Reflections, memories, and musings — written and shared as they come.
A few days ago I had shared a Malayalam song 'chenthamara dala nethran thanne' by Malayalam singer Mira Ramamohan. I liked it very much and listened to it a few more times. It was always ringing in my ears. ' Chenthamara dala nethran' - a man with eyes like lotus petals. Sri Krishna. Then, is there a woman with eyes like lotus petals? Ah! Yes. What about 'Saroja dala nethri ' - Syama Sastri's krithi in Sankarabharanam in praise of Devi Meenakshi. . I listened to it also again. I became curious and searched further. I wanted to see the album from which the Malayalam song was taken. I found out that it was from an album titled 'Poornathriyeesam Ashraye' by the Malayalam musician Srivalson Menon. All the songs in that album were in praise of, not Sri Krishna, but of Poornathriyeesar.
Now I wanted to learn more about this Poornathriyeesar. Then I remembered that I had listened to a couple of full length concerts by Dr. N J Nandini and others in the Poornathriyeesar temple a few months back. My further search got me the following information about this temple. I am sure you will also be interested in knowing about this temple.
Poornathriyeesar temple is in Thrippunithura, a town very near Ernakulam. (My Malayalam teacher says it is Thripnithara. She knows better. So we will adopt that name). . The presiding deity here is Lord Poornathriyeesar, a form of Lord Vishnu also known as Santhanagopala Murthi. It is one of the very popular temples in Kerala. The Lord is the family deity of the Maharajas of Kochi, just as Lord Padmanabhaswamy is for the royal family of Travancore. Poornathriyeesar means Lord of the Complete Three Vedas.
According to the local legend the deity was established there by the Pandava prince Arjuna in Dwapara Yuga. The legend goes like this:-
After winning the Kurukshethra war the Pandavas were ruling the country from Hasthinapur. During that time a poor Brahmin came to Arjuna and complained that his children died prematurely soon after birth and he thus lost nine of them. His wife was then expecting their tenth child. He requested Arjuna to save at least that child. Arjuna promised to help him by safeguarding the child. He also took a vow that if he failed to save the child he would himself die by entering the fire. He took his bow and arrows and stood guard at the Brahmin's house. The tenth child was born but unfortunately it also died soon after birth. Arjuna could not save it. Dejected at his failure he raised a big fire and was about to enter it. Sri Krishna appeared before him and prevented him from sacrificing his life. He took him to Vaikunta. There Arjuna saw all the ten children with Lord Vishnu. The Lord was so pleased with Arjuna's perseverance that He gave him all the children and also an idol of Himself. Arjuna returned to the earth and handed over the children to the Brahmin. He wanted to install the sacred idol of Lord Vishnu at a suitable location. Sri Krishna requested Lord Ganesa to search for a suitable place for this. While searching all over the earth Lord Ganesa reached 'Thripnithara'. Enchanted by the captivating beauty of the place He refused to move further and sat there. Arjuna and Sri Krishna decided to install the idol of Lord Vishnu there itself and requested Lord Ganesa to move aside, but he refused. Upset at this they pushed the Lord aside and installed the idol where He was sitting. Thus pushed, Lord Ganesa sat there permanently facing South. People say that this is the only place where we can find Lord Ganesa sitting facing South. Unlike in other places Lord Vishnu is sitting on Aadisesha here.
This is said to be a very popular temple in this area. The annual Vrischikothsavam, an eight day festival, celebrated here in November-December draws thousands of pilgrims from all over Kerala.
I saw some of the photos of the temple. It is very large, completely built in wood and has a beautiful Kerala type architecture. One should visit this place at least once in one's lifetime.
(I began my search for a song and ended up in a virtual visit to a temple).
Once in Houston, during a family chitchat when asked who in the family watched tv shows the most, pat came the answer from Rishi, 'Ambi Thatha and Sarasu Paatti'. Hit on the bull's eye.
True, Manni and I are addicted to our iPads. We get immersed in them for hours together every day whenever we are awake. 'They are the ones maintaining harmony in our midst'.
We both use Bluetooth headphones, with noise cancellation feature so that we don't disturb each other. So much so, on several occasions, when I wanted to draw Manni's attention I had to telephone her.
We have iPhones also. I have very little use for phone except for listening to music at bedtime. I don't get personal calls. All the calls I get are from Amazon delivery agents asking for directions to the house.
