Battle of The Bulge

The battle has not been fought to win .It was not fought at all.

Now the counter offensive could be late and the enemy is entrenched over the past decade and more. And once dug in, the enemy is in a strong hold and may require a war to annihilate. But then where can one seek the will? The will, the determination and perseverance to wage the war, move meticulously forward and evict the enemy from what he has usurped? 

But introspection is required too. Any failure in battle calls for a post- Morten. And that revealed high magnitude of lethargy and indifference, a casual nonchalant attitude, a lack of proclivity to discipline perhaps! And that may have brought forth the loss in the battle of the Bulge. Someone opined. “Well actually the battle is not lost, with will there can be a reversal.” I suggested the battle is a losing battle, a lost battle – “The battle of the Bulge”.

I looked in the mirror, turned sideways and saw the profile too. Made no difference, seemed more pathetic. On a 180 cms tall frame a 92 kgs of mass! Goodness that is a well thirteen to sixteen kgs more than what is ideal and advised. 

I went back in the time machine past the last decade, and further beyond. It seemed like the journey in space through a black hole, decades, passed by and I went further, one, two, three and four or there about. I saw what may be justifiably alleged as the emaciated reality that was then. And that was, it was about 168 cms frame and about 45 kgs in mass. It brought back to me the profile of an Auschwitz survivor. A cousin of mine called me, H.W.Longfellow!

At twenty three, came financial independence and thence began the indulgence and excess in gastronomical predilections. Gluttony and devouring of spirits that did not see any need for restraint saw the Auschwitz image metamorphose into what glares back from the mirror today. Fortunately there was above mean levels of outdoor physical exertions, else, I may have simply dropped down flat, never to get back on my feet again or may have had the medical fraternity ripping open my rib cage to fix a few detours in my cardiac arteries. And also because of some good physical chemistry passed on genetically!

Rum then was the favourite liquid to cleanse the gastro- esophageal portions and to wash down gluttonous orgies. Rum, a typical byproduct of sugar cane and from molasses, very reliable elixir to deposit expanse around the mid riff! As means bettered, came along travels and with that, exotic spirits from the Rhineland, Bordeaux and the district of Cognac. However the fascination continued with the good old Indian whiskies and Rum and fabulous food never in dearth.

I moved away from the mirror to under the shower. When the cold water sprayed one me I mused. “What if the battle of the bulge is lost? There has been quite good memories and earned great companions, excellent indulgence in food and drinks, many places went, graduated a fair bit in the bitter, sweet and sour of life and in people. And in the final sum up, it has been a typical mortal existence with mixture of fun happiness, despair, sorrow and elation. Perhaps only got to remember to look ahead and not with crestfallenness. That sometimes is a tough ask. 

Losing the battle of the bulge may have enlightened me a bit of  what life is all about!

Delight at Dawn

This post was inadvertently deleted & hence the re-post now.

This early morning, I was half in sleep anticipating the troublesome wakeup alarm on my mobile. In my half-awake mind, I juggled whether I must go for the jog heeding the dispassionate reminder of the alarm. It was about five am and I was startled into full consciousness by the jolting tone of the incoming text message in the phone. I chose to be lazy not to stretch out to pick the mobile phone and instead decided to believe I did not hear any that and tried pleadingly to sleep again. 

When I finally woke up at around half past six, I remembered the text message and read it. It was from C, and it said that, she has some interesting news for me and that I must call her. I tossed about in mind, what that would be. Later when another message came in a little after, I dialed her.

It indeed was news more than interesting; in fact it was such wonderfully pleasant news to be given early in the morn. She said.”Kuns’s (the pseudonym of the very amiable and loving friend of mine (us)), daughter Ammu is to be married away. And the marriage engagement will be in May followed by the wedding in September.”

The delighting news, besides it being a matter that all dear and near look forward to has more reasons for me ,C and surely some of my close friends to be beaming about. Ammu, the little girl she once was and now an Engineer in Electronics is the first child of the generation next to be born to one of the fellows in our close circuit of friends. And S, her mother was expecting her when she brushed away the trouble of the advanced pregnancy and was at our wedding, twenty four years ago.

