Direction(less) wonder

Commenting at Philip’s blog made me write this one. I have many friends who can give directions when they are asleep (Please dont read between lines). My allergy to directions started back in 1st standard when my mother’s brother tried to teach me North, East, West & South. I was good at every other subject – but I just didn’t have the brain to comprehend directions. To complicate matters further…my father was an atlas freak.

Pappa : Mone ..See what I have got for your Bday, a globe
Me : Pappa…Are you try to say that I am turning fat and should eat less ?
Pappa : hmmm…Now that you mentioned it…try not to finish one whole chicken for breakfast…..your mother is concerned about our food budget.
Pappa : Can you show me where Europe is ?
Me : Points to Antartica…
Pappa : ( After several futile attempts ) Mone…atleast show me Parappanangadi ( you guys don’t know this place…tsk..tsk )
Me : Points to Europe…
Pappa : ( Happily ) He answered my first question…he is picking it up slowly.

My wife is a master in directions…

Me : Darling…( that’s translation for Edi ) .. How to go to Super Walmart
Wife : hmm…I think that’s in the south…so if you take route 40 and then merge onto route 2 and then drive for 2 miles on I 95 and get into route 36…it should come on your left
Me : You free ???

My friends often call me for directions…(If they are desperate and they don’t get anyone else on phone)

Sudip : Eda…I want to reach Peoples Plaze…go to google maps and find where it is …
Me : Sure …where are you now….
Sudip : I am at the intersection of Salem Rd and Route 20.
Me : Go straight…and tell me when you see Old Baltimore Rd
Sudip : ( After 20 mins ) … I see old Baltimore Rd..
Me : OK….you have to turn right on the previous intersection.
Sudip : #*$&

I India I used to stop every 5 mins to ask for directions from thattu kada wallahs

Me: Chetta …. How to go to my house..
Chettan: Why are you late today…I was waiting for you to close my shop…you go straight and take the next left and its your house is on the right.

In US…there are no thattu kadas…so I went and bought one GPS.

GPS : Turn left on Harmony Rd…
GPS : Recalculating … Turn right on Pattambi square
GPS : Recalculating….Turn right on Ambalapuzha avenue
GPS : Recalculating…..Turn left before next intersection….Atlantic ocean ahead
GPS : Recalculating….. Maanga tholi…Naayinde mone….For the love of god, throw me out if you are going to suicide….$##*

Hunter & Hunted - Part 3

Next day we again started hunting around 6 am and didn't get anything till evening. It was then D told me that he knew one guy Mohanan. He used to be good fisher man ( I didn't think what fishing had to do with hunting ... I wanted more of that delicious kokku irachi ). Mohanan was a married man with 2 kids ( 35 years old ) but had the heart of a kid ( Like we say in Kerala....Avanu pillerude manasa, chila thendi pillerude ). He told us that we were doing it all wrong. We had to hunt after 12 midnight, that's when the kokku sleeps. We had never thought of that...of course this thing has to sleep and it should be easier to catch it then. We were convinced. Mohanan convinced us that if we 8+1=9 ppl hunt for 4 hours, we will have atleast 8 kokkus ( Cranes ). I was really happy, I asked B and P to share their kokku since I needed one whole kokku. They were not happy, but agreed anyways since they knew that I had some new 'educational CD' with me.
So I borrowed ( yeah...stole ) some vessels from my house and B stole the utensils. We all stole something and we had everything ready. Antony didn't want to go for hunting..he was scared of snakes...so he was made in charge of cutting onions and sautéing it. He had already started cutting onions and peeling tomatoes when we left. Apparently that was karutha vaavu and we didn't even spot a single one. We were devastated, we were hungry. We had our usual quota of OPR, but we don't have any touchings with it. While we were returning, we passed by Paulose chettan house.

D: He has a poultry farm
B : And he is so kanjoos ( miser )
P : Everyone in the village hates him
Mohanan : Daivam dushtamare pana pole valarthum
Me : Lets do it !!

So D who is most courageous walks in front. When we were 200 ft from the farm and everyone except D was scared. So D took the responsibility and went and caught 3 hen from there ( You should see the way he walked...as though he was there to marry Paulose chettan's daughter....head held high and very calm ). He bought the hen back, we cooked it and ate it...happy ending ....right......
No...

Next day we plan hunting again...this time we hunt for only 15 mins and gets bored. Everyone looks at each other...we head for Paulose chettans Poultry farm, D as usual borrows..oops steals 3 chicken and we leave. Only this time we did a series of blunders.

1) D left the small torch on top of the coop.
2) D left the door closed ( we had told him to leave the door open so that Paulose chettan may think that some fox caught his chicken )
3) We drank too much that day and didn't bother to clean the place near the stream where we cleaned the chicken.

