snoring stories

My daughter in her early twenties   had been with us for a month now and was planning to leave back to her studies in India in a couple of days .

 she wanted to sleep with both of us together last night for a change before she left us

A small yearning to be the small girl again and be with both her dad and mum together

 we too loved it

For the last several days mother and daughter had left me alone in the master bedroom  to brood

And so we chatted away and laughed a lot and slowly sleep took us over

just like those old days

After a small quick nap the bright light switched on woke me up

I saw Sruthi my daughter going back to the next room !

Me …..What happened molle ( dear ) …… ?

Sruthi…..Am, going back to my room to sleep …

Me ….Why ?

Sruthi… nothing ,   can’t sleep here !

Me …..Oh and why so ?

Sruthi….Acha ( Dad )       look   one can manage to sleep with one person snoring as it was for me the last one month but two of you together and in different tones and pitches is too much to bear !

You know as soon as I managed to grunt, shout, squeak, shake or even tweet the nose of my mother and she stopped, you would start where she left !

Do You have a relay system or what?

How united you are in this ?

Made for each other indeed !

I smiled sheepishly in the dark as she put out the light and walked off.





The funny thing about snoring is it is something that is never known by the snorer .

I always prided myself as one who never snored though I had a suspicion I sort of made blubbery sounds from my lips as I fell asleep

that didn’t count as real snoring does it ?

In my dreamy state it was like a soothing lullaby and it just heralded me to the bliss of somnia



Of course many of us snore  with different styles of our own

And sleep medicine is a great specilaity these days where effective measures reduce snoring and prevent something known as sleep apnea where one tends to stop breathing momentarily  !

Dangerous

We had no such pathological snoring of this kind
just some harmless non poisonous  rumbling you see

So I thought till yesterday !!



Talking about snoring We once had a guest who came to our house in Cochin and that was ages back when we had this small clinic attached to the house 

 on that particular occasion we had plenty of relatives visiting from the native village for a function occupying different rooms in the house .

This said gentleman insisted that he was happy to lie on the floor of the hall and he would sleep slowly watching TV late into midnight as this  was his regular habit  and so we agreed to his whim but warned him  of the presence of patients coming to the ante room clinic near the hall in the morning .

He guffawed and said ….. I would be up and about by  dawn as we are from the village you know and we hardly miss the sunrise there

I still don’t remember whether he meant sunset or sunrise  for he was deep asleep at 8.30 am

and out of our graciousness to a guest we didn’t shake him or pour a bucket of water on him!

Though I was sorely tempted to do so

Here was somebody who could sleep through a nuclear explosion with a smile on his face

Well I had no issues, let him sleep but couldn’t he have done it quietly

He seemed to have been a record holder in the Olympics in the snoring category as we came to know from the others who were traitorous enough not to have warned us of this knowledge .

The sounds that emanated that day amongst the coughs and sneezes of our patients was of high decibels

It ranged in several rare ragas

Wild and tame animals were mimicked

one minute we would be in the deep jungle as wild pigs rampaged amongst snorting crocodiles elephants bellowed while lions road  mice squeaked and ducks quacked

Resool pookuty the sound engineer who got an Oscar would have been delighted to get those rare sounds on record for posterity

The patients sniggered and some asked me

Doctor where did you get this special piece of art from?

Well he is a great artist, with great difficulty we had brought him from a far land because we were told that the vibrations that emanate from his snore  are part of a special vasthusasthra and does wonders to our fortunes !   ....I countered

And thus when the last patient had smiled away our man rose with a guttural farewell to his snoring paradise and squeaked his eyes open

Chaya chaya ( Tea Tea ) he bellowed

That was the most delicous sound to our ears that day .

Mohabati Sulaimani Ustaad Hotel

Any act of creativity with soul  stands out from others
so does the malayalam film USTAAD HOTEL  .

such films raise the hope for the future of mollywood

There is a scene in the movie  where  the veteran actor Thilakan    hands over a glass of  tea  he made to his grandson Sulfikar the hero of the film ,who is awed by its taste and enquires about it .

