Bunchin wields the bow!

D had a movie date with a friend and Bunchin and his appa had quality time together. It happened that they wanted to fiddle with the violin which has seen more active days! So it was retrieved from its closet and Bunchin saw some new toy. He was excited and immediately caught hold of the bow. He has to do something, not sit there and stare at anything. So he took to wielding the bow and it went all over the place and he was thrilled.

Slowly he was able to make contact with the string and it produced a very nice sound. He went at it again and again and sure enough a melody emerged as if by magic. Bunchin was trying to tell his appa, see I can make a sound from this big toy!

Appa is overjoyed,  and he immediately took a video and put it up on whatsapp.
Patti is amazed at the wonder in Bunchin's eyes as he is figuring out a new toy.

God bless.

Bunchin greets thatha

Bunchin's chinna thatha celebrated his birthday recently. Bunchin, given half a chance would like to throw a wild party! But constrained by distance and his miniscule size, he made a grand performance.  D gently prompted him to say, happy birthday thatha. Bunchin reproduced it sound perfect. It came out beautifully like a sonnet!

."atha din din din thi thaba
.atha din thatha. atha din appa
. thatha thatha, thatha
 din din din thatha

This sound clip came all the way through sound clouds from Guwahati to chennai and sure clouded our eyes.

Wonder of childhood:  the child sees the world new everyday  and we see the utterly charming baby steps he is taking and rejoice in  Gods grace.

Not to be left behind, the wonder of technology to help us enjoy these stages, near perfect!

Its the street life

I have a regular beat to go to my mom's place everyday. The sights and sounds and smells are fascinating. It is a regular life on the streets  that I witness everyday. It is less than a kilometre but the scenery and life varies by the minute!

It is now peak summer in chennai. The trees are bare and the heat is beating down from heaven above. Thankfully good samaritans had planted avenue trees along the road and civic activists in the neighbourhood are ever vigilant about the health and well being of the trees.So there is good shade. The copper pod tree is in full bloom and every hundred metres or so you step on soft yellow carpet.You look up and the dark brown buds and the rich green canopy are a real feast for the eyes. Neem tree is also decked up with flowers and while not a feast for the eyes, it gives out a very heady healthy smell. The road is also full of the tender neem flowers of yesterday , some of them swept away to the corner in bunches by the conscientious corporation workers. You have the jungle badam tree shedding copious seeds. The leaves are so broad and the shade is really cool and sun is totally kept at bay.

You have any number of roadside eateries which have recently sprung up. Yes the idli sambhar kadai is the most popular. The customers are the call taxi and auto drivers and the watchmen from the numerous flats that are sprouting. There is an occasional woman customer who wants to take her morning breakfast as take away. There is also the health drink kadai. It sells all healthy porridges(koozh) and I dont see milling crowds there. A lone stall with a umbrella stuck into the stool on which a mudpot with the words'mor' ( buttermilk) written in chalk . I have not seen much custom here too. But then I dont venture out, mor or no mor at midday, which must be the peak custom for this shop. The tender coconut stall which has now become a roadside departmental store with water melons and a mixie and a juice kadai is seeing regular clientele.

The vegetable vendors are spreading their wares on the pavement and are doing brisk business before they cart them into their vehicle and go door to door. Go for a early morning walk and on the way back pick up vegetables and fruits  seems to be a common practise. I really wish these health conscious people also carry their own bag and not the think plastic bags that the vegetable vendors carry in abundant measure.

A new men's hairdresser has opened shop on the busy thoroughfare.A garage has been recently converted into this 'men's saloon'. The newly painted board announces it as 'sabari saloon'. Quite an unlikely name for a saloon. What did sabari do to have any remote connection to men's hairdressing? But then the other one further up the street is ' vinitha saloon'. So there!

An old lady used to sell bananas in a small cart and would religiously call out to me to buy some. Now she has expanded her shop to sell water melons and also recently flowers. Why flowers I was wondering.Then I realised that chennai women, whether they have anything to eat or not, want to sport mallipoo on their hair and also buy flowers to take to the temple. This road is leading up to a siva temple and a church and the beach, so there is a good weekend crowd there. Summer holidays have added to the floating population and flower seem to be a logical addition.

