FUTURE SHOCK

For some time now lots of thoughts are jumbled up regarding the losing trend of money value, inflation is now a word heard very often ,and it also gives me a sadistic joy when I learn that the inflation is soaring up(just calculating that extra money that would come as a DA increase).but what appeared as quite imaginary is now seen as reality.My parents used to say they got grand weddings  conducted by their parents  with a mere fifty rupee, my fathers salary was just 55 rupees when he joined services .and they would make references as 4  anna , 8 anna etc .for various commodities. we just used to listen to these narration thinking they lived in a different world, today my kids too have the same feeling when I narrate that we had coins ranging from 1 paisa, and our 5 paise  that day would meet our snacking requirements, a full house used to be fed with chicken curry meal with 10 rupees. And we could easily get 20 idlis for a rupee. And my god I had to shell out 40 rupees four 10 idli’s in a near  by eatery, it would have been just two had it been saravana or sangeeta  All of us used to spare 1 paisa or 2 paise as alms to beggars and they absolutely had no grievance in fact blessed us for our benevolence. Of late beggars too demand oru rupa pichai podunga and we in turn curse him internally saying thimura paru, not correlating that he would get nothing even if people flood his plate with 1 rupee coins.

But every thing has changed now.I was thrilled when my father gifted me a 1000 rupee note for my gragapravesam in 2001, it was the first time I was in possestion of a 1000 wala,but today I have to take out a thousand to meet my minimum expenses  5,10, 50,100 rupees have no value and never seem to be in circulation, the minimum coinage is 25 paise which would be withdrawn. shortly we will have  COIN FOR RS 150 released . iam just wondering whether we have to part with this as alms to any beggar, cause this would be the minimum coinage available and definetly if he has to have a few idilis he requires atleast this money. All movie makers would have to revise their earlier lyrics,1,2,3 nu ennuratukulla,otta rupa othiduvan netiyele  mella, where now we have to decide whether it has to be one rupee or 150/- rupee. Phone companies have a  different problem ,should they go for a one paisa as heavy as rupee 150 or enchance call rates to rs 150. The later is distant you see telecom is the cheapest thing available.

Well  days are not too far away, we would be paid in lakhs and crores ,but would just be making a hand to mouth survival Aha. Inplation,inplation nu solurangalae athu etuthana (modulate it to vadivelu’s) voice

IS EVERY INDIAN BORN POOR

I  am one person who gets annoyed on getting any thing free ,as a gesture of indirectly saying you don’t have the power of purchasing. yes  the type of concessions and freebies given to people on the pretext that they are poor or below poverty line.

well  I was also getting disturbed with the statistics as how many are below poverty  line? And equally disgusted when some one said as long as we remain in power ,we would continue giving freebies,and yet another person quoting it’s not the governments job to give things free of cost to people who are starving. Well ,India being the 2^nd highly

 populated country has a growth rate hovering around1.5% ,thou there was a slight dip  to 2006, it remains more or less at that static point, yet another interesting statistic is that the % of people living below poverty line is a clear flat line since 2002 at 25%,while the global figures indicate that this is around 51%, the highest in the world,

Well let’s see what positive changes have happened in these days, ,there has been a consistent  increase in the number of women taking up employment in small and big sector. Previously one man used to earn and there were ten mouths to feed, to day the family size is shrunk and you have more earning members in each family. Every family  at least owns a motor cycle ,which was a dream for many. the statistics also points that 40 million people are added every year in the middle income group and a majority of Indians would become middle class, I don’t know whether there is a slide from high income group to middle income group, because if the later statement is true than there should be a decrease in the below poverty line group.

So there looks some thing radically  wrong some were and I can only guess that every Indian born should only be poor ,yeah while iam just writing this I just hear one more announcement made for yet another freebie. Well this time it’s a baby,why should people be subjected to this hard ship of bearing one. At last the government has turned into a breeding ground for lazineees

WHAT India needs today

 