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With this post I intend taking a short break, yielding the floor to others to entertain (and enlighten) us with their anecdotes. I want to learn Spanish, the second unofficial official language of USA where most of our group members live. For this I have signed up with Duolingo. As soon as it is finished I will be back in a month or two. In the meantime please listen to this upcoming artiste:
Krithi Vittal in Cleveland
https://youtu.be/hKrNTKnks80?si=900S84igjlDOAWH7
Here are some more trivia for you.
Do you know that the states of Ohio and Michigan in the USA once went to war with each other? Yes, you heard it right. They went to real war with each other. The dispute was about who should own Toledo, a border industrial town. It got aggravated to such a degree that their militia (National Guards?) were mobilised and were ready to shoot at each other. Luckily the president and the congress intervened and settled the issue amicably allotting Toledo to Ohio and compensating Michigan with some other area rich in minerals.
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Talking about Ohio, it was created as a state in early 1800s. As was the procedure then the representatives of the proposed state gathered in Chillicothe, the then capital of the territory, and drafted a constitution for the new state and a petition to the congress in DC requesting recognition as a state and admission into the Union. The petition was sent by a special messenger to the Congress. The congress approved the request; but omitted to notify it probably by oversight.. This was not noticed by anyone for about a century and a half until the state celebrated its sesquicentennial of formation in 1953. Waking up suddenly the process was restarted and a new petition was drafted and sent to DC. As by then the capital was shifted to Columbus the petition was sent from the old capital, Chillicothe. What was more, the emissary carrying the petition rode all the way to DC on horseback, as was done in olden days.
The new petition was approved and notified and all ended well, except that the state had to exist without recognition for more than a century.
You might have used ChatGPT on several occasions for reference. I have also done it many times.
My opinion about it is that it is a wonderful reference guide with a sea of information. Its spontaneous response impresses me; but I find it the most talkative one I have come across. It goes on throwing up endless suggestions for more information enticing you to unknowingly continue the conversation. Get caught in its tentacles and extricating yourself will be very difficult. As they say, give it a foot it takes a mile.
Once I asked it about Lord Rama's elder sister. Yes, my favourite deity had an elder sister by name 'Shantha'. The story I had heard goes like this. In olden times the Kosala kingdom, of which Ayodhya was the capital, was divided into two parts by Sarayu. These were ruled by the parents of Dasaratha and Kausalya, who happened to be cousins. Dasaratha and Kausalya loved each other and married against the local custom which prohibited such relationships. Their first born was a daughter named Shantha.
A charming child, she was born with a congenital defect, probably as a result of the consanguineous marriage of her parents. The court sages advised Dasaratha to give the child away in adoption, as they thought that it might cure her of the defect.
Obligingly Dasaratha gave Shantha in adoption to his friend Romapadha, the king of Anga, a neighbouring country. There Shantha got cured of her infirmity and grew to be a beautiful woman . Romapadha started searching for a suitable husband for her.
In the meantime his country was afflicted by severe famine due to failing monsoon for a couple of years. The king was advised to get the sage Rishyasringar, a celibate living in seclusion who had not seen a woman in his life, to visit the country for relief from the severe drought. The king immediately arranged for this. The moment the sage Rishyasringar set foot on the soil of Anga there were torrential rains and the famine vanished. The king was so pleased that he gave away Shantha in marriage to Rishyasringar.
This was the same Rishyasringar who officiated at the 'Puthrakameshti' yaga performed by Dasaratha for getting male offsprings.
I told ChatGPT about this tale and asked if it was true. It clarified that most of it was, except the parents being cousins and the consanguineous marriage parts. According to it Shantha had no birth defects and was given in adoption by Dasaratha out of love for his friend Romapadha.
Not stopping with this, it went on explaining various episodes from Raguvamsa and offered to give more and more details. So much interested in the conversation that I lost the sense of time passing till it was nearly 4 o'clock in the morning. I had to say bye to ChatGPT. It reluctantly left me saying that it would continue the discussion the next morning.
For the next fortnight I never launched the app.
You may be wondering why this guy always talks about himself. I think it is the safest one to do . Discuss others and you may hurt them accidentally, forcing them to look for the nearest half a brick. One should be discreet in expressing one's political views, . I for one do not like to spend the next fortnight in MIL's house eating 'kali' for dinner. Hence this choice.
Did I say 'kali'? Does it not ring a bell? Who can forget the days we spent, when we were young, eagerly looking forward to Thiruvathirai in December when we would be served the sweet dish 'kali' with a generous helping of 'thalaga kuzhambu'. What a great combination! A heavenly delicacy worth sacrificing any thing.
