A Different Farm

There was a time when every malayalee family had one or more elders in thier house .

With the advent of nuclear families and the lean and mean age the seniors either stay alone if they have the place or either they are dumped into senior homes or some even on the streets .

many children today have never enjoyed the cosy laps of thier grandmothers while listening to tall tales ,they have traded this to the soft cushions in front of an idiot box or a play station vacantly staring at dotted images due to no fault of thiers .

Again with many of thier offsprings abroad or in ohter places within the country and visitng them occasionaly and sometimes never there are many senior members of the society staying in big houses all alone ,thier security is questionable and they are helpless when they fall sick .

Thomas should have thought of all this when he thought of building a seniors home .

Unlike the existing ones this one he feels would be different in its whole approach ,like a fresh breath .

The idyllic land placed admidst the placid backwaters off Shertallai close to all comforts but at the same time tantalisingly away from the dust and din reaching to acres owned by Thomas was made to order for such a purpose .

Quaint huts with smoky roofs reaching out to the green tree tops ,thickly canopied coconut fronds swaying in the pleasant wind that blows across the ripe paddy in the swampy fields

waddling ducks that play between your legs while walking in t he brown pathways meandering along the sides of sparkling water ,ponds ,canals ,thatched and roofed houses which dot the farm

Mango and jackfruit trees give a lot of shade and there is an air of somber peace that settles in as one drinks in nature in all its tangy freshness .

The azure skies lit by a setting sun which casts an etheral glow over the placid waters make the place akin to a painting

Thomas chief engineer for the CGH Earth Group for many years has rich experience with similar projects ,with his technical prowess and training ,his creative mind and astute business sense he had completed several such projects and this one is personal

to him it is a tribute to the aged ,

he always felt for thier plight and wanted to build a centre which to them would be a home away from a home .
unlike other senior homes there would no compromise on comforts and even luxuries
Thomas feels the aged deserve the best
individual cottages which could be sold or leased to couples or singles would have every facility available including domestic help .
The fittings would be all done with the senior citizens kept in mind

Even though each cottage would be furnished with a clean kitchen with all utilities a common kitchen and restaurant with home service would be available
the place would be totally secure with in house medical facilites and quick transportation to any place needed an ATM inside would help banking needs .
Praying facilities for all religons ,common club house , sports area ,Gym and a safe swimming pool would give respite to tired joints
yoga ,physiotherapy and saunas would also be there with trained instructors
A well fitted guest house with deluxe rooms would be available for visitors and relatives to stay as they come visit thier parents .

The plans are slowly and surely beggining to bloom as the landscape is being designed and the cottages being planned .

this is a venture where one could pay and get the best of comfort available ,the benifits would also fall on old people who cannot afford once it establishes itself .
on my last visit to Kerala I went with Thomas to vist the farm and fell for it
now you know where to look out for me when Iam old ! ( 20 yrs ahead )

Salt N Pepper...... movie review

For a foodie like me this new malayalam movie was appetising indeed .

I sincerely wish more such malayalam films catering to a discerning audience are created .

The creator of the movie has blended a story of love for food bringing together two older persons who had missed the boat in thier younger days .

Food is always in the background ,be it in the steamy dough that magically turns into Kuttiyil thatu dosa (Pais dosa is a well known eating spot in Ernakulam where one gets more than 100 varieties of dosa at a jiffy....probably Pai gave the inspiration for the film ) or in the soft and succulent unniappams which makes the hero Lal whisk away the male cook of the house instead of the girl he had gone to see for possible marriage in his younger days .

The cook excellently enacted by Baburaj ( I had seen him as a stuntman and a villain in several movies ) showing great potential in a character role here ,he not only becomes the long term cook but also a conscience keeper for bachelor Lal who is an archeologist happy with rummaging in the past while living a sumptous presence in good food and essential Kerala Brews ( smalls ) to fill his soul and flesh.

Lal who has proved his mettle in acting in earlier movies never diasappoints us and is well paired with Swetha Menon who reminds me of Shabana Azmi with her prowess .

Swetha too is a natural in histrionics and a good looker too .

Lal has a nephew in the film enacted by Asif Ali ,he is an yuppie always seen with a speaker glued to his ears ,he begins all the mischief by presenting Lal a mobile phone by which Lal comes into contact by accident with another foodie Maya ( Swetha Menon ) who is a dubbing artiste

The phone romance almost fructifies on the day they are scheduled to meet each other but both wary of thier age and deficiencies in looks get one proxy to represent them and send them instead of going themselves .

