Lawrence of Arabia - His life in British India

Most of you would have seen the movie with the name (Note: This is not a movie review or a biography!), many of you may have read a bit here and there about him, that Lt Col TE Lawrence, working with the Arabs in the deserts North of today’s Saudi Arabia led the 1916-18 revolt against the Turks, and helped establish Arab lands you see today. As a person who studied pottery and went to the Middle East to be an archeologist, he soon found his way into international politics and armed uprising, of the illiterate Bedouin. He was quickly accepted as a quasi leader and a fellow by the rugged but rival factions of various tribes and Lawrence adopted many local customs and traditions (many photographs show him in the desert wearing Arab garb and riding camels). His final victory in the desert was establishing the liberated Damascus as the capital of the Arab council, with King Faisal as the head, but it was not to continue. During the closing years of the war he sought, with mixed success, to convince his superiors in the British government that Arab independence was in their interests. Disappointed and depressed, he moved back to Britain and was lost to the world, though figuring occasionally in UK news. His friend and American journalist Thomas Lowell had by then propelled him into the world media as a hero, which Lawrence as it appears, was never ready to accept. Anyway, Lawrence had his weaknesses and faults, but was always an eminently interesting adventurer.

TEL as he was known, worked later for W Churchill, but during his life in UK as a civilian, found the public glare on himself too hard to endure. Changing his name to John Hume Ross, he joined the tank corps in England but left soon after. In 1925, he joined the RAF and asked for a posting to India. He spent three years in relative obscurity in British India, and went back to Britain, to die in 1935, in a motorcycle accident (Some enthusiast’s say he did not and that he went back to the Middle East as a spy (Like Subhash Chandra Bose, he figures in many such hypotheses)). But even his death had a silver lining. Today’s use of helmets are a result of doctors studying the mortally ‘head injured’ TEL unsuccessfully fighting for his life.

OK, so much is commonplace, but what did he do in India? Actually he worked for the RAF in today’s Pakistan, starting in Karachi. Some of it was routine clerical work, some of it, still filled with intrigue. Let us take a look into those missing pages of his public life, of which not much is written about. Probably it was too sedate a period in his otherwise turbulent life, probably it was something else entirely, but for me, it was an interesting journey, trying to uncover the story, for I have great admiration for this man. I yearn always to be like that, in strange lands, doing things nobody else did. But we will all have our dreams, while others enact it in their lifetime (See TEL’s quote at the end).

Many questions till remain unanswered - Was he recovering from nervous strain or writing books in addition to routine work in the RAF or was he an anti Soviet British spy in the NWFP? Did the person who considered female contact not quite right, one who desired ultimate chastity, and later arranged for people to whip him, get married while in India? Interesting, eh?

By Dec 1926, Lawrence had completed a draft of his biography, the ‘Seven Pillars of Wisdom’ which was yet to be published. His great friend GB Shaw the writer and Shaw’s wife Charlotte were soon to help him edit it. His next work, ‘Revolt in the desert’ was ready for release and TEL used all his connections to secure a 5 year posting at the RAF station in Northern India. On Dec 8th, he set sail to India, in a troopship. But there was another twist. Thomas Edward Lawrence, who had become John Hume Ross to escape public scrutiny, now changed his name to Thomas Edward Shaw. Lawrence the persona as we know him today, was journalist Lowell Thomas’s making, the one exalted identity which he wanted to escape from, and thus it was that he ran away to India. Destination, Karachi, NW British India.

At Karachi, TE Shaw took a train to the nearby Drig airbase. As he chugged on, he saw that the terrain was somewhat similar to Arabia; TEL liked it and soon settled down to the humdrum routine of military life in an outpost. He did his own chores, hating the way the others treated the Indian, though he did nothing much about it other than mumbling a bit. His job was a clerk was mostly confined to barracks. Imagine the ex Lt Col, now working in the RAF as a lowly clerk and messenger boy, keeping records on engines, repair logs and the such. It was boring and TEL started to add to his book collection, soon reaching 250 within the year. Listening to the gramophone was also a pastime, and he lived frugally, lending money to others and working without a break. Very few knew his real identity, which anyway was legally changed by June 1927 to TE Shaw.