By next morning everyone started looking at us and whispering. Everyone had noticed the feathers and blood near our rubber shed. But I told them that I had bought the chicken yesterday from market and all those lies I usually say. They seemed doubtful...but we were sure that they cant prove it unless they call for CBI to investigate that. Happy ending......wrong again

Paulose chettan has a Grinding mill ( Ari podipikunna sthalam ). Our Mohanan had to go there next day ... he was very scared and somehow made it there

Paulose chettan : enthokke undu mohana ( Whats up mohanan )
Mohanan ( pleading ) : ellam aa pillera chetta...enikku chaarum kurachu ellum mathrame kittiyullooo ( everything was done by those kids...I only got some gravy and some bones ).

The news spread like a wild fire. We were left with that eternal scar and name ' Kozhi Kallan'. My grandmother cried a lot...I was made a laughing stock in social functions...all because of that guy with a kids heart ( &%$%*).

Lesson learned from the whole story : Distribute the food properly ... Dont give chance for anyone to accuse that he got only gravy and bones.

Hunter & Hunted - Part 2

We hunted and hunted for close to six hours. And we had that one kokku ( that I caught ). We decided to stop our expedition for the day. One the way back we saw a bunch of ducks in the field.

Me : ethra arumayaya thaaravukal ( something like…"cute ducks" )
D : Thaaravirachi kazhichittu ethra nalayi aliya( Its been long since we had Duck Curry )

D signed all of us to stop and remain silent … he had spotted something.He gave his everything on that shot... As usual he missed it. He was so pissed that he held the gun to his side and took 2 shots just to vent his anger. We went to my house and decided to cook our kokku. We were 8 ppl and we had to divide that 1 kokku (Jesus fed 5000 ppl with 5 bread.. but even he might have found this difficult.) Suddenly Omana chechi walks in with a dead Duck….and accused me of shooting her duck. My grand mother asked me whether I did that…I told her that nothing of that sort happened. She showed us the Duck.. It had a bullet wound in its neck. I looked at D … I knew where it came from. It came from that bloody 2 random shots D took to vent his anger. Here was a guy who missed a shot when he was so close to the kokku (Crane) that his breath disturbed its feathers. And he strikes this one on the neck…

Omana chechi (OC) had apparently seen me from the other side of the field (which is a good km and a half away). I told her that it was not me alone, but she insisted that she saw me only (you know ppl….I am a little horizontally challenged ). Supposedly , she had a conversation with Paulose chettan when she saw me.

OC : what is that think moving in the other side of the field
Paulose : It has to be Confucius ( me ) or Kesavan ( local elephant u know) … no one else can be spotted from that distance in this village.


Me ( to Omana chechi ) : I didn’t do this…I assure you.
Omana chechi : I don’t want to know who did this…I just want my money. You know
this duck used to lay 2 eggs everyday
Me ( thinking ) : Obviously, I cant confirm it with the duck since it is dead.
Me : How much do you need ?
OC ( not OCR ) : 200 bucks.
Me : Sorry chechi… I appreciate your gesture, but I don’t plan to start duck
business anytime soon…I don’t want the whole bunch you have. so just
give me the price for that single murdered duck.
I paid the money she demanded. I was a little sad because we didn’t have money to buy OPR ( some rum you get for 100 bucks – Kalabhavan Mani called it Oru gatheem Para gatheem illatha Rum) for our routine vaalu vekkal mahamaham ( read…puking festival ).
B assured me that he had the money that his mother gave him for her medicines and we shall use that for now ( Its all about priorities in life…thats what I taught them first ).We were happy again…we can divide 1 kokku and 1 duck with 8 ppl now. We made the curry and drank OPR in our rubber shed ( used to be our thaavalam ) . We were happy…but there is a tragic ending to most good things …

Hunter & Hunted - Part 1

I was enjoying the new found freedom in Kerala. Even though I was in +2 , I displayed far more maturity than my age. I had a lot of friends. Most important ones being B , P , D and S. Only one guy other than me had passed SSLC in the whole gang of about 8 ppl (it was B). Most of them were auto drivers and 2 of them worked at the near by workshop. Even though I was the youngest (rest everyone ranged from 18 – 24) , I soon declared myself the leader since I had seen the world and was way more sophisticated and handsome than all of them ( ok…ok….I had a computer and used to show them blue films ). My grandfather and grandmother used to sleep early and I could access my room from outside without disturbing them. Now to the story.

We got an Airgun one day. Everybody was visibly thrilled. We started our hunting on one fine Saturday afternoon. To our horror.. we soon found that an Airgun means a gun which should be used when there is no air. The bullet was so thin and the shot speed was minimal than even slight amount of air deviated it. We had decided against hunting wild animals like Tiger, Lion , Elephant etc because they were endangered species ( I gave them a whole lecture on that ). But D was sad because he had his eyes set on something big.