Asif acts as a proxy to his uncle and meenakshi the young roomamte of maya turns up as her proxy and naturally the young ones promptly fall into love .

The older now lovelorn couple who never see each other till the time the film ends are strongly discouraged by thier proxies who tell them that the other person is too young for them.

A lot of frustration creeps up into Lal and Swetha who by now lose all thier hopes for a late age romance which to them was almost a final swing in thier lives

Vijayaraghavan acting as a senior archeologist who manages to position his digs near his former romantic intrests present house and the silent Moopan a tribal elder are the other lively characters that fill the film but above all it is food that takes the prima donna role and romance slowly but surely enriches it .
In the end all turns well when Lal and Swetha meet up in the Trivandrum museum after some twists and turns and bury thier past for a rich future .

The film reminded me of Cheeni Khum a hindi movie with Amithabh Bhachan as a chef in a London restaurant ,here too Amitabh is an older person involved with food and falls in love .

Read my review on this film http://hariwrite.blogspot.com/2007/11/cheeni-kum.html

So friends remember that love for food and love for hearts go along together

Dont we all know that foodies have big hearts and can take a lot of love as much as they can take a lot of food !!!

A Friend who couldnt help

Anand was a sprightly young man

Tall well built and handsome he was popular in his class and a bright student too .
He had well laid out plans for a career ,after completing Bsc Physics he would do his post graduation and later his Phd and get into Astronomics .

Space science had alwasy fascinated him and he knew he would be in that field .

His parents both bank employees had only him to look forward to as his twin brother had died in childhood due to leukemia ( Blood cancer ) .
Anandh was the reason for thier existence .

And then it happened

Anandh had been looking pale for the last few weeks ,he had fever and nibbled away unintrestedly at food ,blood tests with the neighbourhood doctor rang alarm bells ,he had a very low hemoglobin and his total counts were pretty high ,he was also developing occasional mild nose bleeds ,hard brushing of his teeth brought gum bleeds too .

For his parents it was all too unnervingly familiar .

The sceptre of the disease that took away thier another child , Anandhs twin when he was six years of age was becoming more real with all these known symptoms .

They always knew the chances of a twin brother getting leukemia was definitely more but over the years they had slowly gotten over that fear .

I met Anandh first when I admitted him in the medical oncology department Lakeshore hospital where I worked

By then his diagnosis was certain having found many blast cells ( immature White blood corpuscles that manifest in acute leukemia ) in his peripheral blood films .

He needed further work up to find out the exact type ,its cytogentics ( chromosomal details ) and start treament .

He also needed supportive treatments which would include transfusions ,high end antibiotics intravenous fluids inserting a central line for his planned chemotherapy ,CT scans , lumbar punctures , bone marrow tests and so on and so forth ,

It was a bewildering list and for a person just diagnosed with a killer disease to go through this torture a painful experience

Even to us physicians who got used to this daily work of ours it was nerve racking.

It was disheartening to see young boys like Anandh in front of us .

Bone marrow punctures are very uncomfortable procedures even though the pain can be minimized using local anaesthetics and anxiolytics the uncanny feeling of something grating into your bone and digging into your marrow was as uncomfortable as it can get

Anandh was brave and lay down quitely even talking to me as I did the procedure .

More painful things followed .

we inserted a hickmans line which is a central line into the subcalvian vein ,we did lumbar punctures and every day bloods were drawn from him .
After this initial tornado of tests we found out that Anandh had a type of leukemia called

Acute Myeloid Leukemia M5 Type

Strangley Anandh was full of confidence and cheer

he was confident he would beat the disease and willing to face anything with a smile .

His cheer and amicable attitude was infectious and during rounds there would be lot of laughter when we reached in his room .

Our chief ,Dr V.P. Gangadharan a well known medical oncologist was known for his timely sense of humour ,he was adept at putting patients at ease while his brain whirred away to do the best for them .

He was higly respected in his field and brilliant in his job with an elephantine memory

he was also a sincere and a deeply humble person

Patients looked forwards to his visits as he made thier pains disappear by his countenance and they would miss him any day he did not come for rounds .

He was particularly fond of Anandh too as we all were .