Winston Churchill writes to Airman Lawrence on May 16, 1927: “In fact, when I put down the Seven Pillars, I felt mortified at the contrast between my dictated journalism and your grand and permanent contribution to English literature... The impression it produced was overpowering. I marched with you those endless journeys by camel, with never a cool drink, a hot bath, or a square meal except under revolting conditions. What a tale!”

1927 did not do well to TEL’s health, he had dysentery, problems with his hearing & eyesight and his wrist which was broken earlier continued to trouble him. He felt cold and caught colds in the otherwise hot Karachi. But he worked the evenings writing loads of stuff. Some of that was actually well over 100 letters exchanged with GB Shaw’s wife Charlotte over two years!! Just imagine, he was 38 and she was 70, in the year 1927. She was the mother figure pouring out her heart to the young Lawrence, matters that even her longtime husband GBS had no clues about. She sent him food parcels and edited all his work from then on. Unfortunately he burnt a lot of her replies though she did not. During this period he wrote yet another book, this one on the RAF called ‘Mint’. All in all, things were going well though he was depressed, but the mind weary 39 year old TEL, who felt like a ‘wing crippled duck, and a squeezed out orange’, wanted to try for another extension in India, until 1935. Lawrence describes conditions at the RAF base in Karachi: “Our beds are narrow and close together, our cooks awful; our life harried by orders” (letter to Apsley Cherry-Gerrard, April 4, 1927, Karachi)

At this point, things would take another turn. The commander, deeply distrustful of special correspondence between TEL and his big bosses in Britain, wanted him out. Soon Lawrence (Shaw) was about to be shunted somewhere, when another big gun, a friend of his, interfered and removed the station commander. The new chief was no better for Lawrence, and soon TEL was posted to Miranshah in the NWFP, 10 miles from Afghanistan, where a 400 square yard fort had been appropriated by the British, complete with an airstrip.

Now I wonder, why put this man there of all places? (Do you recall that Champaka Raman Pillai was to come to the NWFP and that it was to become the location for the launch of the Azad India movement? Operation Tiger was being put into place by the Nazi’s as well – but let me not complicate all this too much, that was much later, towards 1942-44). This fort near Waziristan had 5 British officers, 20 airmen, 700 Indian troops and segregated living. Lawrence remained an airman and would not take any exams for fear that he would be promoted. So here, he became a store keeper and clerk typist. Can you again imagine, a personal friend of Thomas Hardy, GB Shaw, EM Forster, Churchill, winner of medals & honors, a one time Lt Col, now working as a typist? And it was here that he took to translating French books and the Odyssey from Greek. It was June 1928 by now.

By September, it was all to change with a London Evening news headline that read ‘Lawrence of Arabia’s secret mission’. He was supposedly spying on Bolsheviks in Amritsar, wearing a turban and robes according to the report. The news created uproar in India and the social circles of London and TEL had to be removed quickly. By November, a tribal revolt was brewing in Afghanistan. Given a choice of Singapore, Aden or Somalia, TEL flew back to Lahore and then to a P & O steamer - SS Rajputana from Bombay back to the ‘blighty’ on Jan 12th, 1929. He finally left, in his own words ‘almost the quietest place I have struck’. He said, ‘I am being hunted and I do not like it. I have a terrible fear of getting the sack from the RAF and can’t rest or sit still’. Soon, he had become arch imperialist spy in the press. They would not allow him to disembark in Cairo on is way back and huge groups of reporters waited for the ship to dock at Plymouth to interview the man who wanted to vanish.

