discussion attracts opposing views. Yes, these do add colour and life. Precisely this is what one youngster did, and with aplomb.  He maintained that Dhritarashtra was the King, and Pandu was just a caretaker, annexing adjoining territories to the kingdom.  Upon Pandu’s demise, therefore, if Dhritarashtra harboured Duryodhana to take over the reins after him and part with nothing to Pandavas, he was well within his rights.

Second, during the entire 13years of Pandava’s exile when Duryodhana ruled de facto Hastinapur and Indraprastha, there had not been a single complaint from his subjects. That should, the youngster felt, speak volumes of his acumen as a king-to-be.

Third, more kings of the adjoining kingdoms rallied behind Duryodhana in the battlefield than Pandavas could muster. This would not have been possible, he maintained, if they were disgusted and disenchanted with him.

He unfolded a few more, before the topic gradually drifted to Indian heritage, the Indus Valley Civilization, the meticulous town planning that the Mohanjo-daro and Harappa excavations revealed, the engineering marvel of the Brihadeswara temple at Tanjore, the iron steel pillar at Qutab Minar not getting rusted despite centuries of exposure to all kinds of weather, and the dating of Mahabharata epic. It is said river Saraswathy had sworn to Brahma (?) that if the two groups did wage a war, she would go dry in protest. The dating of the river going dry, he said, has since been established, and it matches with other evidences of the date of Mahabharata battle.

Delving as we were deep in these, a young mother reminded us that the kids had exhausted their stock of plays and games and were getting restive, and directed us to the dining table. We drove back home with our belly and brain both well nourished.

I know some of you in my Yahoogroups fraternity will be gunning for a rejoinder on these viewpoints. Please do so by all means, but pack it more with content than contempt; make it substantive rather than nitpicking. Thanks.

V.V. Sundaram
11 March 2012

Friday, March 2, 2012

The Misfiring Knack


RELAXING at home on a Sunday morning. I felt a strong smell emanating from the kitchen. I asked my wife: " I say, is some rat dead; or you have opened an antique pickle jar from the attic - or, are you trying some new dish?"

The last delivery was a bouncer and she turned in on me like a wounded tigress. "It is all because of your wonderful prediction - yet another instance of your misfiring ability."

"Yes, it was a bright sunny morning a few days before this. I had suggested her that I expected the next few days to be very hot; she could make the rice paste for Karu Vadaam (a pappad variety-Phul wari in Hindi), and get the preparation dried up in the sun before the dust-storm season set in. She promptly prepared the paste the next day. That was all. Since then there had been nothing but rain, Rain and RAIN. (Remember our Madam Prime Minister even announced that she was going to get foreign experts' opinion on the sudden change in the weather pattern? Exactly those very days.) My wife had fondly been hoping for the sun to show up, but meanwhile the paste was well past its expiry date and had begun to permeate its pungent smell all over the house, and perhaps our neighbourhood too.

Okay, I take the blame for this mishap. But what did she mean by her sweeping remark; "Yet another instance of your misfiring ability?" It did not take her long to unleash; she has such things at her finger-tips.

We were once shopping from a South Indian store. The young Tamil salesgirl quoted the price of an item at Rs 80. I spoke to my wife in Bengali and in code words  (my wife is well versed in Bengali, and I know a bit of it). We conveyed our offer, but the girl flatly refused. And we bought the piece without any reduction. As we were leaving the girl thanked us in chaste Bengali: " I would have agreed to reduce the price by the age of  your elder son as you were suggesting to each other, but in the end you were also telling that even if the price was not reduced it would still be a good buy. So I thought I might as well charge you the full price." Later she confided that she was a child of Tamil-Bengali couple.

Way back in my childhood, I had wanted to participate in a village drama. The director told me that he would have gladly given me a role if only my nose were a little less long. I belonged to an affluent family then, so influence was brought to bear at parental level, and I was included - as a king. In consideration, my father agreed to provide all the stage lighting with connection from our house (only a very few houses had electric connections those days). In my role I was to react sharply to a suggestion of my wicked lieutenant and say "huuhh" steaming forcefully through my nose. In the force of the air released, the moustache that was clipped into my nostrils fell off. The alert light-boy (working in our household) switched off the light to enable me to pick it up and re-fix it. This done, the light was switched on. But there was a second uproar of laughter. Yes, in the spadework done all too soon in darkness, the kingly moustache that was majestically looking upwards, was bowing most humbly downwards.

This incident relates to a scheme offered by a bank [Bank of Madura?]. You deposit Rs 500 for ten years and get entitled to participate in their monthly draw of lots for Rs 1 lakh and downwards. I went to buy one certificate. Being a believer in numerology and reckoning  my place in the queue, I realized that from the standpoint of numerology the certificate number that I would get might not bring me luck, but the one next would. So I allowed the man behind me to buy the certificate telling him that I was still undecided. And, as soon as he bought it, I got mine too. I checked results later. Yes, I just missed the first prize by one number. That chap to whom I surrendered my place had bagged it.

Anyway, as a never-say-die, I still tell myself, if winter comes, can summer be far behind? I might strike it rich one day, in another form, if only my misfiring knack doesn’t deny it.
(Published first in Hindustan Times June 17 1983)

V.V. Sundaram
28 February 2012

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