Marvelous Melbourne

Melbourne would be the last leg of our Australian travel 
 one of the most beautiful cities I have visited

Specially during Christmas  season

strangely  its summer in Australia !

But Its pleasant around 17 degrees  with cool winds 

Melbourne is the capital of the State of Victoria 

We flew in from Cairns in a Quantas flight it took around 2.5 hours

landing at Tulamarine airport the second largest in Australia 

We were booked in the old Vic a heritage hotel right in the middle of town in  Collins street named after an early founder of the city 

in 1836 Batman was the person who entered into an agreement with the native aborigines to develop a village and the treaty was called Batman's Treaty !
most of the aborigines lost thier land and were later moved into settlements 

the Victorian Gold rush settlers from china formed a huge china town 
Irish and German settlers started inhabting the city 

when the Australian federation came into being Melbourne was the capital with the first Australian parliament held in 1901 it was only in 1927 did the capital move to Canberra 

post second world war brought many European settlers and the city developed a Parisian chic look 

the Victoria hotel was homely and  cosy and had had a vintage air to it ,we went through its history of how it developed over the last century on whom it hosted and how it evolved through demolishing its older buildings attaching itself to neighboring ones

the old Vic Bar itself was a sight to see at the top of an ornate staircase which could be seen from the lobby ,the free WIFI was available only in the lobby for restricted times !Australia was a bit stingy when it came to WIFI !

the Flinders Railway station is a real heritage building 


The  Flinders railway station occupies a grand stand location facing the Town hall and the main square ,the station is one of the busiest even today and has been over the years connecting Melbourne to other parts of Victoria and other Australian cities .

HUGE SKYSCRAPERS IN THE HORIZON 

PORT AREA 

ST FRANCIS CHURCH 

SANTA MAIL BOX 

TRAMS IN MELBOURNE COLOURFUL SLEEK 

As soon as we settled down in the hotel we got out 
 ,it was easy as all the tourist section was right in front of us ,the roads were festooned and colorful with Christmas decorations
we walked into the main road saw the municipal building the huge Flinders  railway station and then on to the flowing Yarra river banks which were full of small food joints and big cruising boats ,one could view the city scape and the Manhattan style buildings towering behind the broad river .
the water was pure neat and the banks had well laid jogging and cycling tracks.
I read later Yarra river was not always like this it was a putrefacting mass of sludge once upon a time and it took thirty long years to create as it is today

YARRA RIVER ROWING 

The square itself has bustling colourful sleek smooth trams gliding in and out with  tingling bells as pedestrians scurried out of its path ,while the rumble of hard carriage wheels driven by muscular and gallant white horses carrying tourists and driven by ornate horsemen give a Victorian tinge to the modernity around 
The Town hall gaily painted and festooned for Christmas becomes a visual delight after dusk settles in and the 15 minute light show begins  
I was mesmerised by the beauty of the show as Santa clauses tumbled out of reindeer sledges and china men carrying overladen gifts for the coming season
people went on filming and taking phtographs while they were not hunting for souvenuniers or tucking into hot sandwishces aor creamy ice creams as dusk brought its chill and grazxing winds 


The horse carriages ,the trams ,the cycles,the  flowing yarra river with cruises and the black swans,the  high rises the hindreds  of shops ,food joints ,live music santa post boxes 
Marvelous Melbourne was defintiely European in its profile 
Be it in the haute courte brand houses.the art galleries .green parks flowing Yarra river way side musicians flowing Australian wines gourmet continental food courts English cottages magnificient churches easy people and all
The next morning we were to start the city tour
All tours are well organised with the pick up buses from hotels taking us to a centralised stand where we are split into respective tours ,we get into our buses and the driver cum manager cum guide who are trained with excellent diction and public speaking 
T
While Sydney has its showpiece opera house and memorial bridge to be known all over its left to sport to do that to Melbourne
Melbourne was the sport capital of Australia  with the famed Melbourne cricket ground Australian open event is conducted here football matches and long winding bicycle tracks which are full of helmeted riders
 the climate is mediterannean and there is chill in the air even.in the midsummer and  its sunny at 7pm and the crowds fill the place near federation sqaure with xmas lightings refugee rights meets parks with children frolicking an air of geniality and cheer that comes out of comfort no competition and relaxation permeates the air of this wonderful place
The  luxurious volvo bus fitted with a toilet ,free wifi which was inconsistent and ,a driver who could deliver a TED speech with ease as we went around the sights of this city

The driver elaborated his views on city planning concepts and how Melbourne was made.
Wish he was the Mayor of Cochin for he would definietely done better than the present incumbents !