I may not make it to the engagement in May, which C would definitely be present at. But I will surely have to make it to the wedding, come September. I called up her father, my pal later in the morning and reminded him that he and S, now need to look more like parents (they both radiate a much younger disposition and appearance than any of us).

How inexorably time fly by! Twenty and five years ago who among us would have dreamt in any of our moments of even wild drinking revelry, of such fascinating dream? Perhaps the same was true, yes certainly so, to our parents too. A few more years down and all these kids will be adults walking away into their chosen horizons, leaving…! 

And deluge would seldom happen when we may vanish into the horizon before- for the law of Nature states that matters are cyclical. There will be bees to drone and collect nectar in flowers that bloom each day, the birds will continue to chirp and chatter, the little fishes with their myriad colors swim about in the waters in delight along with the mightier ones, the dogs will wag their tails and bark lovingly when their masters come forth, the sun will rise and set giving way to the moon and the stars- the world will relentlessly turn round and move around for the seasons to enliven all the wonder and another generation will be born for another to give way..

A Dream Still Born

                       "I'm a steam train,big and tough,
                        Riding steel rails, hear me chuff;
                        Running on my steel railroad track,
                        Smoke is steaming from my stack."

Hitch your vision to the stars. Did someone famous say that? I guess so. The fact is I never did really hitch my vision to anything stellar .And when I look back it was more of a variant of   drift wood  kind and  that I was fortunate at times to  ebb with the tide and at  other times get smothered by chance. So there was no real manual design behind what I’m today. Is that not the sign of lackadaisical character?

Strong are the ones who do not let lives be designed and dictated by vicissitudes and the roller-coaster of existential living. They design and chart their course like voyagers who deftly chart the navigation on the vast and seemingly endless seas. And their persistence and perseverance enables them to manoeuvre the vagaries of the mysterious waters and finally say aloud, “Land ahoy”.

As a child I was fascinated by the train that was pulled by the steam locomotive engine. The rail road passed through my neighbour hood and I never failed an opportunity and let go a chance to stand on the over bridge, or the street adjacent to the rail road and watch with enchanted fascination locomotive pull the cars, huffing, puffing and with the occasional shrill whistle that sent  jet of steam out through the exhaust vents. The swish, whistling and hissing the steam engine creates; its huge wheels that are connected by shafts that rotate in synchronous harmony, were wonderful sights and to behold in awe. The manual hand signal on the side of the rail track gave a good indication of when the train would pass. And I would stay put for minutes for the signal to assert and then get overwhelmed with excitement when the engine appears in the distance like a black spot .Then to gradually appear larger in size and vision. When it entered the under the bridge on which I stood transfixed, the brief couple of seconds the huffing becomes distant then to be heard on the other side of the bridge to soon speed off to vanish with the cars in tow beyond the bend on the rail road! The smell of burning coal, though tantalising would also send tiny specks and dust of residual coal into the nostrils and eyes. A less intense consequence when compared to the awe the whole picture gave me!

I decided when I become man I must be a train driver. The huffing-puffing locomotive stayed lingering in my dreams while asleep and the subject to build castles while awake.

It was then by chance and luck of great magnitude as I saw it, that I could travel in the locomotive along with the driver and his assistant. This fortune came my road many, many years ago while I was in Kottayam during a mid- summer vacation from school. I was sent to my aunt (mother’s sister) who lived there. She lived in the housing quarter provided to her husband who worked in the Railways. The housing quarter was a stone throw from the main tracks of the train station and a small open park straddled the railway tracks.

It was one evening and I was with some boys of my age playing in the park. When a locomotive hissed by and stopped with loud clutter and clatter on the track near us. We turned our attention and ran towards the engine. It was driven by someone who was the parent of one of the boys. He asked us if we would want to hop in for a ride. And I guess I was the first one to jump for the invite. So there and then I did my first and only travel in the locomotive .The driver was on a shunting mission and for some fifteen minutes he took us in. I could even help his assistant to shove coal into the furnace and also they let me tug at the cord overhead that sent shrill whistle. It was fascinating experience of a dream that became very true and  nothing alike was felt when I chanced to travel first time in an aero plane.