I still rememebr the day celebrity actor of malayalam filmdom Suresh Gopi happened to visit our ward when he was shooting for a film in the hospital premises ,we took him to Anandhs room and some snaps were taken with a towering Anandh brimming near the superstar a bit taller than the really tall and handsome star .

Anandh loved music and had a good collection of audio CDs ,since it was a common intrest to me I used to borrow some of his CD s .

Days went by as Anandh faced the rigors of chemotherapy ,his body would be ravaged by its ill effects as he fought nausea and vomitting losing his hair and becoming a shell of his old self but his soul would shine through all this and his charming smile would make us feel ashamed for doing this to him .

His parents and his aunt who was a well know personality worried over his prognosis and would heap us with questions .

He completed the intial phase of intensive chemotherapy called induction which lasts for seven days ,this is followed by a period of dangerously low counts when his body is weak and has no immunity he could get all sort of rare infections and the war then was at its peak between the medications and the microroganisms that tried to succumb him , he could have fatal bleeding from anywhere including his brain as his platelets plummeted to near zero his hemoglobin would teether down and he would be dangerously anemic so much so he would be breathless with the most minimum of efforts .

Day in and day out we walked in and and out of his room masked and protected with our hands sanitised to peer into his eyes listen to his rumbling chests and touch his warm fever ridden body ,it all lasted for a month while his bone marrow recovered and brought forth fresh cells which were not malignant

we did another bone marrow on him and found him to be in remission

This would be a brief respite as his cloned cells lurking away deep in his body could rise again if we did not consolidate our victory .

But in between we could afford to give the luxury of a small holiday for the poor boy ,so he went home for a week and them came back for his consolidations .

Each consolidation was a repeat of the induction though slightly different regime they were all followed by similar periods of low counts ,fever and a spate of other complications ,by the end of four consolidations he was like a wet towel squeezed dry

a poor imitation of the Anandh we saw in the beggining but his smile was still there he left us with grateful farewells .

Slowly time would bring back his hair and his muscles and the old Anandh was back to his college ,we crossed our fingers and touched all wood available for it to last .

Generally all remissions if more than three years could be called almost a cure and more than five years the chances are really bright

For AML the percentage was 40 that is out of 100 affected 40 would come out of the fire unscathed ,we hoped fervently that our Anandh would be one amongst that 40 .

But God I feel is reasonably unfair at times ,in fact I would even say most of the times ,Iam sure Iam being juvenile in making such a remark against an unfathomable power whose machinations we know nothing of and can never judge but still

why does he repeatedly do this ?

his vctims are all innocnets ,good people ,while the bad get away continuing thier badness with no such inflictions ,

why doesnt AML affect for example Ajmal Kasab as he gorges on those delcious biriyanis our Government provides him with in his cell after maiming so many

why has it to be Anandh and his like ?

I know I am being immature and foolish to rant like this but working with many like Anandh whom we get attached so much to during thier treament and then losing them after all the hardships makes me angry against the power that is beyond us ( if there is one ) he/she seems to be totally unfair or even a bit crazy .

To make the sad story short Anandh came back with a relapse and quickly detriorated ,,his second line chemotherapy ravaged his body to a great extent and this time he was strangely silent with a lost smile his parents were epitomes of sadness and inevitably it happened one day we lost him to destiny .

to his parents the tragedy they had dreaded had revisited them

I can still figure him in my mind as I can many the other young men ,children, older persons we lost in the deadly battle against Cancer

there have been many sucess stories too for us to carry on our work but frustration and sadness is a part of working in medical oncology .

I went for Anandhs funeral something I rarely do

I felt a kinship with him that of an elder brother or a father or a friend

A friend who could do only so much !

(Have changed the name of the real Anandh in view of patient confidentiality )

Lost in a limbo

This post comes from me after life without G mail for less than a week !

Somehow my account got disabled and finally was reactivated after several frantic mails to Google in U.S. and sending them the princely sum of 30 cents by credit card !

These past days my mail account ,Picassa ,Blog and Google talk all were frozen .

now I knew how people feel when thier accounts get frozen

I mean the biggies like Kalmadi and Raja !

How dependent we are today on technology ?

What does one do when one cant acess FB and orkuts !

one almost get withdrawal symptoms

What about all the mails which I had put off to read for another day ?

what about all my e mail contacts ?

how could I ever let the world know l know that Iam non communicado for now ?

