Twenty Euros

Twenty Euros

One of the notable landmarks and locations in Amsterdam is the Dam square. The imposing gothic constructions adorn all sides, modern department stores, hotels, and pubs are scattered around. The summer palace of the Royalty cannot be missed! The Square is always thronged with tourists and the Dutch who always fancies outdoors on a sunny day. Pigeons have virtually taken over the middle of the square and the imposing old buildings around. Jugglers, ventriloquists, makeup-artists in various costumes, street performers, tramcars, and exotic horse carriages resembling the ancient especially add to the romantic air. The square itself overlooks the central Railway station just about a kilometer ahead. The Dam square bustles with life in the height of a summer day and cold rainy days. The fickle Amsterdam weather can one moment by warm and bright in the radiant sun and the next moment dreary cold and drizzling.

Further behind, once you enter the ubiquitous alleys by the side of those huge buildings, there is the famous tourist attraction- ‘the glasshouses’ and the nightclubs. The coffee shops frequented more for Marijuana and other light drugs that are legal in Holland are also about there. You can smell more of burning “grass’, than the cappuccino or the Columbian, burnt coffee. It is one of the liveliest of all foreign destinations. Not to forget the countryside which is simply laid back and exquisite

I described a bit of the square and its periphery to tell a very amusing and comical story, a joke that went practical. And when the person who was the center of the whole story told me, we laughed our guts out sitting in one of the pubs there in the Dam square. He was a Dutch gentleman in his late fifties and represented one of the garment brands in Amsterdam. He worked in Amsterdam but lived in a town called Breda some two hundred km by car from Amsterdam city. A summer weekend he and his wife drove down to Amsterdam and decided to hang around Dam square and the nearby wharf. They spent the good part of the day moving around, having occasional coffee, beer and popcorns. By late afternoon the gentleman was having rigid legs and he longed for the comfort of a pub or to park his arse somewhere. His wife was keen to do some shopping at the nearby  Bijenkorf department store. He was quite at odds with walking around supermarkets and department stores. So he told his wife that he will sit by the fountain ledge in the square feeding the pigeons while she shops at the store. Our hero sat by the fountain in the square. Sometime soon an escort girl came up to him and began to prospect. She told him that she can spend the day with him for one hundred Euros. Obviously, the girl took him for a tourist. Our gentleman friend, who by nature was a wisecracker, tried to play something funny and told her that one hundred Euros was too much for her and he can offer twenty Euros. The girl huffed and puffed before she went away in anger.

Sometime later our friend’s wife returned after her shopping and they began to walk back to the car park. And some way down the walkway they ran into the same escort girl. She came up to our hero and told him close in the face, pointing at his wife by his side, “this is what you will get for twenty Euros”.

Our middle-aged friend thence decided to be careful before he pulls a practical joke on someone.

The Eye

Eyes have been the subject of many poetic creations and fantasies.

And the bard said ‘beauty is in the eyes of the beholder’. This statement has been famously adopted by a late 

Professor of immense repute who held sway over literature in the University College Thiruvananthapuram and went on to become the Principal of Mahatma Gandhi College as well. My mother told me this interesting story. The Professor married a woman who had perhaps the most ungracious physical appearance. Whilst the professor himself was endowed with masculine charm and was very handsome. He was tall broad at the shoulders and well built .And the woman was lean, skinny and had an emaciated appearance. His friends were aghast at his selection of bride and the woman to be his wife. Because the physical appearance where not compatible to the onlooker. The Professor was queried on this matter and he retorted, “If my eyes were placed where your eyes are then you would have my opinion”. That is believed to have silenced the critical comments.

Few years ago the then Governor of the Reserve Bank of India Mr Rangarajan visited the town I live. There were a hoard of Bankers and Bank managers assembled at the venue where he was to deliver a lecture. The Governor touched on the topic of the attitude Bankers must have in a developing economy, and how they should temper their psyche to provide financial assistance to the marginalised and needy sections and entrepreneurs. He quoted an interesting anecdote.

A commoner approached a local Bank manager and pleaded for financial credit and assistance for his tiny business venture. The bank manager was dismissive of the plea and quite exasperated too. However the man was persevering and finally the manager had to relent and reach a decision. The manager said, “Alright I can provide you the loan you ask for, but you must answer my question correctly”. The manager continued, “One of my eyes is fake and is crystal eye ball. You will have to identify which eye is false and which is real”. The poor fellow looked the manger in the eyes and smiled. He said, “Sir your left eye is real and the right one is false”. The Manager was astonished as the judgement of the poor fellow was correct. He agreed to abide by his words. But he asked the man, “my dear friend could you tell me how you could tell correctly, as both my eyes are absolutely identical even though one has an implanted crystal eye ball, and even my wife at times cannot discern the fake from the real”.