By the way, do you know what 'thiruvathirai kali' means in Malayalam, the lingua franca of the God's Own Country? Though the southern sisters have very many words in common, many of them are miles apart in their meanings. Thiruvathirai kali in Malayalam is not a sweet dish served in their sadyas, but a dance form performed by women during festivals. Dressed in traditional attire they dance rhythmically around the sacred lamp to the accompaniment of music.
Here is an example of thiruvathira kali.
https://youtu.be/1f1JCILQr0M?si=p5iEobfTgHBSiX5v
The songs are sung on the sideline by singers trained in this genre.
One such singer is Nedumballi Ramamohan. His specialty is singing for Kathakali and other folk events. His wife, Meera, is a talented Carnatic musician. One admirable attribute of this lady is her extreme simplicity. She wears simple clothes and very little jewellery. She doesn't even hesitate to sit for performances sans makeup.
Here is one of her songs.
Song by Mira Rammohan
https://youtu.be/ei0kt6QkaZk?si=MutmIaCudWMJ37Bl
Kerala has produced many great musicians. More about them later
Besides music and mathematics, computers are the ones that interest me.
When I joined service under government none among us had heard of this gadget which has now become all pervasive. From 1969 to 1973 I worked with another government department on deputation. I was drafted to be part of the team they had assembled to organise the accounts department of their upcoming new unit here. During the second year of my tenure a chartered accountant joined us as the head of the accounts department. (I came to know that he was also a student of the National College , one year junior to me). He proposed to computerise the accounts of the organisation. For this he sent me to IBM in Bombay to learn computer programming. He also attended the training program with me.
Classes were held in the Express Towers in Nariman Point. We had hands on training in the data centre of IBM. We relived our college days during the couple of months we spent there.
After the training we started with the pay rolls for our organisation and prepared the necessary programs. A new organisation ours was, we didn't have a computer of our own. As a temporary arrangement we shared the computer rented by our sister organisation from IBM. We were given time to work on the system in the evenings after that organisation had completed their tasks for the day. So, I would prepare the data for my work during the day and go there in the evening for using the system.
Once I was generating the payroll for the month. As usual I went to the sister organisation in the evening for completing the work. As you know in those days computers were gigantic machines occupying the whole room. The IBM system 1401 we had, consisted of a processor of the size of a large double cupboard. It was linked to a card reader cum punch, another little giant, with a line printer (which used continuous stationery) in tow. We also had a tape drive, another cupboard. The tapes used were of half an inch width and some 2000 feet length, wound in large open spools like those of old movies. On that day I loaded the data and set all the controls on the system properly and started the process.
The printer started its work and went on spitting out the output, rhythmically going ticketty tok, ticketty tok, …... So much so, I was lulled into slumber as I was very tired and also was sure of my preparatory work. When the machine completed the job and stopped I woke up, bundled the printout and returned to my office. As it was late in the evening I left the whole thing with the Officer in the Time Office and went home, satisfied that I had earned my day's pay.
The next morning when I went to collect the papers the staff in the Time Office looked at me curiously. One of them pointed at the payroll I had left there the previous night. When I examined it I had the shock of my life. The computer had printed the payslip of the first employee correctly, but for all the rest, some 200 of them, it had printed personal details correctly, but repeated the same pay and allowances as the first one. So sure of my preparation that I was, I had not noticed the glitch in the system in time.
The great socialist leveller, the computer had decided that for that month all of us from GM to watchman should get the same emoluments!
Soon after leaving high school in Devakottai I joined the National College in Trichy for higher studies, a premier institution started in 1919 by a few Hindu nationalists as an alternative to the Christian Missionary sponsored St. Joseph's College. The first Principal was the eminent educationist Prof. Saranathan. After his illustrious tenure of a couple of decades Prof. A Rama Iyer took over the reins. He was the principal when I joined the college.
My subjects there were English literature, Tamil literature, Maths, Physics and Chemistry. As part of the syllabus for English literature we had to study a full drama of Shakespeare, a novel of nineteenth century writers like Charles Dickens, Thomas Hardy etc and a compendium of old and modern English poems. That too soon after leaving High School. You may very well imagine the plight of the young boy from a third tier town, educated for 11 years in Tamil medium, (where we were taught even English through Tamil) suddenly thrown into this cauldron. Luckily we had excellent faculty and the lecturers were very sympathetic and helped us a lot in getting adjusted to the completely new environment.