These questions bothered me .

I was just ruminating on starting all new

But with more than 160 blogposts to start afresh without my favourites was quite sad

it was almost like a rebirth

like taking a new avatar

And then it all came back and am writing this now .

you know guys and gals the climax wasnt so earth shattering

As I eagerly opened my inbox all I saw was a lot of forwards and a sprinkle of personal mails

Fact is nobody seemed to have missed me much !!

psst dont let it out

Arguments against Anna

This post is written as a reply to a comment on my post on Baba Ramdev .

the reader commented

That if a low level activist like Anna Hazare could lead a fight against corruption why not Baba Ramdev being followed by millions ,

He also felt Anna Hazare was an escape valve for middle class ambitions ,of people who dont believe in parliamentary democracy or in the ruling by political parties !

He went on to say that how can any Anna or his coterie blackmail the system by fasting ?

and then to say

who are his followers but a bunch of politically ignorant students and youngsters !

and who according to the commentator is Anna ? He had never heard of him till this fast !and he left with a comment that Anna and company alone can never bell the corrupt cat but it is each of us who should do this

Brave words indeed !

let me break these arguments one by one

Gandhiji had advised evenbefore we attained freedom to dismantle the congress party he beonged to ,as he could foresee the mess it would become one day !

The lone lawyer with all his warts and eccentrities was an unknown when he rose in the horizon

he used the same blackmail of fasting and sathygraha to drive the mighty British away and the nation stood behind him as one because they realised his sincerity .

never underestimate the power of individuals

If somebody had not heard of Anna Hazare the social activist he should blame himself for being ignorant instead of belittling the man .

Kisan Baburao Hazare was serving the Army as a driver during the Indo Pak war 1965 when an encounter killed all his compatriots excpect him surviving a bullet missing his head ,the incident made him ponder on the meaning of life and immersing himself in books by Swami Vivkenanda made him dedicate his life to his small village in Maharasthra called Ralegan sidhi a model village with no alcoholism ,with grain banks self sufficiency in water ,and his work earned him the Padma Bhushan and his fight against corruption was nothing new as he was always in the forefront in the Right to information act etc .

his coterie as sneeringly commented does not contain novices but legal luminaries like former

law minister Shanti Bhusan and his son Prasanth Bhusan who are senior supreme court lawyers ,

Arvind kejariwal the spokesman often seen in the TV channels is not any zindabad howling goonda following a party but an IIT Kharagpur graduate and an Indian revenue service officer who took a sabbatical from his work to continue as an activist for the right to information act

Kiran Bedi the retired IPs officer needs no introduction from me

swami Agnivesh an Arya samaj scholar has worked for years against bonded labour .

If our young Indians have started believing in such people today I am delighted

what choice do they have ,

is it the bunch of jokers called politicans ruling us today( with rare exceptions)

they are the sad alternatives available !

The likes of Mayawati a Dalit darling and a parasite of thier votes has spent crores glorifying herself with statues and money garlands when the poor in her state perpetually wallow in muck .

The Rajas ,Karunanaidhis ,Jayalalithas ,Kalmadis ,Mundes ,Pawars and Pinarayis have plundered this nation systematically more than even what the British did

at least they did built Indian Railways as an example !!

The parliamentary democracy in India is soemthing to be proud of but the system today is hijacked by muscle and money .

The aaam aadmi has no power and all tall talk of contributing ones mite instead of doing lot of impotent writing and talking is a standard argument of every politician cornered in a debate why dont you join the system ? why do you talk standing outside great ?

The only way one can join the system is to be a party worker which is to become a fodder and foot soldier for the parties leaders to follow thier dictates with the law in thier hands, with the rules that can be flouted ,with the connivance of a corrupt bureacracy and an army of thugs to muscle any oppositon

Any politician would be in a win win situation

it is a giant racket

Every few years the gullible voter votes with eternal hope for change ,casts his right into the ballot hoping for freshness and fairness to be cheated again and again again

Any day the youth should follow leaders like Anna than these uncouth men who call themselves political leaders

kerala is a bad example of a politically conscious youth being misled by the nose by selfish politicians

Talking of blackmail there are umptteen examples of bullying used against the common man day after day

Take the hartals, gheroas ,demonstrations and keralas own specialities vettiniruthals

the common man is bulldozed by the labour class by nokku koolis and attimaris even to this day and if Anna is getting a lokpal by trying to kill himself by fasting so be it

let none talk of blackmail

I earnestly hope Anna hazare and his team win with no interruptions from emisaries sent to disrupt his mission

a strong lokpal bill will be a weapon against corruption and the politicians know this hence they would use all thier Chanakyan skills to squelch it and dilute it ,

every patriotic Indian should support the bill as his duty .