Are we not getting restless the way India is being projected day in and day out ,the news being read, seen and heard is really disturbing and we are just expecting that some miracle will happen overnight and all the woes and worries we are carrying on should vanish. YES ,some thing serious should really happen to tell us.If only Miera kumar can make our MP’S TO SIT IN PARLIAMENT,if only Raja can come out of the CBI NET,if only S.M Krishna can read out “our” message in the un council, yeah there is a big wishlist with such if only,each one of us can fill up the dashes with their own,but still there is no solution coming up for the state of affairs in which we are. But I think I have come very close to get one. Well this again relates to a story which Amma (my mom, don’t get it messed with anyone else) used to say well her narration, mimic and HUMOUR cannot be reproduced because she was unique in her own way .However for the benefit of the readers I will just give a brief outline of this story. Once upon a a time a family of three lived in a small house. The head of the family, the father was just as big as a pepper corn,his wife to match him ,was slim and fair and was as tall as  cumin seed and no doubt they were blessed with a boy who was as tiny as a mustard seed. The family was doing agriculture In a small way by having a small millet field. The man was having  a tough time in shooing away the sparrows who were feeding on the millet grown. The sparrows ridiculed him,laughed and made fun of him seeing his size.  The man was heart broken and cried to God to help him. God hearing his lamenting appeared before him and gave him a astra. He has to utter the activity that disturbs him and than end it with a "DHOM". Next day as usual the sparrows were found in the field. The man tried to shoo them out ,met with the same humiliation. He tried the astra given to him so said “who ever is eating ny millets DHOM”. To his surprise he found all the sparrows dead down. Thanking God for such a huge help, he collected the sparrows and gave it to his wife to prepare a yummy feast and set out saying he would join them for lunch. His wife made a superb fry of the sparrows. The boy who was tempted with the smell asked his mom to spare him with a sample to taste. Seeing that the sparrows tasted excellent they couldn’t resist eating more and finally saw that the entire quantiy cooked was over. Now the next worry crept in regarding what to serve to the husband when he returns. So both mother and son collected some creatures from the backyard, cooked and waited for the arrival of the man. He sat down with lots of expectation,but was disappointed to see that the item served did not contain any sparrows. His wife and son sweared that the dish was prepared out of sparrows only. The belittled man got annoyed and said ‘who ever has eaten the sparrows "DHOM", and instantly both  his wife and son fell down dead. So the story goes on like this till the man unknowing that he only has commited that mistake says …….."DHOM" and falls dead. Well don’t you think this astra is what India requires on date. With this we could have brought pakistan occupied Kashmir into our fold,we would be the super power and both America and Russia would be doing security services for us, Karuna would have got rid of the accussing Jaya by saying "kodanadula thoongura ammakku oru  "DHOM". Kani can come out without a cbi inquiry with "CBI DHOM", and all of us can escape from our evils with a single shot. Yeah I can hear some o ne saying "Intha madri mokka blog ezuthuravangaluku oru DHOM"..:D

Todays trend in cinema

The Tamil film industry should have completed a century since its inception, its growth has been phenomenal, it  has given us a variety of movies brought in an array of artists introduced us to soothing tunes,ranging from carnatic,melody,pathos,gana,rock and occasionally some tanglish songs too,but I have been musing more on the title of the films that are doing rounds in the theatres iguess either our directors/producers should have entered into a  mental block that their imagination or creativity has got saturated .I have no grievance on the type of movies that are being produced, but on the type of title that are being chosen for their films. just recollect the type of movies we had seen in the yesteryear's,we had predominantly a large number of films wound around  sensitive family,relation ships which tried to focus more on human relations,the love between mother and child,father and daughter,brother and sister,husband and wife etc or a theme based on historical stories or some mythological reproduction. and basically these movies tried to reinforce the value of human relations, taught us to maintain our cool, gave us the spirit of shouldering responsibilities the joy of giving and sharing and also the spirit of fighting without giving up.we did have movies wher men showed their prowess and valor when needed and ladies were depicted to be gentle,delicate kind and also violent when required as in the case of kannagi  and to show how a man is distinct in controlling his emotion and differs from an animal,recall the titles used during olden days,thamarai nenjam,avan thanmanithan ,en annan ,manithan,uyiranthamanidhan,makkalai petra maharasi,mangayar tilagam, just a few to name, a closer look shows that effort has been taken by the creator to distinguish how superior man and mankind is,this was also supported by kannadasans/vallis song,ettanai periya manithanuku……where  the mention is about the greatness of man and in yet another song it went like dhayiriyamaga soll nee manithan thana ,where a strong punch is given to the animal instinct in man,..well let us come down to certain movies that have become blockbusters today, just for the sake of titles, singam,chiruthai,singam puli,veengai,nadunisi naygal,seeval,kuruvi,Ee MYNA, aadu-puli SO BASICALLY these movies are targeting more on the strength of the animal and its characteristic than on the strong points of man, if this trend continues,no doubt we would be exhausting the Chinese zodiac very soon some film would be named as pig,yet another as rabbit,the other as rat,monkey,horse cow,dog, cat,dragon, once the series on animals is over we may have movies as kosu,kaka,killi,we might have some mighty scpirt writer to write dialogues,justifying the greatness of each of these animals and insect and Alas day might come when the goodness of man and his characteristic would be forgotten,and the animals would have more respect and regard