The vision .the clarity the sense of purpose the dedication the energy that has made such cities what it is is what is lacking in ours which could be made equally if not better
Iam sure there would be comments that it is easy to comment in fb but then city planning or politics is not my profession in which I do my best and expect others to do the same .
Iam just pointing out not pointing fingers out of sadness for my state
At least there is hope in our PM today .
Lunch at a Punjabi dhaba was elegant excisite and coffee with doughnuts was sweet 

Yarra river cruise was a bit hot in afternoon 
The river itself needed 3 decades of cleaning to remove its slime and sludge and make it as what it is today .sparkling clean blue water flowing sedately with built neat banks with bycycle tracks 
on return we walked to the town hall and watched the light show again beofre retirng into the old vic 

that was a good un indeed mate I liked it

Finally the 12 apostles standing against the might of the crashing waves with biblical solemnity

XMAS PARK 

YARRA RIVER CRUISES

Final day in Australia was spent in the Great ocean tour
This starts from Melbourne and winds around 250 km into Victoria state on a road built mostly on the sea coast it climbs verdant hills with green canopies plush lawns with plumpy cows and wooly sheep grazing with no care in the world it passes qauint. Villages like Port Campbell and lovely beaches steep gorges that look into turquoise seas winfing paths that lead to the glistening waters stacked and rolled hay in vast fields
One thing missing other than in beaches and towns which were full of gawking tourists and seminude locals out to catch the sun was lack of people in the fields
Thee cows went in line to be milked we saw them but by whom
According to John our verbiose driver cum manager cum crisis officer cum principal the milked ones have a smile on thier face unlike the unmilked cows with heavy udders ..

LONDON ARCH 

London arch this is a natural rock formation was called London bridge in Great ocean road off Melbourne in late nineties an arch broke off and 2 tourists were stranded in middle a man and woman both married to different people ! Finally rescued by helicopter 

Since then its called London Arch

The twelve apostles is a natural rock formation in the port campbell National park and depicts the twelve disciples of Jesus christ

12 APOSTLES 

LEURAH

Reached back tired but happy


dusk saw us do some last minute shopping and the next day morning we felw back to Brunei in the Royal Brunei airlines  

An ode to a Mahatma

Mahatma Gandhi the epitome of saintliness
Who Brought imperialism to its fall
With Ahimsa or non-violence nothing less...
And became India’s father so tall

Rare it is to have One Mahatma in a century
But having two is a luxury
But India is a land where great beings are born
Though ravaged by poverty hardships and torn
Amongst the bright sands of Rameshwaram
A great soul was born 8 decades back
APJ Abdul Kalam was our national varam ( boon )
Lived learned and rose like a lark
Shooting rockets into the air
Spreading messages with no fear
Honest humble sincere inspiring
A symbol for millions in aspiring
He rose to become our President
In the mind of every youth a natural resident
Single and straight he was filled with love
To all Be it a flower a child or a cow
The day had come when he has left us
Lets never forget his messages for our mess
Above all lets not forget him like we did our first
Mahatma who s never left in peace nor in rest

Model Anesthetist

Anesthesia  as a profession is highly skilled and its practitioners need not only to be adept in their hands they need to be stress free during emergencies for mostly their job is one  continuous series of crisis situations ,
 Like firemen for  society in general for doctors the anesthetist is their firemen as in any code blue situation  the anesthetist is to be around .
Of course he has his spare moments specially during those long safe surgeries as the surgeon snicks and stitches the anesthetist is into his dream world but always alert to his monitors .