Bearded Baba under Dupatta

The anticorruption crusade begun by Anna Hazare seems to have been taken for a ride !

Suddenly a bare bodied bearded Baba Ramdev was hoisted on to the centre stage ( they say by The RSS/VHP/ BJP combine ) .

The Baba was crying against corruption with all the fervour he could muster out of his yogic stamina with occasional spurts of push ups on the stage and stomach churning muscular exhibitons watched by an adorning crowd in a massive pandal in the Ramlila grounds New Delhi

Remember the Government had given the needed permission for the tamasha .

Standing with him were turbanned sikhs( who handed him symbolic swords )and prayer capped bearded mullahs to show off his communal harmonoius coexistense

Sadhvis and sanyasis too were in the forefront

All well stage managed but a bit too dramatic when one compared all this show to the relatively sober and silent hunger strike by Anna Hazare and his band of brave .

The Baba was feted and feasted by the very congress that later in the day drove him and his followers to tears literally by letting loose tear gas shells into the pandal

The ministers including the mighty amongst them ,Pranab mukerjee jee the Bengali Babu who speaks English with a Calcuttan lisp drove along to meet the Baba as he alighted nimbly on his yogic toes from his own swanky jet !

The Baba is ,or is he the right man to speak of corruption ? !!!!

A millionare by many folds he is said to even own an island off Scotland and he keeps saying he wants all black money to come back to India !

Maybe he should make a good start .

I never knew yoga could do so much and to think of the five decades of my life wasted without even knowing it ! sad

And then the Baba fasted while the Government feted

initially the Government gave him promises and later the backfooted and turned on him

At midnight the Government acted tough

( congress party got back to its famed Emergency Mode after a long gap

Madam Sonia would be happy to realise it was not a big deal to get back to that mode ) and started to go after the Baba and his supporters with a venom .

The Baba did an yogic trick at first by disappearing and then reappearing as a churidar clad women !

no no not cross dressing .............all for corruption you see

He was just trying to put wool on the cops eyes which he did suceed for some time ultimately he succumbed as they discovered a bearded baba under the dupatta !

And they promptly packed him off to his ashram in Haryana to lick his wounds in yogic comfort .

and so ended the thandava of the baba for the time being

The only sad detail in this drama is the dampening of the real fighters of corruption .......Anna Hazare and his team

Be it the BJP or the congress or the communists the politicians want just a diversion from the dangerous Lok Pal bill which to them was fast becoming a reality and had to be blocked in time before it terrorises thier livelihood .

what better way than use Yoga for it and the Baba was a convinient maverick suited to the T for the purpose

Sad for India

Somehow the politician seems to always win in the end !

The only glad news these days is of M.A.Raja ,Kannimozhi ,Suresh Kalmadi and the merry gang of corruption inc ,cooling thier heels in Tihar jail with Maran waiting to join them in any moment

and the second one is that one more politician almost got hit by a shoe in a press conference .....wish it was not an almost

SOMETHING IS BETTER THAN NOTHING .

Tihar Tweet

Tihar Jail today is teeming with celebrities

who made loads of money in thier large kitties

they stole from the country left and right

and today the bare walls of Tihar is in thier sight !