The man said, "Sir I saw some compassion in one of your eyes and I decided that eye is real”.

The Past Week

I have read a couple of books of Albert Camus. "The Plague" and I remember reading some essay of his. That was long, long ago when reading was still part of the diet. I can just about recall some idea of his, and I guess he said that happiness is fleeting and human life and achievements are meaningless. And he also said that, “I can accept periods of unhappiness, because I know I will also experience happiness to come”.

I was scared of having to live here at home alone for the next one and half months. In fact I was not afraid but just scared! And having to live alone here when the emotional turmoil and strain with the crisis in the business front looming large was very disconcerting to say the least. Because when one is in such strainful times it is always comforting  to have someone around with whom one can  feel and speak and release the inflated  and suppressed thoughts, lest it ruptures with irreparable damage.

C has been complaining about some discomfort and went for a check up a few days back to a Gynaecologist in a reputed hospital in Coiamabatore. The doctor, a woman sent her through the scanning machine, x-rays etc etc, and decreed that she needs an immediate uterine surgery. The doctor persisted that C go back the next day for the surgery for uterine removal. Because she has vesicles or cysts in the uterine wall, and that is the cause for all her discomfort and occasional pain.

I was not too sure, and prevailed upon C to go to Thiruvananthapuram, as being there she would be with my sister and cousins and even a post operative recuperation would be quiet there. There I believed she would have at least someone to care her! And with the stressful time s here it was always wise that she keeps away if she has to undergo surgery, more because the convalescence period is one month. An added advantage of being in Thiruvananthapuram was that there is this efficient Gynaecologist and Obstetrician we know personally as well.

But for me the impending trauma was the prospect of having to spend one month and more in a kind of a solitary state with no one to be with, speak to. And the looming loneliness was ominous.

Back home in the evenings sitting alone at home with absolute loneliness as companion, and confinement, would be directly threatening one’s level of ‘break point’.

C went on the night train last Thursday. And I spent the night of Thursday preparing for the one month of loneliness. It was impossible to read, mind never listened, watching TV was nonsensical as there was nothing to glue on and I kept surfing channels. Whisky as I always have was limited and never fancies that as a companion when alone. And the night- sitting alone was dreadful. Thoughts were disturbing and distressing. I hit bed and slept long -mercifully indeed.

The second night Friday was not much different. I was tumults, tempest like and helpless. I just about forced myself to gather and hang on.But the comforting news from C who reached Thiruvanathapuram was that the doctor there gave her a clean chit and confirmed that it was not necessary to undergo surgery. And the anomaly or discomfort can be corrected through medication. Wonder on what the doc in Coiambatore based her decree for urgent surgery?

This was wonderful, for C not having to pull through the surgery and the post operative phase. And for me the threat of having to fear the loneliness for a month was distant and gone.

I realised how companionship or proximity of someone close can alleviate the turmoil in stressful times.

And as Camus said, “I can accept periods of unhappiness, because I know I will also experience happiness to come”.

The Historian

I have been quite good with the subject of history. And marks in school have been commendable. My mother as well studied history in college. And I’m still surprised by her memory of various dates and years that are special in history. You ask her the year of the battle of Plassey she has it in a second. Ask her the second battle of Pannipat she has it again in a trot. This was until a few years ago. I have not tested her faculty recently.

One of the best books on history that I read with the appetite of devouring a wonderfully crafted novel was Professor A.Sreedhara Menon’s “Kerala History”. The book was in Malayalam and I bought it a few decades ago from the Current Book house in Thiruvannathapuram, and I m now  trying to recall from the reading then.

It was easy reading and one’s interest was kept alive through the reading. The inquisitiveness was teased throughout the book. Compare this to Romilla Thaper's books. I recently bought  “Early India” and still have not covered much. Let me confess that I have no historical erudition to criticise or belittle Romila Thaper, and I m not indulging in that either.

The dawn of Christianity in Kerala, the Christians of Cannon who were given authority to settle in north of Cochin...... Professor Sreedhara Menon threw ample light into all those facets of early Kerala.

He details elsewhere in the book as to why and how households of Tamil Brahmins in Kerala and Tamilnad posses much gold in the form ancient jewellery . He attributed this to the fear of Moughal invasion of South India (Tamilnad). And as temples where then repositories of valuable metals and stones, the Brahmin priests where authorised to move the wealth from temples into their homes. Because the first place of attack and plunder by any marauding Muslim army were temples as they possessed much of the wealth of the kingdom. But the feared Moughal invasion did not take place, and the booty stayed with the Brahmin households.

