Tuesday, April 12, 2011

cemetery looters

Are we not too shy to express our self either orally or in written and is this not one of the major predicament that defines the sucess of man. Right from our young days as toddlers we start acquiring words  syllabi's etc and admiration runs in for people who have  a good vocabulary,more so if it is in a foreign language.Many a times we fumble with words and go blank  at times just for the simple reason that we are unable to recollect the right word/do not know the usage of words used/and also fear making some mistakes in pronouncing them
I learn noah webster is the first dictionary to come out in 1828 with about 70,000 word and on date it has around 475000 words which is again debatable,but i am really surprised with the introduction of new words in our daily life some pure English,some a mix of Tamil and English,some just substituting the local language its only with this back ground and a recent article in the Newspaper which has made such wanderings.
CEMETERY LOOTERS well on seeing this i was just shocked, .thinking that looters have now shifted their venues to cemetery instead of bungalows/homes/and houses,But thanks to the publishers that this was accompanied with a coloured photograph, where a woman made up as kali was danging glee fully with neem leaves in hand some organ of goat might be liver or lungs clenched in her teeth. well this made me to recollect what cemetery looters meant(i did give a momentary smile to myself for that knowledge enhancement).
WELL this is a ritual(festival)that follows Maha sivarathri and popularly known in Tamil as Mayana kolai,and colloquially termed as masana kolai,thats how we used to call it,well the writer wanted to give an account on this and not knowing how to get it on paper has translated each word mayana-cemetery and kokai-looter. so is that so simple to write. Had we known this life would have been soooo.easy for us not to remember words memorise spellings etc.
Coming back about reminisces of mayana kolai,(masana kolai, in our words) this was a dreadful day which we used to enjoy with,terror,we are scared  of horror movies, but still we would like to undergo that thrill, so was the case here too.
As school students, our school had a very big cementry in its neighbour hood, there would be a huge crowd,relatives of dead souls ,having a grave,would have assembled there, decorated the cemetery, and would have come with a spread of eateries,delicacies what they presume was liked by their  dear ones when they were alive.this crowd used to wait for the arrival of a convoy of  people dressed as deities mostly incarnations of kali with deadly colors and some raw meat clenched in hand or mouth.this scene and crowd was enough reasons for us to assemble their as spectators since the event was always around 4 oclock, the end of our school. how ever there were very scary description that     people dressed as kateri(as being named) would come and attack  people if found with any accessories in black.so we used to remove our black shoes dump it in our bags,cover our head and hair with what ever little cloth we have and prefer to take the gaps behind people so that we can have some glimpses but should never be the front liners of any attack, if at all it happens by the kateri, the long wait would end with people(dressed ones) just visiting the burial ground and occasionally they used to lift some eateries from the spread and eat, and people who ever have displayed it get a consoling factor that their dead ones have consumed the same.well this article was not about mayana kollai, but just in appreciation of the editor, who did not shy away from writing about this,many people would have had an iota of doubt how to give a caption and here we had one with out any inhibition wrote CEMETERY LOOTERS, YET ANOTHER ADDITION IN THE LIST OF VOCABULARY ON WEBSTER,well at this instant i am also reminded about a person
who walked up to the board and wrote VENGAYAM well this is response as a students to the challenge posted to a class who can spell (vengayam) in english correctly the expected reply being ONION ,well if we have confidence looks speaking and writing english  is a coool job

Saturday, April 9, 2011

ENNA SUNDAY DA SAMY........!!!! @#@

WE often come across  usage of words such as, catastrophe/chaos pichikichu well here’s  just an insight about what they mean .
It was a Sunday morning, a long awaited day of rest, as you only break it from your routine of getting up in a hurry shouting at your kids seeing the clock every ten minutes to ensure whether you are in time to that 30 min of late with  which you can always enter your office head down avoiding those eyes  of a row of visitors with  with a minimal guilt, so the real rest what the word means is subjective..
I had made up my mind that the next day I don’t have to go thru this above mentioned routine and went to bed, the previous night presuming that I am going to have a relaxed stress free day. Well the clock had hardly crossed 10  past 7 , there was a gentle shrug  but a firm one from my maid, with the first announcement, water is not flowing in the taps, to make it still worse, she said she has operated the sump motor and still water doesn’t come, to give more clarity to her version, she narrated with action(u see she is partially dumb and deaf)that the motor does not make noise when switched on .
Well I think this much of alarm was sufficient to make me to jump out from bed to start  my relaxed day. Still that residual laziness to act made me to transform the same action to my daughter  shaking her up from her sleep  with a shout saying Check up whether the motor works this dame claims there’s no water. Well she went down returned and said yes the motor doesn’t work only difference being that she spoke these words out. Now I had to give the next command, check whether all three phases of EB is working after a delay of a few minutes she returned back saying yes. Now my temperament was changing, I said to my daughter do I have to give instructions one by one will you not run through  all the possibilities of reasoning to check why a device doesn’t work? Any way we can all guess why our people fair so badly in maths and problem solving, they get struck and always wait for the next statement for execution.
Well coming back to my water woe , I called up an electrician, with out showing up his displeasure to work on a Sunday he agreed to  turned up(bait being that he has been requesting for a job for his ward)and now a new dimension is added up there is no water in the s ump this response comes from my daughter, who has now gone for the next command    of execution. Oh now it is time for me to get started to switch from delegation to do it mode I walk down to the sump/motor for a first hand  status for the entire episode, well the inlet pipe of the sump is closed I open it so water starts filling up in the sump, the electrician turns up fixes up a wire that’s given up and the motor starts lifting up water, putting up a relief on my face but also triggering up with such a good start for my so called relaxed sun day…
This led me to wander my thoughts  on some of the happenings around
The recent pathetic earthquake of Japan, the tsunami and the after effects
The political war going on for clenching power, the exposures and aftermaths of various issues creeping in
Was the scene not the same even with epics such as Ramanayam, Ramas throning as king and his exile , ABDUCTION OF SITA AND THE STORY GOES ON..........
Well I can go about listing out happenings which substantiates that trouble small or big never come as a single episode but as a  culmination turning down into a catastrophe  but I think in the end every problems end with a solution and learning.
As alchemist quotes IF WE ARE DESTINED TO GET SOMETHING THE WHOLE WORLD CONSPIRES TO AID US ACHIEVE IT, AND I WOULD LIKE TO ADD THAT THIS IS BOTH FOR GOOD AND BAD,
AND JUST TO END WITH A KNOWN PUNCH SINGAM SINGALA VARUM…. PANNI KUTAMA THAN VARUM, I GUESS HAPPINESS COMES ONLY IN MEASURED QUANTITIES WHEREAS WORRIES AND TROUBLE COMES IN COUPLES AND COUPLETS.