  

St.Antony , a Story ( Part -II)

                               The Wedding day pic Aug 23

When did I first step into a church? Well memory is very clear here, it was into a Chapel many, many years ago in the convent school run by Carmelite nuns, where I studied in the primary classes. The Chapel is a magnificent Victorian era structure. Though access into the precincts was not free, there were occasions we could be in. It was often that we peeped in through the windows and be amazed by the quietness inside.

Honestly even if there was students from families of various faiths, no separation and difference was felt.  We sang the morning thanks giving song in the assembly with  exuberance and excitement. “Father we thank thee for the night, and for the pleasant morning light…...” We had a parting song in the evening. “Jesus tender shepherd here me….  .”  It was exciting!

I believe, those formative days had immense bearing on me from a tolerant and all inclusive point of view of creation and cosmology. I did not find a necessary distinction based on faith. That I turned out to be an irreligious person in later years may be perhaps a matter of little conjecture, but more of reasons not wasteful.

So it was not an astonishing shock for me that I chose to be confidently around in a church with the woman I fancied marrying. And, I could empathise with her feelings when she expressed the desire while travelling pillion on my bike to pray for a while at the St Antony’s church en route to home one day after a wedding.

However there was no formal proposal to her, going down on my knees yet. Neither did modesty let her. But something told me within as it did to her that we got to live together.

However with two of my close chums (Balan & Sree) rebuking me for what they asserted (and rightly so) as my unparalleled foolishness, I decided to ask her and without delay if I can have her hand. It certainly could be a betise if I walked about on the presumption that she would want to wed me. The whole world almost knew that I wanted to marry a catholic lass- my family, friends and her folks. And quixotically, except the woman that mattered ,the woman concerned!

It was perhaps the longest journey of my life-a journey on a sultry March afternoon, from Cochin to the distant town in Tamilnad some two hundred fifty kilometers away. The dusty town that it is and was then was not relenting at night too. It was quite warm. I checked into a hotel and spent another longest period ever –the longest night! The following morning I would be going to her house (where she lived with one of her sisters). It was then, rolling about in bed that I wondered what if I had been prejudiced about her decision. Presumptions can be awakening painful and panicky too.

March 20- and the Sun took a long while to come up in the east and go further up in the sky. Perhaps the whole world was conspiringly going slow.

Audaciously, I began the chat with her on the assumption that she has accepted to marry me. I did not while sitting across in the chair alone with her in the room, think it was necessary ask her if she would marry me. I assumed that we had decided to be married and began the discussion on our life after wedlock. The little nitty gritty matters that can come up manifested, or be foisted up by the ones around, more because we were from families of two different back ground and faith and many other things I do not recollect what and what not.. Did we chat for an hour? I guess so.

I was to take the night train back and in the evening we found a convenient excuse of walking to the church being a Sunday (I have not seen since, that keenness ever in her to go to church ha!!) We took a long slow, casual, walk. And wished the road was longer!

By then it was intense and clear that the physical law of Nature had played its role. We were attracted because of the forces of gravitation and honestly!!!

"Oh Lord Forgive Me for I'm Cynical"

I vehemently deny that I was born a cynic and a pessimist, I became one.

 This is what I would tell in face of the alleged cynical tone in me, be it verbal or in letters. I checked the definition of the word “cynic” and found the following decorative pieces.

A) Believing the worst of human nature and motives; having a sneering disbelief in e.g. selflessness of others.

B) Abusing vocally; expressing contempt or ridicule.

C) Showing contempt for accepted moral standards, esp. by following self-interest.

But I do not fit in these descriptions with much gusto, though I do not deny the definitions that may be in me, but it is more relative.

The reason for the ornamental pseudonym that I may have, “cynic”, is more because of what I see as an uncontrollable offensive attitude of what for example is sinister, deprecating, torn away from even semblance of altruism and abusive. I find it comforting, release of pent up energy to react sternly vocally or by letters to a situation when it demands, rather than be timid and peeved and then boil inconsolably within oneself. It is better to be sheared away from any possible loss of self-respect.