Lawrence finally settled down in horribly cold & freezing England, where Charlotte Shaw and other friends anonymously purchased for him an expensive motorbike, gifting him a hobby that would lead to his eventual death a few years later and poignantly shown in the opening scene of the movie. His head hit the handle bars and massive cerebral hemorrhage speeded his death. Today the helmet we wear, reminds us of that TE Lawrence…

The Miranshah ‘spy’ controversyMuch of this is of course not proven and based on rumors at that time, my mentioning them is just to complete TEL’s stay and related events. While TEL was in Miranshah a public uprising occurred in Afghanistan and the king Amanullah was deposed. Lawrence was accused of working as a British Spy. One of the garbs he supposedly used was that of a Muslim cleric, Pir Karam Shah. I doubt this for it was not easily possible for a Westerner to blend with Afghans & Indians, especially with Lawrence’s blue eyes, pale skin and his knowing only Arabic and not Pashtun, Urdu or Hindi. During one event, a Karam Shah was indeed accosted by an angry mob and was seriously injured (some other reports say that he was accosted by TEL’s wife’s father’s wrestlers when they found out that Shah was Lawrence), the mob was fully convinced that he was 'Lawrence of Arabia' in disguise, But it was ‘later’ reported by the Imperial Civil & Military Gazette that the person was indeed the real Karam Shah. A strong denial that he is Colonel Lawrence, or that he is in any way connected with any State or Government, was then issued by this Syed Pir Karam Shah. Nevertheless the story would not go away.

Tariq Ali, the Pakistani novelist had written, “Surely he [Lawrence] didn’t go all the way to the Afghan frontier just to translate the Odyssey. His skills in fomenting tribal conflict were highly regarded and the British were desperate to topple (Soviet sympathizer & radical) King Amanullah. They needed Lawrence, with his knowledge of Islam and facility in Arabic to exhort the tribesmen against their radical, modernizing ruler.” He told Observer the following - 'Lawrence was deployed in a secret role in Afghanistan to destabilize the regime of the then king. It was a highly secret operation and very sensitive. Lawrence was highly regarded in Afghanistan because he spoke Arabic which tribesmen see as the divine language,' Ali told The Observer last week.

Extract from Lawrence of Arabia - The Man and the Motive - Anthony Nutting )

He had not been there (Miranshah) more than a month when, in spite of strenuous precautions, his presence in this embattled area of Britain's imperial domains became known to the American press, who had for long been looking for an exciting story to fasten onto his return to the East. The Soviet newspapers started an immediate outcry that Colonel Lawrence was spying in Afghanistan and the British Minister at Kabul requested that he be sent back to England. Relations between the Indian government and Afghanistan were then at a most sensitive point and Lawrence's continued presence on the Afghan border would have risked a serious incident. He returned early in 1929 to a barrage of comment and speculation in Britain. Unfortunately for him, just before he was withdrawn from Miranshah, a rebellion broke out in Afghanistan which led to the deposition of the King. Labour politicians and the left-wing press in Britain became convinced that Lawrence, whom they had long suspected as being in reality a leading British intelligence agent masquerading as an ordinary airman, had engineered the Afghan conspiracy at the instigation of the government of India. Questions were asked in Parliament and, at a demonstration staged on Tower Hill by a group of Communists, Lawrence was burned in effigy!

Lawrence’s marriage in KarachiTariq Ali also reported that Akbar Jahan, Sheikh Abudulla’s wife was first married to T E Lawrence in 1928, while he visited Kashmir. He states that the information is from Akbar’s brother Nedou. Apparently Lawrence before leaving had to divorce her. This again is difficult to believe for Lawrence was well known for his distaste for physical relationships and women and had a major issue like undergoing self flagellation with a whip (which curiously he never did while in India!). But then, who knows?

Quoting a Guardian report – Tariq Ali was told of the marriage by a former senior civil servant from the Himalayan mountain state of Kashmir which was part of the British Raj until independence in 1947. The civil servant said he was told by Benji Nedous, the brother of the bride. 'It was kept fairly secret,' Ali said last week. 'While Lawrence was stationed in India he used to go to the city of Lahore like many other officers, to relax. It was known as the Paris of the East and the Nedous family had a hotel there that was popular with soldiers wanting to rest and drink and so on, and that is where he met her.'