Fortunately for us during our second year one Mr. C S Kamalapathi joined as the second lecturer for English literature, the other one being Prof. Mr. M K Venkataraman. This Mr. CSK, who had come from the Jamal Mohammed College in the town, was an expert in teaching Shakespeare. We thoroughly enjoyed his lectures and began to like Shakespeare's works.
Here comes the important part of this story. While teaching , our lecturer would also enact the scenes, many a time asking the students to join him. While teaching Julius Caesar he would bring out the characters alive. During the funeral procession of Caesar his Brutus would reverberate the class with his oratory, uttering the famous lines 'it is not that I love Caesar less but I love Rome more'. We never missed any of his classes.
At the end of the year, during the annual day celebrations of the college, he arranged to stage the drama, Julius Caesar, to be enacted by the students of our class. I was given the role of Antony and my room mate Cassius and so on. The rehearsals went off very well. When the actual performance came trouble showed up. In the very important scene of Caesar's assassination I had to say something. Unfortunately I forgot my lines. Mr. Kamalapathi prompted from the sidelines several times, but nothing doing. I faltered repeatedly, and persisted in delivering my own substitution. The audience had a hearty laugh. The scene meant by the author to be a tragic one turned out to be comic. That was the day the great Shakespeare was rewritten by none other than yours faithfully.
Poor Mr. Kamalapathi, might have cursed himself and vowed not to repeat this adventure with students like us.
That was the end of my dream of choosing the acting career.
I am an avid reader of P G Wodehouse , a great satirist, right from my college days . I have read almost all his works. I can never forget his characters, like the ever forgetful Lord Emsworth, the master of the Blandings Castle, with his prized pet, a pig named Empress, which had won the first prize in the village show year after year; or the indomitable Jeeves, the Gentleman's Gentleman of Betty Wooster in London. Unfortunately no new novels of my favourite author are being published now (maybe he could not send his works down for publication from the other world to which he was called decades ago). So I am now re-reading his old works now and then. I was so addicted to his writing that his style had almost gone into my system and often showed up in my writings. My colleagues appreciated this. But one of my bosses seeing my notes commented that the style was interesting, but it would require a couple of generations for the Government to accept and use it. I didn't know what he meant by that; but I took it as a compliment. Never the less I avoided using that style thereafter as far as possible and reverted to the official style. Still, now and then it creeps up.
People used to say that I didn't talk much. In fact I was a compulsive talker once. Heading the training department of our office for some three years I had to spend a major part of my working day lecturing to trainees. I also had to officiate as guest lecturer in other Regional Training Institutes of our department. So continuous talking was unavoidable. But after retirement I became silent like many men of my clan, learning to speak only when spoken to. That too in the presence of the Head of the Family.
Once I had to attend a three month orientation training course in the Indian Institute of Public Administration in Delhi. It was a very memorable period in my official life. We were provided with accommodation in their hostel, a fantastic place with ethnically furnished rooms and delicious food. Lectures were held during week days and during weekends we went round the city and nearby places site seeing. As part of the training we were taken to Haridwar and Rishikesh for studying the working of the public sector undertakings there. (One of these was IDPL, Rishikesh producing generic drugs for export. A company which could have become one of the Navarathnas of GOI was styfled to death by negligence. More about this later). A fantastic tour it was.
I think I am digressing from the real episode I wanted to share.
During the course of the training one of the lecturers commented that it would be better if the government recruited persons with only one hand. We were wondering why he thought so. He then elaborated. His grievance was that whenever the Secretary, posed with a problem, asked his deputies for suggestions they would come up with a lengthy note concluding with 'on the one hand plan A has these benefits and is preferable while on the other plan B etc etc'. This made the Secretary's work difficult. Had there been one handed officers they would give (single handedly!) only one suggestion making decision taking easier.
Jokes apart, the training was wonderful. Whether we were benefited from it is a different matter.
Meena says that you are all enjoying the 'new me'. In fact the 'new me' in me was kindled by none other than Meena herself. During her recent visit she evinced lot of interest in talking with me about my childhood days, the society of those days , and things like that. I too enjoyed those sessions as I had someone to listen to me.
During the main function, Murali's friend, Subbu and his wife sat by my side and listened to my bla-blas for an hour. They seemed to enjoy it. They also laughed frequently. (Hopefully not out of respect for the old man who happened to be their best friend's daddy).