There have been a few blog posts that went purportedly directing my ire at persons and happenings that were less tolerable even to a serf who would love to crawl when asked to kneel. Certainly the spars between friends are not to be for love of God included in these.

A few months ago, some savvy fraudsters managed to hack into my Google mail account, presumably fancying me for someone worth a shot at. The invisible forces set off a chain of email to all my contacts in Google. The  email went had the subject matter of my perilous state in Greece and that I was urgently in need of money to bail myself out of some hole. Many of the contacts smelled rat and pooh-poohed the message. The slightly sceptical ones made sure to contact C, to ensure that everything was smooth and the message was hoax. It was apparent to even a nitwit that the email message was not from me.

A naïve but unfortunate person whom I have never met, but only spoken on the phone, shot off by Bank transfer some $ 750 to the fictitious address .I came to know of this a month later and he was rather ashamed of his impetuosity. Nevertheless, I feel an affinity towards him for the apprehension that made him act so when he got the hoax message.

Last week my sister called from Thpuram and narrated an atrocious grapevine that came to her hearing that day. The matter was circulating in her Banking circles for these months before a colleague decide enough was enough and told her.

I understood her annoyance but also was displeased and offended by the matter and shot off an email message to the villain of the piece. And decoying copies to some of my contacts too. It certainly was a message that was matter of fact and alluding how contemptuous I hold him in esteem for his apparent pernicious canard and nonsensical act.

When the fraudulent email message went about in December, it went to this person who is holed up with his riches in Saudi Arabia. He was holding a fat account in the Bank branch where my Sis was in charge. Once, after a reference from my Sis, I  spoke to him on a matter of emplacement and did communicate once to him by email. The subject was forgotten since. Now when the email went to him also in December, instead of displaying the decorum to call the Bank branch in India and enquire with my Sis about the email, he went about telling some other branch managers that the lady manager’s brother whom he has not met asked him for money. The gossip loving colleagues of her went about spreading the slimy gossip, know not how far. It finally reached her ears the previous week. To further the agony the guy with drew some Rs 100 million from her branch and ably aided in the whole process and gossip by one of her colleagues she trusted much.

Now one can choose and ignore the situation or be cynical in this context relatively.

The situations that I allegedly become cynical are similar in content. If one can have the luxury to be stoic, why not express oneself and be cynical and relieved too?

Jack & The Bean Stalk

                                       An old photograph

The mother is furious at the boy that he is sent to bed without supper. The blunder he did was to give away the only possession they had, the cow, she entrusted with him to sell in the market and he did literally for nuts. He bartered the cow to a man who offered what he claimed to be magical bean seeds. The seed grew overnight into a huge stalk that went up to the skies and  little Jack went up the bean stalk to the Ogre’s castle, befriended the young woman who was a prisoner there and he finally enriched himself with the booty the Ogre had. And all that is all fascinating for a fairy tale. And Jack’s mother was absolutely within her rights and duties as mother to reprimand him severely for the infringement. But what if mother refuses to advise, suggest, discuss let alone gentle nudge when it need be?

I have an issue going off and on with C. And I feel she refuses to see my side of the argument and steadfastly opines that the children are grown up and she need not be asking them to do things; she should not be acting like a catalyst or correcting them. The trouble is that she has her heart ruling her words and reactions than the brain locked inside her head. This has been more than often a rusted piece of nail that pricks me.

She may read this post as she sometimes ventures into my Blog!

I’m not expressing the lack of confidence in the children per se. They are in their own ways individualistic and have formed determined and strong opinions.  A is twenty one and R eighteen. But as Balan mentioned in his recent post on parent’s anxiety and Oushu in his Blog about his mother’s apprehensions- apparent it is and not an enviable position when you are  concerned about your children’s future, however well they may be marching ahead. It is not anymore in the day’s world that, epiphany like with little Jack that will lift you up in life. It has to be perseverance, hard work and most of all smart work. If it is only hard work one may live the life of an ass.