Amith my friend is a great anesthetist but this is not the only interesting thing about him he is also a car enthusiast ,
Even in his childhood he would meticulously polish the fiat car of his dad to a fine gleam
those were his Goan childhood days later with medical admission and a long 6 years of becoming a doctor and a post graduation in anesthesia he hardly had time for any hobbies but he did start his collections then
he collected a radiologist as his life partner..... early signs of a collection aficionado

It was while they were working in Kozhikode or Calicut in Kerala during a regular

jaunt to the Travel book shop Amith found small model cars  (Hot wheels )as he browsed around it fascinated him and he bought a couple never knowing it would spiral him into a endless quest for made to size model cars
He then thought of bigger ones and searched the net to find out a wholesale dealer who sold bigger models which were  more authentic ones .
At the same time he also found a small kit for building model planes .
Having read a lot of books on the world war II given to him by his mother a history professor
Amith knew every bit on the  second world war planes ,
he was much pleased with his first plane model as it looked good and with Google and Wikipedia to hi aid he soon became an expert slowly moving on the more difficult models ,

Amith collections of cars and planes he made grew into one and then two cupboards full by now Amith was a serious plane model builder and he specialized in second world war planes he built a couple of warships and tanks for a change ,
Today living and working in Brunei Amith can be seen in his pare time meticulously glueing pieces  of a plane and painting them painstakingly .
 Each and every small part of the model would be so authentic .

him a 



he would have a smile of satisfaction on his face as he completed one more
His family supports him a  lot , even his naughty 6 year old is careful with the models !

And whenever he tires  making planes or collecting cars Amth goes on a swing in his lovely burnished  model sports car making heads turn in Brunei

Reviews kakka muttai and magalkku

Some days like we are destined to get good food we also get good films !
Yesterday was one of those as I saw one very good Tamil film called Kakka Muttai ( crows egg) and a Malayalam film which had achieved distinction by getting national awards Magalkku .


Kakka Muttai is a film that delves into a grey world existing beyond the visual limits of most of us middle ,upper class , and rich people in the country ,
we do hear and see slums but hardly know the inner workings of one though at times their proximity is very close .
This movies plunges us into one and before we know we are absorbed into the juvenile antics of two brothers around 10 and 5 years of age whose father is jailed for a petty crime and the mother lives a hardy life in their miserable small tenement just  managing to meet the bare needs of her children and the aged mother of her husband .
the children too keep away from the riffraff of the slum and make some paltry income by collecting coal from the railway track and selling it ,they stop going to school as the mother cannot afford that anymore .
thus we are introduced into a very poor family in a very poor slum but a family which is reasonably happy .
The problem starts with the inauguration of a Pizza chain nearby and this material temptation turns the family upside down !
that too this news  is brought to their house from an advertisement in  the freebie TV that they got from the local party !
The feeble attempts of the grandma to make a pizza out of a Dosa is smirked by the children who know the difference though they had never tasted one
The movie is about how the boys who manage to make the money to buy the pizza are still insulted and slapped by the pizza shop manager as they are form the slum this news spreads as a video which unscrupulous local thugs ,politicians and the police all use to make a fast buck out of the pizza shop owner who wins in the end by getting the TV cameras capture a pizza feast for the two children where he feeds them himself
The film is unpretentious but at the same time has an excellent message .


Magalkku is a Malayalam film directed by Jeyaraj warrier with Shobana donning  the role of a mentally unbalanced woman who does not know her own child and a doctor in the  mental hospital Suresh Gopi  desperately tries to bring Shobana  back to sanity by  using the child , does not succeed but the child brings  fresh air to the center till the time the human rights champions come to know about it and removes the child to an orphanage !
As a  person who had been involved with special children and worked in a  destitute center as a volunteer doctor I could well rhyme with the scenes in the film
Ramesh Narayanans music and singing by  Hariharan and Manjari and Adnan sami has given it excellent songs and a couple of awards too ,of course the acting talents of Shobana needs no mention