THE WORLD CUP FEVER

                                EVERY ONE OF US HAVE Been  aroused with a lot  of  expectation, on the forth coming world cup cricket  There is an update comming up at  every second on the fm radio, the news papers have started reserving full pages to give an elaborate account on the participating players,  and the media is going  to have a good catch covering up the event and also  making   some fast money in the form of advertisements.I had a few calls from people known to me enquiring whether they would get some tickets to watch the match, INCLUDING MY DAUGHTER you see now a days people are willing to spend money on many sporting activities,its more important for them to identify themselves with that elite, affordable,  crowd, which can spend money and be apart of the game. well was life the same  when I grew up?i had to fast forward the events by a few decades. The game cricket was  known to some, definitely my mother never knew about it than(now she is an ardent watcher even curses Indian team when they give up easily.)Well only boys knew about cricket than, they used to play country cricket in different forms,logs used to be  their wickets, sometimes they used  a regular bat and ball(TENNIS) and many times it used to be a make shift bat from the palm branch and palm fruits of various sizes  used to substitute the ball ,leaving a part all these things. the game itself used to be played only in the form of test  matches  ranging to five to six  days . today we have different forms, ODI ,IPL day and night etc.all of us had a common goal that our country team should win.we never had divided interest about players and teams within.  when ever the game was played in India there was  a radio coverage (commentary)of the matches,we used to sit perched to the radio sets to follow the game,many of us had a lot of respect and regards for our players than,we had little idea what they looked like  but the Strong points of each one of them was known to us,kirmani,kapil,yashpal chauan,venkatragavan,ravishastri,  chetan Sharma.binny( just a few to name),each one had a unique standing and every one was important in their own way,listening to a commentary was more difficult  as well as fun, cause you had to simulate the field ,know what is silly point ,slip, mid on, mid off coverdrive lbw  etc ,i.e should have to virtually convert the conversation played into a visual. our best time where, when a match was played in Chennai(madras than)because the commentary used to be in tamil,mathai(bat)veechalar(bowler) and expert comments from ramamoorty were the high lights,coming back to listening program  on the radio,we had only two or three stations giving us the content,vividha bharathi a commercial station being run thro with advertisements,it played both Hindi and Tamil songs till 8 in the morning it was Hindi songs. neyar viruppam from 8 to 10,in the mornings and theen kinnam in the nights many houses used to never have wall clocks to display time,these programs were an indicator of time. we used to set our foot out to school once the radio announced 9.30am.the night programmes  used to be interesting with film songs,followed by tirai chitiram excerpts from films used to be played,we also used to enjoy our Sunday after noons, were we used to have an oli chitiram some family soaps,running to an hour,where some family dhrama was being narrated.the artists used various voice modulations to bring in the emotional content,and,we could get the grip of the play sitting in our small rooms,our imagination grew wilder each one of us would have perceived the chatacters in our own eyes.following this would be a one hour popular programmee,with new film songs,so our listener ship was almost 100 percent.well the first time we had a black and whiteTV  was some times during 1982 coinciding with Olympic games,I think there was a steep increase in sales of solidaire,the most reliable TV of those days, so we also became a proud owner of one ,after the Olympics the content what doordharsan provided the only channel available was sparing and he really had a resource crunch since had to meet every target segment within   the airing time of  12 hours and half the time the content was in Hindi ,yeah my foundation for the little bit of Hindi what I know today is due to courtesy DD,we used to watch every bit of programm ,thou the radio still had its standing.yet another popular program we used to watch on the TV was the weekly news for deaf and dumb which used to come with a subtitle for viewers like us,SOME TIMES DURIND LATE NIGHTS we used to have some spill over coverage of SRILANKA channel RUPAVAHINI which used to air tamil movies or tamil songs to catch this signal there used to be a person on the motta madi turning around the yagi antenna shouting varutha ,eppo,and one tuning the receiver down to atleast have a audio coverage ,but still we did watch this ,because we never had the alternatives of what exist today. your world cup would be on the TV ,you would get alerts from your mobile service provider, sitting where ever you are you may watch the match live or recorded by video streaming on your mobile see them on your computer screens,listen to the update on the multiple FM channels and many of us have the money to spend to get a high end ticket and be apart of the cheer group witnessing your match,but still my childhood and my experience of the world cup matches what we heard on our radio sets were more enthusiastic,SUPERIOR and memorable