Remember the commonwealth conman Kalmadi

these days his debonair beard looks a bit tardy

Suresh bought toilet papers at unbelievable prices

Toilet paper was just one amongst his vices

Andhimuthu Raja the Dalit minister who made trillions

by selling his 2 G spectrums for many many zillions

today this hero of the poor and the man of the masses

is sadly forgotten even by his bosses

The doe eyed Kanimozhi and smart MP of the south

These days hardly dares to open her mouth

For she dreads the jail food of bread and tea

All she wants is to tell her Raja I told you u see

All the rapists murderers bandits and rogues

who form majority of the Tihars Logs

are delighted at thier home becoming breaking news

To them much better than a hill station with its views

Many more of the class need to go in

All the remaining leaders filled with sin

The Lok pal bill is a sharp damocles sword

hanging over thier heads like a heavy load

Black money and bank accounts in Switzerland

could one day just become as worthless as sand

cheating ones country is the worst crime

One hopes the Indian politician realises it in time

Special Prasad

Shri Sathya Sai Baba is called Swami by his devotees and Iam just one of those millions .
His mortal remains have disappeared deep under the Sai Kulwanth hall in Prashanthi Nilayam Puttaparthi ,Andhra Pradesh bringing a chapter lasting 85 years to a close ,but it had changed the lives of many.
The work he professed and blessed brought succour to thousands regardless of thier status ,be it financial ,social or religious .
For the ill andthe helpless his healing centres brought relief free of cost with only love taken as payment
I go back to my first awareness of Swami .
It was years back when I clenched the fingers of my father somewhere in the sixties as he took me along to attend a prayer meet in Guindy Madras ,I vaguley remember a big crowd and an orange robed person with a halo hairdo in the distance on a stage ,I knew no more in those days of innocence ,my father left me when I was 10 years old before enlightening me on that visit did he go out of curiosity to see the emerging spiritual master or was it out of faith I would never know ,to my father an expert in Sanskrit and a well read in Indian philosophy may have felt a need to meet the young man creating spiritual waves then . Years later I had visited an optholmologist again in Madras this time with my mother who went for an eye test. the doctor was a great Sai Bhakta
he took us inside his prayer hall and showed us Babas photos which regularly spewed honey and at times holy ash during bhajans .
Our family friend A.S.Menon uncle an artist by profession ( who painted so wonderfully )and his wife were ardent devotees .
To the childless couple he was everything , God and child rolled into one .
we often attended bhajans in thier house ,at that time I was more keen on the prasads that followed more than any immediate spiritual intrests .
It all happened years later after my daughter Shilpa ws born ,the intital shock of knowing about her disability took us to many quests to find answers as well as visits to several physicians .
We later moved to Kerala from Chennai
we worked together with a doctor friend who with her husband were Sai devotees who told us to visit Putaparthi with Shilpa and get his blessings .
I was sceptical and had a neutral attitude to that but we did go there as we never wanted to leave any stone unturned for Shilpa .
I still remember that day more than two decades back very well
The Huge hall in Prashanthi nilayam where Swami gives darshan was still to be built then and in its place was a huge ground .
Devotees lined up in neat rows conducted in an orderly fashion by volunteers and sat in seperate sections for men and women.
Thousands were there from all over the world and there was pindrop silence .
There was a general sense of expectation and calmness prevailed everywhere .
Discipline and neatness are the two hallmarks of Prasanthi nilayam and in all Sai centres .
I was in the back row in the men s section maybe in the eight row
my wife Premila with our Shilpa was somehere amongst the womens section .
I could see Baba stridng purposefully in front of the crowd and people craned to look at him
He was far away from me and I could see him waving ,blessing ,talking to some ,gesticulating ,smiling .frowning but his gaze seemed everywhere .
He was also beckoning a select few for a personal interview ,I just watched the proceedings but in my inner mind I was praying fervently not to anyone in particular but for my daughter .
To us those days everything was for her well being ,we knew not to accept any miracle trained as were in science but love goes beyond science in its needs .
My feelings should have been intense and sincere for I saw Swami leaving my area take a few steps walk back and looked at me directly from afar and beckoned me !
I looked on both sides not in the least expecting that the call could be for me
why should he call me when his dear devotees for years coming from far and wide wait for a call day by day .
I was very sure he meant someone else .
but others and the volunteers told me to come out as I was being called ,it was stunning and though transfixed I moved ahead to the interview room .in front of the large crowd There were 8 of us called that day for the interview and Premila brought Shilpa also as it was allowed for the family to join anybody called for an interview
Shilpa was already a bit irritated of the crowd and was whimpering
suddenly Baba arrived and looked at us standing with the child outside the room .
He looked at Shilpa and said in Hindi to us Kripakaro Aap bache ke Bahar lekhe jayiye
please take the child away .
I was furious and muttered but why ? he again said the same thing and left into the room ,I told Premila angrily let us go away after all we came for Shilpa and if he doesnt want to see her we will leave but my wife insisted that I go in and she would leave with Shilpa
I went in forlorn and glared at him sitting in front of us
to me he was nothing then
I was angry and sad forhis turning away my child
what was the reason I was burning to ask this question and tears were welling from my eyes .
why was he so cruel to such an innocent being at least he could have blessed her before dusting her off .
I sat through as he asked questions to the others cracked jokes and even told us that he had a red eye because his pet elephant Sai Geetha swiped the tail into his eye the previous day !
To me he was just another orange robed person with a weird hairdo and nothing great to talk about ,most of my feeling were that of helplessness and frustration and anger at his behaviour to my child and it came out as tears which never stopped .
I saw him matirealise vibhuti and even a chain which he adorned on an young man he was particularly happy about .
Several acts of the the supreme are an enigma to us mortals for our knowledge is through only a small peephole and there is an ocean of ignorance filling our minds ,our concepts are taken from our immediate happenings and our meagre experiences which could be nowehere near the real truth which is seemingly unfathomable .
We were then taken in pairs to an inside room where we could talk on our personal problems and I went in with the coveted young man who got Babas attention he was patricularly sweet to him and enquired about his education and the like with me brooding totally ignored !
suddenly he turned to me and said so you are sad about your daughter I know she is mentally handicapped it is all due to the effect of Karma i know all( all this could be deciphered by any observant indivisual and there was nothing special so far ) so i just nodded and asked him what can we do ?how could swami help us ? then he told something which shook me
he told me she has a heart problem too ,a hole in the heart !
how did he know this that Shilpa had a ventricular septal defect not obvious for somebody from seeing her as she had no symptoms from that then !how could anyone know of this medical history and that too of a newcomers family .
i was genuinely suprised he just looked at me and softly said
I will give you special prasad and then ended the inteview
i came back strangely at peace
somehow i was stunned that he could know all about Shilpa without my uttering a word on her ! nothing happened and we left the place shortly and then as years rolled by
we now concentrated on Shilpas training with less visits to holy places
we could successfully get her hole in the heart closed thanks to the great cardiothoracic surgeon Dr Cherian and cardiologist Dr Haridas .(Dr Haridas is even today a well wisher of the school )
And then Shilpa left us when she was 11 years old and this sunk us into doom for a long time
Exactly a year later Shilpa School was born thanks to premilas dedication and passion to special children and her unrequited love to Shilpa .
some years later one of my Sai devotee friend Dr Raghus daughter Swapna who herself a keen devotee and a law student then gave me a book titled Special Prasad .
This was written by a long time Sai devotee from Trivandrum ,reading it I was surpirsed to see a similar story to ours .
they too had a child who was mentally challenged and they too had got an interview and were also promised special prasad and thier daughter too had left them like ours .
the only difference was after that when they went back to Putaparthi Swamis close Devotee Sri Kasturi told them was not reaching the lotus feet of the supreme being the best special prasad of all !
strangely the book reaching us was almost an answer to our questions !