Man and Nature

Man and Nature
Man and nature have a symbiotic relationship but when space is a criterion they intrude.
Even an innocuous tree which needs to be nurtured for our ozone issue turned out to be a monster by falling on our children recently .
Every two seconds somebody gets bitten by a dog in India and one dies every 30 minutes of dog bite and this is from a statistic 6 years back.
There are more than 25 billion dogs in India and more than 1.3 million in Kerala most of which are... stray dogs especially in urban areas which are attracted by food wastage in abundance.
In this situation we are nowhere near the goal of achieving the planned rabies frees Kerala by 2015.
Dog catching and killing was the answer before the Animal bite control rule of 2001 where only incurable infected dogs are allowed to be killed rest are to be caught neutered or sterilized and homed in same places .
The local bodies have the responsibility of doing this and of which they have been grossly negligent in fulfilling.
Dog catchers are a priced commodity these days
Possible solutions are
Domesticated dogs need strict licensing and compulsory vaccination
All pet owners should be made to pay a small dog tax which could be used to sterilize and control stray dogs
Public activists who make a hue and cry on dog culling should also have a look at the ways the dog menace in other countries were reduced ,instead of crying murder they should form kennel clubs to care for stray dogs .
Selective felling of branches which are dangerous instead of cutting trees totally should be the ecologically correct way to be adopted by local bodies,
one doubts how this will happen with these bodies who never even clear garbage efficiently
A concerted dialogue between various power brokers in this filed is needed to reduce human suffering because of nature intrusion.
Health Department should stock adequate post exposure vaccines and speciality clinics for animal bites .
Public should be made aware of things to be done after an unfortunate bite
Environmentalists and animal lovers should also have a rational view and need to consider human costs while preserving nature

Uttama Villain

Uttama Villain

 

Kamal Hassan is one of the versatile actors that Indian cinema has produced and can be included amongst the greats like Sanjeev kumar,Shivaji Ganesan ,Mohanlal and Naseerudhin shah ,of course Amitabh Bachan .

The sheer variety of the roles  Kamal has done over the years  is mind boggling .

 From the quintessential lover boy which I feel suits him the best ,to the innocent orphan he portrayed in Kalaathur kanamma where  captured the hearts of a million mothers to the sun glassed serial murderer in Sigappu rojakkal

As an agile dwarf clown  in his own Mera naam joker ,

how could one forget the middle aged matron with inviting eyes in Chachi 320 where he showed how a man could do a stag act with perfection ,or the raw emotions of a mafia don who loses his dearest in Nayakan , classical dances which he did with élan and grace unbecoming of a man are legends

 what about the many comedy roles he has done with so much ease ,

once upon a time he was the darling of many girls in Kerala as the most popular red lipped hero of those times .

Even today above 60 he can give a run to other younger heroes in romantic roles even with a paunch that threatens to peep out  these days .

Movies Maro cahritra the Telugu romantic taken by his mentor K Balachander are almost epics (Maro Charitra   later on became the hindi super hit Ek duje ke liye )

In Tollywood they say if one needs to ne knuckled in the head better to get it done by someone wearing a diamond ring and that mostly means to be groomed under Balachander because that is like a passport for success in the  tinsel world .

It’s not a myth but a truth .

look at all those talents he groomed from Nagesh the brilliant comedian and actor par excellence to Kamal and Rajini and countless others .

To Balachander amongst his protégés Kamal and Rajni are like his own children .

It’s this relationship that is the most significant in this film made before the legend left this world

It’s a rare few who can live a role with a mentor just as in life and kamal is lucky that he could .

“ Utamma villain “ is almost his story with him in it  being a superstar having a mundane family life with a fat wife of convenience and a lover in the form a doctor .

Very dramatically in the film kamal gets to know he has Glioblastoma multiform which is a brain tumor stage four and his days are numbered so he goes back to Balachander his mentor director who shouts at him at first telling he has done all he could with him and the present kamal is more of an icon than the one he knew but kamal goes on to say that he needs to do a film again directed by his mentor ,

finally he blurts out the truth and the scene that followed was one of the best I liked in the film ,