A has taken of his own very volition a medium that probably will be “the” talk and the thing of the present and the future. Something that depression and inflation, the economic synonyms will not bother much-“visual media and entertainment”. As luck has paid back, we (I & C) have not thus far bothered much about the academic brilliance or performance of both the kids. And thus far they have done fairly well. Fortunately they did not want to be stereo types( doctors and techies) and we loved that decision more than any.

But I get apprehensive often as A is in my opinion though not certainly agoraphobic is not entertaining my suggestion to be more advertising. And it is necessary more because the field that he has chosen is not easily amenable and one has to be heard and seen. But C seldom tells him or discusses advisory matters with him. She tells that he is grown up. This irritates me all over. I do not feel that he is still letting himself submerge in it.

She expresses unquestionable confidence in the children and silences me by asserting that they are conscious of matters and will certainly do what is required to further their selves.

It is not always that all mothers and parents have such optimism. But to me it takes more to be convinced and I have to see the ground proof, the result and the sum of the matter. I get distressed when I think of the missed opportunities that I let go begging. The matters I was not expressive about and timid when I had to be assertive. It is the desire to ensure history should not repeat in certain ways.

When I was little I was fancied with Jack’s scrambling up the bean stalk and the good things he brought down from the Ogres abode for his mother. As a boy it is easy to fantasise and imagine such manna falling on you. But with half a century of life behind, there is anxiety and reality that has to be dealt with. The world is tough today than it was a few decades ago. And is cruel and unrelenting too.

MAGNA CARTA

Social Studies, the mixture of Geography and History that was in the curriculum at school were an interesting subject to read. John, King of England from 1166 until his demise in 1216 had to counter the hapless Barons who turned rebellious and got together to curb his powers. They brought forth the Magna Carta which was drafted to curtail the vast power the King had over the land, people and his recalcitrance towards the Papacy. History is like a long, intriguing novel ! It is a story of knowledge, conniving, deceit, victories, battles won, wars lost, of people who preceded us and in flesh and blood like we. Spilling of much blood, usurping one’s own father, brothers and even mother on the long desperate scramble to the glory of throne!

But my history book says Magna Carat was a failure, though the death of King John secured Magna Carta eventually.

The drama continues to be enacted even today and in our midst, in social lives, in dwellings among lay people and more among the powerful and the mighty. Distrust, helplessness and subterfuge like in the times of John the King of England! The Bard detailed such intrigues in the Macbeth, in King Lear and Julius Caesar. The latter had more in common to the real life episode that preceded William Shakespeare by about one thousand five hundred years. But life all the same, even before the Italian Machiavelli, was full of intrigues, lust for wealth, power and amour. So why pillories him for what we call “Machiavellian deceit and intrigues”?

There is a friend of mine who often narrate in disgust to me the chicaneries in the family she is married into.  She lamented in anguish and disgust, the subterfuges and intrigues that are agonisingly rampant in the circle of her in laws. A rocky nuptial accord that she has with her husband is on a plateau now more because of the necessity to secure her children’s rightful share of the assets. She wonders if their father will ever have anything left to bequeath. More because even though he is crafty, he is pliable, she says. One of her in law (her husband’s brother) as she sees it happen will through guile and artistry that deludes without the deceived knowing so, arrogate what has been jointly held by all of them.

She has now decided that she will not deign and begun to face a bunch of specious sisters- in law- square on. Cowed down by the weight of their contradictions, the rest of lot have lost out on their deft plans of producing a Magna Carta to reign in the marauding brother and his wife and save much of the wealth that they will elude their grasp. They now assume that they can “Hail Mary” their way out of the imbroglio .

I asked her if she would mind if I blog some of the story. She said she would not care a hoot. She is sometimes distrait that she indulges in binge drinking. Though I and C have cautioned her to desist from exposing much of the rags in public and take care of herself.

It is the cruel irony of life that under the avalanche of unbridled wealth, people who were relatively decent and spartan would metamorphose into people who can bring forth much sorrow and anguish.