Again during another function a few days later Pavani's cousin's wife, a girl from Coimbatore, talked with me for some time. Her grandparents lived in Palakkad. We talked about how Palakkad and the surrounding villages, a fertile area, got populated by Tamil Brahmins. A story says that the chieftain of the area wanted to be crowned as the king. But the Namboothiri's refused to officiate at the coronation as he was of low caste. So, he brought a few hundreds of Brahmins from Thanjavur area, who gladly agreed to his request and crowned him as the king of the land. Out of gratitude he gifted them with lots of money and villages where they settled down and the clan grew into what it is today. Palakkad has produced very many great administrators, musicians etc. She had not heard about this before and so listened to me with interest.
Funnily, she appreciated my dentures and wanted to know more about them.
(When I later told Manni about this she commented that it is a good thing that happened and that I should be happy now that my long felt grievance of not being appreciated is at last redressed. That's Manni. Seeing some thing good in every thing.)
Be that as it may, I have now decided to speak more and the result is these posts of mine.
Time now for some trivia.
Calvin Coolidge, a former president of the United States, was a very silent man. He seldom talked in public but worked hard for his country. People started calling him Silent Cal'. An anecdote on this goes like this. In a party attended by him a lady came up to him and asked him to say a few words as she had a bet with a friend to make him talk more than two words. Coolidge just said 'You lose'.
A couple of days ago I had mentioned about a silly act of mine in using Manni's cheque leaf to withdraw money from my account.
What does this indicate? Am I crawling towards Alzheimer? God help me. I don't want anything of that sort. . I have already enough daily reading to keep my brain (luckily my upper deck is not empty) engaged.
May be besides reading I should also start writing something daily. Nowadays I rarely do this. Perhaps I should start writing again.
By the way, in one of her posts Meena praised my writing style. After more than 35 years in Government service, where we depend only on paper records and where we had to deal with different departments and agencies, if my writing style is not as it is now, then there is no bigger dunce than me.
BTW, like many of my contemporaries, soon after I left the college, I was also not able to write a few sentences in English correctly. Students of mathematics and science, we talked and wrote in broken sentences full of symbols and notations. After I joined service under the Central Govt I had to undergo rigorous orientation training in office procedure, codes and manuals of Govt accounting and audit etc. This included writing in English also. At the end of the training I had to pass an examination for continued retention in service. This helped me a lot in improving my writing skills.
As for my writing style there is an anecdote about it. We will talk about it later.
Way back in the eighties when I was living in Bangalore I happened to see a Kannada movie titled 'Hamsa Geethe' a musical piece, on Dhoordharsan of course. Those were the days when we didn't have any choice but to watch only what was dished out by DD. Compelled most of the time to watch Kannada anchors advising us on safeguarding our paddy crops from pests or the prices of 'koli mutte' or 'badine kayee' in Malleswaram market. This would go on day after day, ad nausium, we started quizzing ourselves what would be that day's price of karela in Vijayanagara market.
The film I mentioned was a musical with lot of Carnatic songs. One of them was 'Himadri Suthe Paahi Maam ', by Shyama Sastri in raga Kalyani. I liked it so much that its refrain was ringing in my head in a loop for several days. I listened to the song several times thereafter. Here is the original number from the film (play back by M Balamuralikrishna).
https://youtu.be/TCDiKf3r6bc?si=sQr3Y8GuUQAg3rVp
Recently I happened to listen to Bombay Jayasri's rendition of the piece.
Here it is for you to enjoy.
https://youtu.be/wYdU8uBeEPE?si=2fFurYc74Wl3dKvR
A funny thing happened a few days back. I sent a self cheque with Rajesh to my bank for encashment. The Cashier returned it unpaid pointing out a mismatch in the signature and also advising me to file a new set of specimen signatures together with my photo to avoid recurrence of the situation. I was very much annoyed. I felt that the Cashier was unfair; he could have ignored minor variations in the signature as they are bound to occur in the handwriting of very old people. Cursing him (mentally) I completed the specimen signature form he sent. As he wanted a fresh cheque I proceeded to write one. The cheque book I had used earlier was on my bedside table. I took it and prepared to write a new cheque. Only then I noticed that it was Manni's cheque book. I had signed a cheque using Manni's cheque leaf. Admittedly, no sane teller would have passed such a cheque. Thank God he didn't report it to the police as attempted fraudulent withdrawal. The mistake was mine and I unjustly blamed the cashier. I apologised to him for this (again mentally of course).