On some days when I am fairly early, many of the shops(carts) are yet to open. A simple tarpaulin covers their wares on the pavement. I wonder everyday how they are safe. Anybody on the road can pick up a few or more and the owner would be none the wiser.  But then some sort of 'street dharma' seems to be prevailing, and the goodies seem to be intact!.

Life in the open!

Jugaad

Recently read a book on Jugaad and found it quite interesting. It has featured very many native innovations from developing countries. Many of them have an Indian context and I felt quite proud. It was actually a racy read and I was eager to see more and more examples of how countries with are resource starved make do with less.  The authors compares this situation with typical MNCs which have a dedicated research wing with a huge resource budget and having processes with six sigma level of systematisation and documentation. These companies and their research wings have by their very nature prefer expensive products which can be patented. Not for them cheap and easily replicable products.

The authors predict that the world is moving towards resource crunch; or raw material, capital, skilled man power. The power is also shifting from capital intensive countries to consumer driven countries like India and China. The new markets for the mncs are also these countries. They have to necessarily compete with local jugaad products and services. MNCs develop products with more and more features and complications, which are not having many takers in developing countries, where a base model which satisfies the needs of 90% of the population is good enough.These countries do not also have skilled manpower to handle the sophisticated systems nor have the resources to maintain them.

So I felt very good to read in the magazine Sruti, about these jugaad techniques being put to very good use . The feature story was about repair of violins. I have never given a thought to the science of violin repair and more so about the manpower and talent available for that in India. It appears that this is not a developed field and the violinists make do with very rudimentary repair work from hardcore carpenters. The instruments do suffer but that's it. The Lalgudi jayaraman's son Krishnan has for the last few years set up a workshop to train some youngsters in the craft of violin repair. Yes, it does appear to have got a status to being a craft. The teacher from Germany is initially aghast at the rudimentary style of repair work. But then he is also duly impressed with the resourcefulness of the students to collecting the required materials when needed. More so when they needed to be imported and they were expensive and would mean a time delay.

The teacher talks of horse hair for the strings. It has to be white. It has to be horse hair taken from horses who are in the wild and have done lots of outdoor time! Not for him the tame domesticated city bred horses. So it has to be from interior China, Mangolia and Argentina.

Here we are making do with nylon strings.

But then the question remains in my mind. Nowhere in the feature was it mentioned whether sourcing these exotic horse hair has added to the tonal quality of the violin.

I would very much like to know.

From the beginning of time

I was drafted in to take yoga course in our centre last week. I opted for morning session as my evenings were booked with learning swimming. So life has become quite busy. No well not really busy busy in that sense. But both ends of the day are packed, so I feel sort of boxed in. Day starts at 5, I finish a portion of my yoga routine and head for the centre by 6.15. Then two hours there and I head to mom's place from there. Spend some time there and then get back home. Yes that is hectic 5 hours. It is already quite hot with the sun blazing away. My best intention to get some good vitamin D on the sly is thwarted everyday as I desperately open my lifeline of umbrella the minute I step out of the house.

So I get back and spend some good time, trying to get back to equilibrium. I have just about achieved it when it is time to leave for swimming. By 3 pm I start gettting ready and leave by 4. ymca is a good distance from home and very relieved to get into the pool. But the sun is blazing away and can hardly see a little distance ahead in the pool. Yes a few head butts do take place. Thankfully for the last one week, summer coaching has started for tiny tots who like tadpoles are all over the pool till 5 pm. So now when we get into the pool it is after 5 and it is relatively cooler. At 6 it is with great difficulty I get out of the pool and head home.

Home and a routine awaits. Samahan in hot water to guard against pool infections is the first.Then a hot water bath(yes, doctors advice!) , slokas and my yoga routine. By which time I am blissfully tired and hungry and dinner it is,  hot and fresh. I am ready to call it a day with an episode of  ramani vs ramani  and then some reading and settling down for the night. Yes, phone calls to D which invariably are hijacked by bunchin,

So I was really gasping for breath for sunday. A day off from both yoga class and swimming class and I feel like a  typical IT industry professional, who just about manage to live between weekends.