D: Eda…what about Nari, Kurukkan
Me : No…endangered
D: what about Poulose chettan’s Pothu
Me: No .. we will be endangered.

So we started our hunting expedition.

Me : Look boys , I am gonna shoot that Kokku ( Crane )
P : Eda patti… u just shot me
Me : Sorry da…the bullet might have taken a 180 degree turn due to turbulence
P : And mind you … I don’t enjoy being tickled.

We had several near misses ….

D : ( Taking aim at a kokku in the bush and moving closer for a better chance )
Me : Eda … u are too close
D : I know….just to make sure that I get my angle right.
B : Eda….you are too close .. you can hit and kill it with the Paathi ( gun’s handle )
D : shhhhhhh
Me : Eda.. I think that bird is trying to suicide…..it not even moving…just catch it with the hand
D : Shut up !! ( By now he was very thrilled at the thought that he was going to be the first one to get a strike )

And D shoots finally and the bird, as expected flies away.

D : Shit man…I didn’t get the angle correct
B : Yeah…and that may be because the tip of the gun touched the kokku

And finally it was me who got the first strike…the aim was perfect, the shot execution was awesome, the angle of incidence was spot on … the shot struck directly on the birds belly and we saw it falling to the side because the impact. I was ecstatic and crying with joy. My friends hugged me and congratulated me and then it happened!!!! That idiot bird got up and started flying (visibly injured … but still flying very low and in short intervals). I was so heart broken… but my dear friend S started running after it. He ran across the whole paadam (Paddy field) and after a good 30 mins , returned with the bird. S insisted that I give half the credit to him since he was the one threw some stick on it ( madalu ) and captured it. I explained it to him that utopian principles of hunting never allowed to do that. He was convinced…he never challenged my utopia…..

Discovering India ...

I studied abroad (ok…ok…. its gulf) till my tenth standard. After that I convinced my parents that I had to go to good ol’ Kerala and study 11th and 12th there so that I can start preparing for my engineering entrance. I still remember the little drops of tears rolling out of my mothers eyes ( santhosha kanneer fellas..) thinking that how responsible a boy I was. Fast forward 2 weeks…Mission accomplished…I landed in my maternal grandmothers house. And this grandmother is a typical Xtian GM who thinks that its ok to serve Panam Kallu ( toddy – from our own thengu ) to 15 year old and that an evening snack means beef fry and a glass of munthiri kallu. I was so happy … a new found freedom and I went up and met all my childhood friends. There was B and P my best friends and a lot of other guys. B was all ready to try his luck at SSLC for the 3rd time. It was his English exam that day. Since I was the only one who knew all the alphabets at least…I decided to teach him some English. He tried to discourage me…but I was adamant that I will help out my best buddy. I asked him several questions … and was appalled to see the English standard of a 10th grade student. I told him that there was no point in wasting his time writing the exam next day … but he insisted that he will give it a try. I was really shocked when the results came…he has passed SSLC with minimum required marks on all subjects.

Me: Eda…how the f*#k did you do this?
B : I learned from my previous mistakes ..
Me: ??? Explain …please
B : Last 2 times I left the answer paper blank …
Me: And what did you do this time…shit on itttttt
B: No…I wrote the question backwards ....
Me: ! speechless !

A sample of his answer paper might be like this.

Question : What are your hobbies ?

Answer : hobbies your are what ( or most probably “ ? hobbies your are what “ )

The evaluator might have been very happy..atleast the guy displayed his knowledge of English alphabets, his creative thinking and his view on socio-economic problems that India faces in that one single answer.

And till then I thought that my hobby had to be stamp collection ( even though I had seen stamps only on letters from Kerala )

My first post

This is my first post. I have been following a few blogs for past few months and thoroughly enjoyed reading it. I accidently stumbled on Mathew’s ( wetspark ) blog ( aakasmikamaya kandumuttal…ee aakasmikamaya maranam ennokke parayunna pole – from Vandanam)and was surprised to see that his thought process was a lot like mine ( Only the thought process….I will never possess the creativity he has .. especially his culinary talents :)..Check here ). I found Silverine in his comments section and decided to give her blog a try. I read all the posts from Silverine in 2 days flat ( both poomanam and think pad ). I would have started blogging a lot earlier but for her … I was cent percent sure that I wont be able to maintain the standards I saw on those blogs (So Thank Mathew and Silverine for delaying the inevitable). Later I read so many blogs and found them to be really good. After months of soul searching, I have finally decided to start one. Thanks Silverine (Anjali) and Mathew for your support. I can see fellow bloggers throwing stones at you ppl in the near future for no fault of yours. As the old saying goes “ Bhasmasuranu shake hand kodutha pole “ ( that guy is a hindu mythical character – whoever touches him burns to ashes )