the extinct species

A wide spread awareness is being brought in, into lots of social issues such as global warming ,climate change, save tigers, protect our wild life and on a global note to save our eucology.even though this at times looks like too much about too little things. once you assimilate,  realities are quite shocking, while we heard about dinosaurs, we always felt that it might be yet another fictional,creature which would be some ones imagination. until we saw this mammoth creature being brought on screen by spiel berg,and than we could correlate many things and really believe that a world did exist where the roads and horizon were dominated by such creatures.well when activist are there to save big things like tiger, elephants and loins. we are just missing out that a lot of other species have already vanished with out any documentation about their existence. I say this because as a child living in Small town we had the pleasure of enjoying our childhood in  a variety of ways and also having the opportunity to be well fed with our mothers homemade food(you see my mom was a house wife at the service of her family)now that i visit the fish stall and purchase fish for my family and me not being a good cook,i just keep recollecting the various mouth watering  gravy"s what mom makes. and we used to have a variety of fishes being cooked which has become rare.we used to have a small miniature fish,keluthy, which was a fresh water fish,this is the one which RADHA eats and demonstrates in Mudal mariyathai,which is not to be seen, yet another item was a small fish called aara a very slender eel like fish normally found on the sand beds in fresh water, and ofcourse the famous aiyre meen which just appears on the menu card of a few chettinadu hotels.well these species are almost extinct and the only proof that they existed is in some parlance where there is some mention about these varieties in songs and movies.some more to add to this list is fish called koravai. a black one,  it almost used to resemble the tank cleaner bred in our fish tank and of course the tasty varal meen.these species have silently got eroded one of the reasons beig that the water bodies use d by them have been occupied with buildings and encroachment,secondly the pollution level in the water hs made them die and lastly they rate it which these fishes were multiplying should have declined, dO WE STILL FIND EARTHWORM IN MOIST LAND?

ENTERPRENEUR

Enterprise is a big word in todays diction ,hence i couldnt even spell it properly, there is a misnomer that you have to have a good family backing, a sound education   preferably from a B school and ofcourse a lot of money to become one because we have been tuned to think big and also to treat big the guy who does something on the enterprise side, well i am just reminded of very many people that i have come a cross who were doing a business in small way and surviving on its returns,these are again nostalgic moments of my child hood where we lived in a small narrow lane, predominantly occupied by illeterates,their social status was above poverty line or might be just balancing on it. but there was a very vibrant group doing this for their livelihood as a hut service. we had two or three people dealing with eateries each one had their own unique product so that there was never clash of customers,a lady selling muruku,ottavadai and athirasam, well she used to appear from 4.30 pm onwards,which was her prime time of sales.what ever little purchase made would go a long way in meeting the evening snacks,it was very rare that people would pay and buy out, it was often on credit that they were sold and she was neither bothered, cause she understood marketing much better.what she was selling never had a shelve life the earlier she sells them the lesser is her loss.just like this person we had other groups, a few persons selling fish on retail,you would get a door delivery and select customers were their prime target .yet another group sold color(goli soda and cool drinks) one group was into making kamarkat, a local delicacy toffy made of jaggery and coconut.,yet another group was making appalams. a few targeting on the morning breakfast, idli,dosa and aapam.one just selling sundal at 10 am a nutritonal supplement for the starving crowd. we did have some bigger enterpreners too a beedi factory, the lady in and around were its employee base, the process started with a few cutting or trimming the base leaves, some men used for rolling and stuffing the tabacoo.crust, the most intresting production job was to label each beedi individually and neatly pack them into bunndles.i guess each bundle consisted of twenty four beedi against the normal grouping of tens and twenties. well all these were witnessed by us as a way of spending our free time, which also gave us some first hand info about the process involved.  i have to mention about the most sucess ful enterpreneur of our time Chinnappa, a petty shop owner,his house shop and establishment was all condensed into that small bunk of 3x3 size. his shop was the most visited one for all of us because before going to school we have to touch his shop and go. i think he was the first fellow to introdue this 1 paisa bussiness, every shop in the vicinity would charge 5 paise to fill a pen with ink while he would only charge you 1 paise well he would give us a diluted ink but who cares it was for the teachers to strain and read.as far as we were concerned we would even fill up two pens at the rate of 1/2 paise and we had other attractions of spending the balance 4 paise, every thing in his shop was hovering around 1 paisa a then mittai,kammarkat,pakkumittai,nellikai.and the mostattractive one was his 1paise lottery, lot of ambitious gifts would be displayed you have to tahe a number paing one paise,but than i dont think we ever got any thing out of it at times we might ger a gift of 5 piase or ten paise.but it would be recycled aiming for some thing big.but now i just think he was a better enterprener cause his shop was always crowded he knew that it was volume that matters not quality