K Balachander is not only an excellent director he is such a wonderful actor probably all his love for Kamal was really expressed on the camera as he pours his grief on his protégé ,he agrees to do the movie and the film is about the film making and the story of the film that is made which is a period film where kamalhassan is a lucky guy thought to get the spell of life forever and the funny things that happen with a clowning Nasser as the king and seductive heroine who is after kamal and this gives them pleny of ops to romance on the screen and it all ends with a narasimha avatar to kill Hiranyan

strangely here the hero is Hiranyan and narasimhan the villain gets a sudden itch to go to the loo when its time for him to tear the villain to pieces and the villain becomes the king

This part was excellently choreographed by blending theru koothu ,theyyam and nangyar koothu and since it was kamal doing the dance with others there was no doubts about the professionalism in the dances

The film making was blended with real life scenes of kamals illness slowly getting known to his family ,the scene between him and his teen son after he knows the truth is one of the most outstanding ones ,the sheer emotion is portrayed so well by both .

An in the end Kamal bids farewell with a mischievous wink the hallmark of his in real life too

I liked the movie a lot

Please do see it

 

City Streets

Cities and at times some towns have a character to them ,they are liking living entities .
I am jotting down a few cities and towns i had been in India as well as abroad ,a very small collection but these places have left an indelible impression one me .

Al Ain
In Arabic it means The Eye
Al Ain is a known oasis town and a stop for caravans in the desert dunes in the past ,the village had a salubrious climate was green and had water supply ,there was a hot spring near mount Jebel Hafeet

 It was also the birthplace of Shiek Zayed the founder President and father of UAE ,He was very particular that Al Ain retain its heritage and hence Al Ain has no multistoreys like Dubai ,Shariah or AbuDhabi
I landed in Al Ain to work  in Tawam Hospital a very reputed tertiary state of art hospital run by the Johns Hopkins group on a hot Sunday morning in July 2006 ,
staying there for six years I fell in love with  the place and it was like a home to me
,I met many good friends there .
Al Ain is known as the garden city of the UAE as it has finely pruned gardens all over it has beautiful roundabouts and is spacious and expansive unlike other cities .

AbuDhabi


 The capital of UAE was just 160 km away from Al Ain and the fine highway had a speed limit of 160 km per hour and we used to go there often ,

Its a city of straight roads mostly leading to the lovely cornice and the grand Emirates palace ,the Shiek Zayed mosque in its marble splendorour and the several high rises are the hall marks of Abudhabi .
the city has an excellent trasport system of sophisticated buses and cabs ,lot of eateries and malls .

Beirut
the Paris of the east
The capital of Lebanon ,the very name conjures a medicterranean haven of pleasure and leisusre ,dusky eveningss behind frosted windows ,tall clinking glasses ,dark coffee in checkered tables on pavement ,smoke from lazy hookahs twisting itno the gabled roofs the distant mountains ,aquamarine sea ,drifting ships and nights young with dance and song .
History has marked its presence in every part of Beirut ,in the Roman Baaths ,the balbaak ruins ,Magnificient St Georges cathedral where the monks had once hidden its treasures in its basemnt during the long civil war .
The Solidaire is the restored historical area of the city ,its windows did show shattered glasses and bullet holes were seen in its walls preserved to show case the long civil wars ,today it is the epitome of fashion and its streets go gay with pop music group live TV recordings and restatrants of all hues .
Beirut was big but one could make a walk through maor areas from the museum to Hamra street which was like Bengalurus Brigade road and the sea lapped corniche ,
i stayed in the centre of the city and my prestigous hotel looked at the spot where its illlustrious president Rafik Hariri was assasinated in 2005

Bangkok

Thailands capital welcomed us at Swarnabhoomi Airport with a huge tableau of the pallayi kadayal or churning of the mythical ocean and obtaining the nectar of heavens or Amruth ,one of Hinduisms important mythical tales ,shows how much importance Thailand a Buddhist country gives to its Hindu origins of Buddhism .

We entered out of the airport to a cloudy day ,the rainbow colored taxis added great colour ,Banghkok had many streets named after its kings Ramaa 1 ,Ramaa 2 Sukhumvit road and swarnabbhoomi Airport all pointed to its Hindu lineage ,more than nine kings of Thailand were named Rammaa .