Yes, the day starts with yoga whatever time I get up and then stretches till 5 pm when I head to my mom's place  and then back for some evening yoga time and slokas and that's it to call it a day.

So no wonder that I am feeling I am doing yoga classes in the morning and evening swimming classes, from the beginning of time. But the reality is that the morning classes started just three days back and swimming, three weeks ago.

Perception and reality my friend, a BIG gaping hole inbetween!

Language lab is very active

We had a video clip of Bunchin, where he is talking non stop while turning the pages of a book that thatha was showing him. Not one word or a series of sounds was intelligible to us. But Bunchin was taking his own courses in vocabulary and training non stop. It was hilarious. D said this is just a peep into what he is doing throughout the day. He is babbling non stop( actually the lannguage equivalent of ahara sadhagam in music)

He comes on the phone sometimes to talk to me. He said a few words and repeated them over and over again. So I had to ask D for help. She said he is adding roughly two to three words everyday that I am able to make out. He is saying 'auto' with a soft ending "aathoo". He said kaa for car. Scooter he learned to pronounce a while earlier ''choothai". Yes, he is also able to identify them on the road.

Yesterday a video clip which D sent had him casually walking around the house saying 'cheetah cheetah" and when D asked him he said 'chithhi". D told me he was earlier looking at a pictorial book of animals and was pointing to cheetah and saying yes, accurately as cheetah. Oh great day. He was saying the correct word and I was looking for the interpreter. Chitti he got it just like that. D says he must have heard her mention chitti and has just picked up that word.

Another hilarious one was about 'innonnu'. In tamil it means 'another one'. We use it quite frequently in our conversation and he has picked it up. He was sitting with a few bowls of water for generally fooling around and pouring them all over himself and on the floor. When D was trying to take them away, he said 'innonnu' for the first time. D was wondering what it is and then quickly cottoned on to what he was saying. He was telling her, you are taking my play things away , give me one more!

Last night D told me excitedly that he is able to denote little and lots by his hand gestures and facial expressions. He puts all his tiny fingers together in both his hands and crinks his eyes to denote "very little". Similarly he stretches his arms wide and also gives a wide grin and eyes wide and bright to denote 'lots and lots". Motherly pride and affection was brimming over as she was narrating this to me! It is also fascinating to see the small one pick up new words and expressions one by one and we are closely watching him take this journey!

Now this is patti feeling very very proud of peran and very happy!

God's marvel!

Subra colony gets a facelift

Chennai was devastated by floods in December. Centre sanctioned flood relief and it was utilised for directly crediting 5000 rupees to every household in the entire flood affected area. A little later, road laying took priority. Everywhere we go the roads were getting relaid or redone. Slowly the wave came nearer home and every other road surrounding subra colony wore glossy fresh tar and dazzling in the pre summer sunshine.

Civic awareness is a bit high and so I had looked up the local adyar times and checked if road laying work has been sanctioned. I was delighted to see it was listed.Waiting eagerly for the JCBs and tar drums for a longish time. Then it was that sometime last week, many workers descended on the road and started sweeping the dust off from the roads.That day we went to sleep quite peacefully. The next day, two of the houses in the colony which had raised their house level and put up a big ramp running to a good length of the road and inconveniencing the traffic had their ramps bulldozed .These two ramps were most obvious, because they were in the blind turning and the width of the road already narrow and having lots of two wheelers parked all over the place, was encroached upon.

Since it a small lane and not connected to any thoroughfare, the work was done over a period of two days, during day time. But it was a well coordinated effort and all tough jobs were done by huge machines. On the one hand I was happy that men and women were spared, backbreaking work in the hot sun with hot tar to handle. But I did remember the hue and cry created when heavy machinery was used for the golden quadrilateral that labourers were being displaced and what about their livelihood?

Here I was able to see first hand, it is only the most inhuman jobs that are taken over by the heavymachines(also the smooth finish of the road), but there are any  number of jobs that are still done by men and women.

Our block of flats also got a fresh coat of paint a while ago. so all in all it is a bright orange black visage that subra colony is sporting now!