 Thilakan replies that  it is so because it was  a  sulaimani full of  mohabbat .
 ( a tea laced with love ) .

 The film is really a sulaimani with loads of mohabbat .

Dulqar Salman  son of the superstar Mamooty ( a tigers son cannot be a cat ) is a Swiss educated chef who loves being one .

Director Anwar Rasheed had made a good choice in him fro the film .

Dulqars  father the multicrore Dubai based business man  Siddique has his ambitons on investing in a five star hotel to be run by his son in India not as a chef but as a CEO .

To Siddique  cooking had always been  a stigma having grown up under a father who owned a decriept hotel by the beach in Kozhikode ( Calicut )  and when he thought he had finally left those sordid memories behind he begets a son who wants to be another  cook !

His infuriation and his new found wife (having been a widower for many years ) drives his son to his grandfather .

Thilakan the quintisential Asan or master chef makes his grandson go through the works from being a cleaner boy to an errand boy and slowly making him work his way up to being the chef ,
he also gets his grandson  a job in the nearby five star hotel and slowly Dulqar comes to realise that even the Biriyani which the beach 5 star hotel is famous for comes from Ustaad hotel  sold at astronomical prices there and that the owners were eyeing the property planning to drive off the old man from the dream of his life .

Dulqar throws away his job and with the help of his lady love Nitya Menon and some friends does a makeover to the Ustaad hotel ,there are so many problems like interference by the food dept and the media encouraged by the enemies which is all overcome and finally Dulqar and his dad come to understand  of what is true in life is what  is what is done with sincerity but by the time they lose the man who taught them this by living it .

The aromatic Biriyanis made in Ustaad hotel reminded me  of the famous Kayikan Biriyanis of Mattancherry Cochin which is also  well known for its mohabat .

films message I feel  is mohabat wins .........always...... yes it does ,in anything
 remember that !

an Ode to Independence

for every being his country is the best

to that person its  always a bit above the rest

after all is  it not  ones own nest  ?

its thoughts would ever fill ones chest

India  to me is a blessed place

full of excuisite  beauty and grace

with  a long history and a hoary past

its lands are spread out far and  vast

it has its tall and snowy peaks

its forests are filled with firs and teaks

its deserts are full of blowing  sands

and its blue  seas embraces its green lands 

it has multihued  languages  cultures and colurs

its subjects are immersed in several labours

but it has a string tying it  all together

like an umblical cord  its mother

A land with many varied thoughts

where   many paths to God are sought

a land filled with many wise sages

going back to the ancient ages .

a country which had been ravaged

conqured over  time  raped and savaged

for centuries  its wealth plundered

but with a  soul that  never surrendered

many came to its shores with greed
robbing it and letting it bleed
ruling it and damning its subjects
filling it with poverty abject

it had overcome all this to get its freedom
and from many little and big kingdoms
it was born an united country proud
to those men and women who brought this  our heads are always  bowed

to those valiant soldiers gaurding our borders
waiting for the enemy marauders
all we can do is to  salute and bow deep
for remember  thier watch makes us reap .

But there are many   enemies within us
the cunning and the conning powermongers
who  are no different from our invaders
they loot and cheat and sell our country like traders

in the name of freedom and democracy
they hold the reins of autocracy
 they play thier puppets and pull the strings
cutting and clipping our  thoughts and wings

they are clever in words cunning in deeds

they reap the spoils of thier seeds

and as our beloved country continues to bleed

our hearts wail and wait for  a change plead

is there a light at the edge of the tunnel

or are we doomed to fall in the funnel

what and where will we find that elusive  turn

before our dear  country succumbs to its burns

From sports to religon they meddle

and as we burn  they play the fiddle

these men and women who muddle

area dangerous and an unsolvable riddle

some  amongst them are men of virtue

but it seems like that  they are far and few

the harbringers of change are split

and thrown into deep and endless pits

and so the story goes on
sixty five years after we were born
eternal hope is the only solace
which we can blissfully embrace

India is too great to fall
for it has never done that at all
so the present devils too  will go one day
and only then   would  India shine with its golden rays