Shilpa special school grew with his grace and gave us lot of contenment our other two children too grew
by then we had regular Saibhajans as the local samithi conducted weekly bhajans in our house
I for one was never much for these meets shying away from them though Ii used to read books on Swamis teachings and devotees experiences ,we went to Puttaparthi a couple of times My wife worked in the the super speciality hospital as a medical volunteer and once went out into the remote Andhra villages for a medical camp .
We attended some medical camps in cochin too .
What impressed me with all Sai activities was the sincerity and dedication of the particpants ,it was done with devotion and was evident in all the acts .
this was true with everything under Shri Sathya Sai Baba ,there could be accusations of him being a charltan magician or fraudster working our cheap tricks to impresss people but none can deny the selfless service by his followers under his stewardship .
Thousands have benifited from the superspeciality hospitals in Putaparthi and Bangalore
Free heart surgeries conducted by surgeons from across the seas and from within all parts of India ,in state of the art hospitals .
Everyone got a chance ,the witing lists were long but selection was beyond religion ,caste or creed ,every single surgery was totally free of cost with even food for the attendees
provided with love and care .
Excellent educational institutions where human values are taught along with academics functioned under the Sai umbrella .
The transformation of Puttaparthi from a dusty hamlet into a modern town with all facilities was also a wonder .
Swamis speeches and Bhajans were simple but sweet
The depth of his words brought forth expositons of the real truth to all .
he was everywhere comforting caring and cajoling
and he would be there in the hearts of every one of his devotees for ever and ever .
The drinking water schemes in Andhra Pradesh and in Chennai are yet another example ,so enormous even for the Government.
There are so many happenings the world over in the Sai family that I can hardly think of compiling in myhumble blog !
Prasanthi Nilayam itself was a small town where the world gathered .
there were people from even distant Russia and the South Americas
it had an airport ,a railway station ,planetarium, heritage museum ,post graduate instituions schools and colleges where the students who graduated were coveted by many out as thier education and training were of the highest calibre .
though he has left us his message and mission would continue to benifit mankind and assist man and his eternal quest for knowing divinity
Sairam