Ali said that he was told that the woman, called Akbar Jehan, was from a good family and was a Shia Muslim. 'It was the Shia practice to have short-term marriages that are very quick to arrange and dissolve. The exact details are a mystery and very few people knew about it, but I am completely convinced that Lawrence married the girl.'
A related Hindu report summarizes the same facts

Personally – I think the Lawrence in Afghanistan as a spy is a tall yarn, so also the Akbar Jahan Wife story that followed.

Lawrence in Jandola
He also visited the army mess in Jandola and gifted them a copy of his ‘revolt in the desert’. This act would not have occurred had he been undercover.Reports state thus - He visited the area in 1928 in the guise of an Aircraftsman Shaw; benighted there by a broken down truck and accommodated in Officer’s Mess. He kept them enthralled by tales (some, perhaps, almost true) of far Arabia and left them a volume which is still treasured by the South Waziristan Scouts officers. “This book, he inscribed on the flyleaf, was written by me, but its sordid type and squalid blocks are the responsibility of the publisher. It is, however, the last copy in print of ‘Revolt in the Desert’, and I have much pleasure in presenting it to the officers of the South Waziristan Scouts in memory of a very interesting day and night with them”. This book is apparently lying in the South Waziristan Scouts Officer’s Mess, Wana.

Some detail on the Dirg base – Today called PAF base Faisal
Soon after the India Command of the Royal Air Force was formed in 1918, with a projected deployment of 8 squadrons on the subcontinent, an aircraft repair depot was established at Lahore with a detachment at Karachi and a port depot at Bombay. In 1922 the main unit was shifted from Lahore to Drigh Road. This was to remain the station's chief function until RAF Drigh Road was handed over to the Royal Pakistan Air Force in 1947. T.E. Lawrence wrote to Charlotte Shaw 28 January 1927, "The Depot is dreary, to a degree, and its background makes me shiver. It is a desert, very like Arabia: and all sorts of haunting likenesses (pack-donkeys, the colour and cut of men's clothes, an oleander bush in flower in the valley, camel-saddles, tamarisk) try to remind me of what I've been for eight years desperately fighting out of my mind. Even I began to doubt if the coming out here was wise. However there wasn't much chance and it must be made to do. It will do, as a matter of fact, easily."Air India’s JRD Tata took off from Drigh Road Airport, Karachi, carrying a mail of Imperial Airways, in a tiny, light single-engined de Havilland Puss Moth on his maiden flight to Mumbai via Ahmedabad. On 26 December 1977 Drigh Road Air Base re-named 'Faisal Air Base' in honour of King Faisal II of Saudi Arabia

References
T.E. Lawrence: biography of a broken hero - Harold Orlans
Lawrence of Arabia - The Man and the Motive - Anthony Nutting
TE Lawrence Studies
Impressions of TE Shaw

Pics
Karachi Photo – TE Lawrence Studies

Others from www - thanks


"All men dream, but not equally. Those who dream by night in the dusty recesses of their minds wake in the day to find that it was vanity,but the dreamers of the day are dangerous men, for they may act their dream with open eyes, to make it possible."

—T. E. Lawrence from "The Seven Pillars of Wisdom"

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Achanak and a slo-mo back to the 70s’

Last month, after a period of some 16 years, I watched the movie Achanak again, to mutter to myself at the end, what a movie it was and by today’s standards, what a movie it is. I remembered seeing it at Lido Bangalore, ages ago, walking down from Cubbon Road, with some friends.

Directed by Gulzar & co produced by Hrishikesh Mukerjee, this thriller brought out the best from a dashing Vinod Khanna playing an Army officer who comes back on a short vacation, to see his wife in the arms of his best friend. He kills them both, one by one and hands himself over to the police and after an ensuing court case, is sentenced to death. While the girl’s father Ifthekar, who is also Khanna’s superior officer, appeals on Khanna’s behest at the high court, Khanna flees captivity, but is found and shot by the police after a thrilling foot chase. Fighting death with cerebral thrombosis, he survives miraculously and recovers, only to be taken back to the gallows. Or is he? It is a brilliant movie and if you, the reader have not seen it, try to (DVD’s are available) . Even today, it will measure up to most standards. Based on a short story by KA Abbas (who also wrote Mera Naam Joker, Jagte Raho, Awaara, Shree 420, Bobby & numerous other great scripts & novels) titled Thirteenth Victim in the magazine Imprint, supported by a cast of Ifthekar, Farida Jalal and Om Shivpuri, the lead by Vinod Khanna is superb.. But then this is not a review, there is obviously more, as you can imagine.