History is written by the victor and only when a person with strong head, will, gut and spine who refuses to be pliable takes up to noting history like the late Professor Sreedhara Menon that people with academic interest and those of us impassioned about the past can relish history as a subject of research, fact finding and knowledge. Men with ideological leanings cannot truthfully document and judge history. They owe allegiance and have sold their conscience to the theory and ideology they profess. And in the process they wear blinkers and cannot be impartial judges, they can only be, as Professor Sreedhara Menon said ‘lawyers who collect materials to suit their theories’. And that is not history but a story.

It is typical of the communist psyche that the then communist government in Kerala declined to accept Professor Sreedhara Menon's  book on freedom movement in Kerala because he refused to know tow the official version. If Kerala history where to be written by a communist it is anybody’s   guess that it will be painted red, as it was done to the Punnapara uprising.

If history of Post Independence India has to be subjectively, and truthfully written for posterity it has to be by the likes of Professor Sreedhara Menon. Lest it will be history through the myopic and icteric eyes of a Congress man, a Hindu fanatic or a Red comrade.

Lady Macbeth

These days with the proliferation of media in the form of television and print, news are not reported or analysed. The veracity and truthfulness is not looked into. And news is created, sensationalised and reported. The result, we have no way of judging or concluding what is news ipso facto and what is nonsense and imagination  purveyed as news. This is where news is paid for. Paid news as we all can see is false hood, and untruth packaged as genuine and thrust upon the gullible public. The discerning still sieves through and throws the rubbish into the trash. Whereas the big majority are fooled in no uncertain terms, for which in fact we ourselves are to be blamed. The reason for this state is the general public is hungry and craving for sensation and sleaze. We see and get what we look for!

With reference to this state of our news media, a fascinating incident was mentioned by a person. This is nothing to do with politics, corruption by politicians and men holding public offices. But it tells the sordid saga and innuendos inside a business house and comical too. The end is risible to a great extent. You could laugh your guts out!

We have heard well about the feuding inside conglomerates like Reliance and manipulations in Satyam. We have seen dirty family linen washed in public when the internecine dislike of Mrs Indira Gandhi for her youngest daughter in law came out to the fore.

The amusing story told to me goes like this. Lady Macbeth (euphemism is true to the character), is the member of a business house by wedlock. True to the characteristics attributed to daughters in law she ,(in this case in cahoots with her spouse) plants a paid news in a not very obscure vernacular daily, with the intent to usurp  other members and founding people of the business unit. The write up with a surly photograph of herself eulogised her from beginning to end. Though she came from fringe back grounds and was eking out living consigned to some nondescript job in Government, the article impressed without gumption her courage in jettisoning the cosiness and comfort of a lucrative, respectable and safe job to confront the vagaries and uncertainties of business life. It went on to laud her far sightedness and vision, entrepreneurial acumen, and hard smart work that turned an enterprise of low beginnings into a behemoth it is now. The irony I m told is that people who mattered in the evolution and sustenance of the enterprise were not mentioned even in passing. The gratitude and acknowledgement that they deserved was not accounted in any remote way. It was a petty and cruel joke with deeper insidious dimension.And in fact she was a dispensable and non contributing factor to the success of the enterprise.

She would have  like Lady Macbeth called upon the evil spirits "stop up th' access and passage to remorse in order to be relentless".

As expected the paid matter got a fair coverage and where it did not reach she ensured that the clipping was circulated. And then came the somersault- the denial and expression of surprise and squarely blaming the reporter for misrepresenting and contriving. The purpose of the paid news was done. She could send the message across as to who the boss is. It was a successful coup-de-tat after all! There were no ripples, but smooth slide into control of all she surveys. There where mocking and hushed jokes on the news and the woman, in the corridors of the enterprise. People who have known her and her self where amused and where cautiously derisive.

Every place of power has a retinue of self-seekers. And she has quite a crowd of such. And they were nurtured and sycophancy well preserved.

The final shot was from poetic justice, and people in jest said that, they now believe in the heavenly power. And it happened after a few days of the paid news coming out. Lady Macbeth, our  heroine set off on a foreign jaunt.  She was given a conspicuous farewell and bon voyage by her palanquin bearers.

She was slated to fly out of the country from Chennai. And with great pomp and air of having arrogated she walked to the emigration counter. Where the sky fell shattering on her virtually! She was stopped by the officers and turned back as she did not have a valid travel VISA. The derisive talk of the town is the queen who longed to be the queen did not know the basics. It is now widely presumed that she has gone into incognito, and may not resurface until her predetermined date of coming back from her foreign tour, and that she may need a while to nurse her bruised ego back to its former state.

It is also supposed that the people who felt grievously ignored and hurt by her are drinking wine in private to toast the fall.