some photos of our last visit to Putapparthi in feb 2011

The Third Kind

India has as its drivers three kinds of people .
The first kind are people who who mean well ,are patriots at heart ,those who are saddened by the path of our leaders ,this is a rare variety amongst leaders and politicians but there are a select few too but the large number of well meaning individuals who really dont have much of a say in things that matter like you and me make up this group .
The second kind is the Archetypal thick skinned machiavellian power holders selfish to the core ,this forms a great majority of our power mongers and decison makers be it from the executive ,legislative or sad to say even from the judiciary these days . This kind holds the key to power .
There is a third kind who incidentally are also the most harmful to our nation ,even worser than the second kind .
They are the so called intellectual class !
They bear labels like breast beaters of human rights ,fighters for the underdogs and antinuclear activists .
They have even distinct dress codes that proclaim thier individualities
mostly dressed in hoarse jubbas over jeans with gunny bags hanging from thier lean shoulders and hungry starved bodies with diskempt hair with most of the male speices amongst them growing beards . ( exeptions of neatly attired female specimens are there of course )
These enlightened beings are often seen illuminating international conferences declaring on the supposedly human right violations of the countryto all and sundry ,ruminating on depth on scholarly articles on any sort of development schemes accusing them of plunder and intentions to decimating tribals and thier livelihoods ,they swear on environmental awareness and ecological econdrums which caters to thier lablelled outlooks
They are feted and hosted by thier supporters and they serve to thier intrests and fantasies .
Thier kind regualry accuse security forces of rape and plunder while keeping strangely quite on terrorist inhumanities,they are ever silent on the incitements and infringements by our neighbouring enemies ,they exel in creating films ,and documentaries,for the small and big screens while writing novellas and columns on communal confagulations with thier one sided versions .
They delight in declaring to the world that India is a sad place for the minorites which is a blatant unturuth .
They conviniently and selectively ignore the wilful soul chasing and harvesting going on in a large scale in the country and the hoards of money coming across the shores for this purpose .
To this kind anything to do with the traditions and the heritage of the country even the name Bharath is an anamoly to be shunned .
Strangely it is these that are being studied in depth and adapted by many nations today due to thier inherent richness .
The designs of these self labelled righteous intellectuals are more machiavellian than even that of the relatively naive politician who sticks to lesser ideals of catering to his own self and his tribe .

Most of these individuals are distinctly leftist in thier leanings and have thier umblical cord melded in extinct philosophies .
To them communal events are mostly biased and one sided .
They argue for men who have maimed and slaughtered while never shedding a tear for the victims .
They fight against death sentences and jailing of these devils .

The recent Anna Hazare phenomenon in India was a watershed in its history as Gandhian thoughts won again with an upsurge of passions and support from the youth and the middle class spread by the beats of of technology ,
It was a movement of the people who were tired of the two other classes .
Strangely individuals of the pseudointellectual kind were also part of the bandwagon intially
They quitely moved away when Anna Hazare made a comment of appreciation of the Gujurat Chief Minister Modi as being worthy of emulation .
The pseudointellectuals just could not digest the praising of somebody who has been systematically demonised by them over the years even if the appreciation was for genuine causes .
Arundhati Roy who brought us pride with a Booker prize for her first novel has also disgusted many with her views ( at least me ) ,with her antinational comments and intellectual articles .

Kuldip nayar who regularly writes scholarly columns on Indias so called misdemaneours caters to a global audience a distorted version of reality .
The Medha Patkars Mallika Sarabhais and Shabana Azmis are the pirmma donnas of the third kind
They cause greater damage to our nation than the Amar Singhs ,Mayawatis and the Mulayam Yadavs do ,because they wear the guise of intellectualism and selflessness while professing thier distorted thinkings .
It is imperative for our progress that this kind be reformed or rejected forever before we even attempt to deal with the second malignant variety .