Bangkok's prime attraction was the great Buddha temple with a huge reclining Buddha many statuettes of Golden Buddha's ,the pointing spires of the temple looked ethereal in the foggy rain that hampered our photographic attempts

there were a lot of malls one I remember particularly was the electronic mall where one could strike a good bargain for any electronic goods

Evening saw us in a cruise in the Chor payya river as it moved under several ornate bridges skirting the lit high-rises as sky trains thundered past and the hordes  of tuk tuks ,motorbikes colored cabs  raised a babble .

violence against doctors ..petition

The Recent spurt of attacks on Doctors and on hospitals and clinics is alarming.
If people start taking the law into their own hands and mobs start administering justice as they deem fit then it is a sorry state for a country like India.

It means anarchy has set in and this sorry state would spread to every field shortly.

The Medical community in India has been contributing its mite for the present health status of the country and its demoralization by such occurrences will reflect on this.

Every Physician needs safety for doing his work and it is the primary responsibility of the Government to protect him

The Medical Protection Act has been passed by many states expressively only for this purpose.

In spite of that the spate of recent attacks on doctors not only by damaging their property but by bodily injury is unacceptable in any civilized country.

Public anger and emotions may be the reasons given for such acts but if a mistake has been committed by any medical professional or hospital there are legal avenues to investigate the same and punish the guilty.

The present situation of mob inquisitions and violence is not befitting to our nation.

The Medical protection act has been passed by several states expressly for the purpose of protecting the physician and his clinic or hospital from violence

But We hardly have examples of guilty people who do this being punished under the medical protection act, if this has been done it would acted as a deterrent for such acts in the future .

The supreme court order that no doctor can refuse any patient in an emergency and has to offer first aid puts the onus on physicians to treat cases for which his center may not be equipped or he is not professionally skilled to handle (for example a defrillator may not be available in every clinic to treat a patient who may have a cardiac arrest and he may die in the clinic before he is referred to a tertiary care specialty center

 If any such mishap occurs in such cases again the doctor is considered to have committed negligence and many times has to face crowd anger and later legal consequences for negligence!.

Medical science accepts the possibility of unexpected complications for example a patient to whom an allergy test has been done for a particular drug as per guidelines can still encounter a fatal anaphylactic shock though rarely, this would still be considered as medical negligence though after expert opinion the doctor may come unscathed the damage to his reputation has already been done or he may have suffered violence from the relatives by then.

Quackery is carried on in our country with ease and the rules have been made flexible for cross specialty practice,

Health authorities close their eyes on such Practioners who are also considered as modern medical doctors and the crowd does not differentiate between them and qualified doctors, these ill trained quacks add to the negative image of the profession.

The quality of drugs prescribed in the country is not consistent as there are lax regulations and monitoring by Drug control authorities, the use of such drugs by any doctor can produce complications for which again he would be blamed

The media too instead of delivering facts in many instances succumb to sensationalism and induce crowd anger, they hardly make any effort to present the version from the physicians side ,they also d ignore the  achievements of the medical profession .

One has to remember that in such a vast country like India with such a huge population and great poverty reasonable and economic medical care both primary and tertiary has been possible only because of the unstinted efforts of this community ,today India is one of the most economic for medical care comparable to many countries

If there are genuine cases where doctors are negligent there are plenty of avenues wherein the affected public can raise their allegation, they can request an inquiry from the Grievance cell of local IMA branch, they can file a police case against the doctor or file a consumer grievance case where it would be investigated and due justice given,

We support this as it is a fair way to punish the guilty

But what is happening today is taking over of the law by any disgruntled crowd and bodily harm

and obstruction of work by a doctor

The state should not allow this to happen.

Anarchy cannot be encouraged

Hence we request the authorities to kindly address this sorry state of affairs

We demand justice from this unfair situation which is increasing day by day We insist that a fair hearing be given to any case of negligence and no doctor is subjected to humiliations before this is done We hope our pleas are heard by the concerned.