Curse of the Serpents

I have known revulsion, abhorrence, plain fear and awe when I watch on National Geographic and other TV channels, men like Steve Irwin , Romulus Whitaker and Austin Stevens  handle and fondle serpents as  toddlers  would do to   toys. The thought of the very prospect of seeing them live naturally would send shivers up my spine and my heart palpitate. I see them often at night by the head light of my car when I drive back home. Wriggling fast across the road (the drive from where I work to my house is through a lonely stretch of road with undergrowth on either side).I often see them run over and lying mutilated on the road. Even the sight of their mauled and mangled sinews life less on the road would send shivers though I m well cocooned in my car. One late evening coming back home I stopped the car and opened the gate. I bend down to pull of the latch and I virtually froze as there down a few inches from my outstretched palm was a colourful coil, moving slowly when disturbed by the light of the car and the movement of the gate. It was a Russell ’s viper, common around the place I live. I stood frozen in fear and for it to move away .And it took a while, as  Vipers are tortoise like when it comes to moving about, though they being ambush predators  strike very swiftly.

I can vividly recollect the utter repulsion I felt, nausea as well, after watching the movie ‘SSSssss snake’.

So is my fear of snakes, and determination to keep as far away from one if I notice one around, is unbound.

A couple of months ago I, C and R went to the Mannarasala temple after exhortation from a few people of piety. The abode of the Snake gods and goddesses! That was my first ever experience of the temple dedicated to serpents. Eerie was the feeling. My fear of snakes that developed from nascent days added to the eeriness. And I bore with me stories and legends of lore about the temple and its serpent gods that were spun for me by my grandmothers from the time I was little. I left the temple hoping that I invoked the serpent Gods to my well being.

A few days ago a friend who considers everything supernatural to be determining the odds for and against him sent to us a septuagenarian gentleman. I feel now that he was aptly named ‘Naga Sabapathy’ He visited the place we live and went around the house and the outside in a sort of deep observation. After a few minutes he sat down and began to talk. He made some statements from my personal history and also C’s. He spoke about a sacred grove near the place I lived when I was little. He asked if we ever killed a serpent (he referred to the Cobra) a few years ago at the place we now lived. We answered in the negative and told him we have not seen one yet around here. He then went on to say it could be somebody who must have done, but the damage of the act might touch us in many ways.We are afflicted by 'sarpa dosham'( curse of the serpents).

Ara was keenly watching him and the discussion. Later that evening when we were sitting together he had these few questions directed at me.

The gentleman was only referring and gesticulating about snakes with hood, is it that in his encyclopaedia of the genesis of serpents other species of snakes do not matter or doesn’t exist. It is well known that there are many other species of snakes that are more venomous and dangerous than the cobra. Then why is this consternation about the poor cobra alone?

And what reason is it that if someone, we are not aware of or known to us killed a serpent some time in the past and the malediction befall us?

I wonder if I must direct this incertitude to the gentleman if he returns.

Twinkle

It is very difficult to observe the twinkle in the eyes. The gleam is come and gone at fraction of a split second. Certainly there must have been instances when all of us have had the twinkle in the eyes. The twinkle is not in relation to euphoria,it dose not persist, but it is the subtle acknowledgement of satisfaction and happiness. And also soulful appreciation, of this, words cannot express. It does not stay as sparkle in the eye for minutes. The heart takes over the spark. And the eyes are as usual thereafter. It gleams in the eyes like the water bubble that surfaces for a brief second and then transforms into gentle waves that acknowledges the reason for the sparkle.

I once read an article of Nithya Chaithanya Yethi in the Kalakaumudhi . Therein he dwelled on the expression of affection. He says in the West expressions are physically dominant. It is kiss on the cheeks, on the lips, a warm and close hug etc etc. Be it to your mother, girlfriend, sister, wife or acquaintance! This he also acknowledges is frowned upon in India. We do not express animated love and affection with our limbs and facial contractions. Be it in public or private.. To emphasis the point he mentioned an instance where the deep love and affection for his sister and for her to him was conveyed through the twinkle in the eyes of their both. This was when he landed back in India after a long sojourn in foreign lands and his sister was at the airport to receive him. He said there was no hug, no pat, no hand shake no kisses. The subtle affection was in their eyes and each could notice it and be enlivened.

The other night Ara was going back to Chennai and it was about the time he was leaving the house. I was speaking to my friend Balan and told him that Ara was leaving. I called Ara and told him there was a phone call and asked him to speak. He was in hurry and expressively did not want to be on phone. He frowned and waved to me that he will take the call some other time. I told him it was Balan maman. And I saw for a moment the flash and sparkle in his eyes- “the twinkle” He ran up to me and took the phone.

(I cannot recall if I ever gleamed when my father’s friends wanted to speak to me).

Apart from all that it is amazing what a pair of eyes can convey and I wonder if there is any other organ that can spark and tell a thousand stories of happiness at a shot.