THIS ALSO WILL PASS(ETUVUM KADANDU POOVUM)

today i was going thro the paper ,swami sugabogananda had made some writing on how to meet difficulties, where he says every door closed is an indication that there is an opening some where else, we are more tuned to see difficulties, than to see oppurtunities, so its the inner mind which has to have abetter outlook see every thing as an oppurtunity than as abstracle or misfortune. if we just keep telling to ourself that we will face any difficulty, it would just go out as passing clouds, well yet another good one which he had quoted a few days back which is worth musing was, he says try to float on water you will not drown .and also said its whitin us that decides whether we would float or sink, a dead body always flaots, well what is the radical change that happens once the life is out how does the same body float when dead?any logical reasonings

HARE AND TORTOISE

WE ALL KNOW SOME TALES WHICH WE READ OR HEARD IN OUR YOUNG DAYS SOME ARE FORGOTTEN AND SOME REMAIN AS TRACES  .this is an attempt to recall a few or them. we know that once there was a debate between the two a hare and a tortoise to adjudge who was more wise or mightier. so they had abet to contest a running race,who ever reached the assigned target first would win . the fox was made the umpire to start the race and end the same.with a blow of wishle the match started the hare which is know for its speed was way ahead of the tortise, so thou of relaxing and retired for some rest under a bush. the tortoise knowing its capabilities was troddling slowly but steadly towards its target alas.when it reached the spot it was surprised to see the fox declaring it to be the winner, the hare after a good nap ,resumed its  run but was taken aback to see the tortoise as winner. Moral of the story SLOW AND STEADY WINS THE RACE.
This defeat was not acceptable by the hare it came as a shame,and a shock for its self confidence .so called the tortoise for a rerace.this time the hare was very alert did not waste time and wanted to emerge as winner from the start  and the result too proved in favour of the hare.MORAL HARD WORK NEVER FAILS.
But than the fox which was a spectatar wanted some fun said it was aunfair competetion snce both of them were not on equal footing so a different route was fixed for the race this time, the hare was all brisk afterall he wanted to retain its supermacy so made a very fast run across bushes lanes etc and reached a point beyond which it could do nothing ,for there was a wide stream whiich it had to cross,so it was struck. the tortoise made its appearance at the point troddling slowly and allmost tired and dead. but on seeing the stream it just jumped into it wadded tho the water and reached the other end whithin no time. and this time the tortoise was declared the winner, but the tortoise had choosen this route with a pact with the fox using a water based terrain. the moral here is how ever powerful or confident you are kindly have a startegy.finally both the hare and tortoise felt if they have to be friends and win at all times the strenght of each other is to be shared  so they finally had an agreement that on land the hare would help the tortoise and in water the tortoise would help the hare.

empathy

we claim ourself to be rationale,loving caring and what not,a few days back while comming to office my attention was drawn to the wailing of some one,so just looked out of the window of the speeding car.a lady who was walking was knocked down by a motor cycle,the lady had landed down and was shouting with pain perhaops afractute  the guy who had knocked her down was just looking at her in awe people were passing by giving a momentary look over the scene and not a single helping hand to rescue her nor the situation which includes me too.well we live in a speeding world where these small concerns are big burden. hope the lady is better now

todays quote

when ambition exceeds performance,the gap is called fustration.when the performance exceeds ambition, the overlap is called sucess

rainbow

i wanted to keep writing some thing that comes to mind every day so started this blog, the first thing that bogged me was to name this ,yeah it might look stupid to see the name rainbow but it is one thing which every one admires and also people smile at the sight of it and ofcourse its a rare occurance