 

Strong Doctor

just to make things a bit light ,of course iam as angry as everyone here
take it in a light spirit we need to laugh too
With increasing violence on doctors i just thought i will take off on a comment written by a doctor in this forum .Dr Praful thanks

All doctors wear helmets and shatter proof face masks...
Bullet proof vests to be procured from Kevlar bought in concession by a Government subsidy
All furniture iv stands and lamp fixtures to be made of plastic
Marked changes in MBBS curriculum
Selection will be like for army and police recruitment height weight ability to fight back will be scrutinised
Base camp under commandos during internship is must
First year physical fitness and 8 pack training
Aamir khan will be roped in as national coach
Salman khan will be the dean of this dept he will teach drs to hit and run
Second year during anatomy special boxing traing with dead body punching and wrestling with specimens
Mulayam singh yadav will teach wrestling
Morning prayers to dara singh
Third year pharmaco therapeutics a special segment for how to treat doctors who are injured by thirr patients
Tamil actor Vijay will show how to reverse dislocated shoulders and hit the enemy telling iam waiting
By final year most doctors will be black belts with judo kung fu kalari and kolattam expertise
Rajnikanth will be roped in to teach juicy dialogues like
If i tell pay bill once you pay hundred times
Doctors will go on deputation in turns to mumbai bhais to learn how to throw back stones and play with knives like with a stethoscope
Voice training will be by Amrish puri oopps sorry cant have ghost lecturers
Doctors will go to kolkata to learn magic from pc sorcar to turn the missiles thrown at them into flowers to have the last laugh
Arvind Kejariwal will be honorary prof of anarchist methods
Supreme court lawyers will train drs in fourth year how to sleep on cases and take summer holidays
Finally if nothing works they will meet our PM .Modiji to learn how to be abroad 365 days in an year

See More

Kerala Rains

Kerala Rains ...nostalgia
June first is always a memorable day for Kerala ,
its when school reopens ,for a state with 100 % literacy that's an exiting day indeed .
though Iam a Keralite
 I studied in Madras but every year during this time I would be in Parappanangadi in Malappuram district in my ancestral house in Kerala and i would share the excitement of my cousins who studied there .
Our school would open only by June first week .
Days before the D day parents would make a beeline to the local textile shop to buy the uniform clothes give it for stitching
( the school mercifully allowed them to do so unlike these days where the school insists on a package deal ),the shopping spree would also include pencils pens geometry boxes school bags lunch boxes and above all umbrellas .
how could one exist without those as the famous Kerala monsoon would come by June first .
The sweltering torpid heat of April and May where ripe mangoes would fall from trees ,ponds would go dry ,and the grass give a burnt look ,pregnant ,jack fruits would be split open to gorge on their sweet insides ,the holidays would be languorous slow and lazy as it loomed long and we would mostly be on trees rather than on Terrafirma by mid May the heat would be sweltering and people would wrinkle their foreheads and squint their eyes to look at the horizon for clouds .
A few summer showers would only make matters worse as the heat rose from the ground but the number of trees gave a lot of shade too .
The timing of the monsoon in Kerala is really amazing .
One expects the south west monsoon to set in by may end from the southern tip of Kanyakumari and slowly weave its way through kollam ,Allepey Ernakulam and then to Calicut and then upwards to Goa , Mumbai and later across the country to race to west Bengal by July .
Alexander Fraser wrote an excellent travelogue called chasing the monsoon where he would just wait for the clouds before he rushes to the next place by train or bus for it to arrive and all the way upto Kolkata ! great travel writing indeed .
so by end of may the distant rumbles of thunders would be heard like the distant drumbeats of an advancing army ,
strong flashes of lightening and drenching short showers would leave us in a frenzy of happiness as we frolicked in the green pond
water snakes would peep from the weeds as exited as us with the arrival of rains
The birds would chirp happily and the old Namboothiri ladies would hurry home with their bamboo umbrellas covering their face and head as they returned from the temple .
Mostly every June first morning the school children in their new uniforms would reach their schools wet as those days they walked all the way about 4 to 5 km and rains never failed to baptize them
These days rains aren't so punctual they are inconsistent but by June 15th one can be sure Kerala can be seen only through a rainy specter and this would last till august
I would wave my cousins goodbye as the rains poured and the lightening flashed and quietly try to go out with an umbrella and my mother would yell at me to go in and start doing some work as schools are opening shortly
i love Kerala rains