The original story (dating to 1958-59) was ‘apparently’ based on the very famous Kawas Nanavati case. Now this would be known to certain people, mainly Bombay’ites. Kawas was a dashing naval commander who was in the employ of VK Krishna Menon while he was high commissioner in London. While at the UK, Kawas met and fell in love with a lovely English girl Sylvia. They married, and returned to Bombay. Kawas a Parsi, had to travel frequently and it was thus it seems, that Sylvia ended up having an affair with Kawas’s friend, a Sindhi playboy named Prem Ahuja. Now some of you may wonder why I mentioned the communities of these people, well, it was for a reason of course. As the press & court minutes conclude, Sylvia had a roaring physical relationship with Ahuja, but she wanted a more permanent married relation. She was prepared to leave Kawas, but was at the same time getting increasingly confused over the affair, and Ahuja eventually backed off..

As it happened, Kawas came back after a trip and found a disturbed Sylvia. She confessed about the affair with Prem Ahuja. Kawas took it calmly, picked up his service revolver and a few cartridges the next day, from the naval stores, dropped his family at a movie theatre, then went and accosted Prem Ahuja and asked him if he would marry Sylvia. Prem retorted that he had no plans to marry every woman he had sex with. Kawas as it appears shot him dead. He then turned himself in to the police.

The court case which followed was sensational, as Kawas pleaded non culpable homicide, Bombay wad soon divided, Parsis vs Sindhis. Karanjia (also a Parsi) of the ‘Blitz’ newspaper took up the publicity for Kawas. Blitz was soon in hot demand and sold at Rs 2/ each instead of the usual 25 paisa. The dashing officer was on the paper regularly and many swooning women if I read right, sent Rs 100/- notes with their lipstick smears to support him. The trial that followed was a Jury trial. The jury acquitted him 8-1 but later the presiding judge dismissed it saying that the jury was unduly biased by newspaper reports and other publicity.

That was the last time a jury was used to judge a case in India (My friend Nick Balmer was telling me how hard his forefather Thomas H Baber of the East India Company tried to bring in Juries in Malabar trials. Well, they were indeed used in India, until it was abolished in 1959 after this particular Nanavati case). So as you saw, the session’s judge refused to accept the ruling and referred the case to the high court. Kawas was sentenced guilty and imprisoned.

The $&#@ hit the fan as they say and the public went berserk. Ram Jethmalani was the skilful defense counsel. The central government was involved, Nehruji as well or so I read, and the armed forces, threw their weight behind Kawas Nanavati. Finally Vijayalakshmi Pandit, then Bombay Governor pardoned him (after a formal personal pardon by Ahuja’s sister) and she also pardoned a prominent Sindhi businessman who had a government case lodged against him, to compensate Sindhi uproar. Nanavati later emigrated to Canada.

That was the story on which this movie Achanak was supposedly based. Incidentally another more directly related movie is Sunil Dutt’s ‘Yeh raste hein pyar ke’.

What you read above was just a brief introduction to the case, for the Nanavati story is long and lurid, with much of it well documented in the press, if you care to look. Kawas was the character pictured loosely in Achanak, which came out in 1973.

All this made me recall the 70’s for it was just a year later that Protima Bedi streaked across Juhu beach (To help launch ‘Cine Blitz’). I was not there to see it, I had only heard about it while at college, but recently I got to see the blurry snaps. Wow! She was some woman, is all I will tell you.

Ah! The late 70’s were great, the college days. We had no TV then; it was all radio and newspapers. Bellbottoms were coming along and reaching proportions rivaling the Liberty bell, long hair was ‘hep’ and we sported hair bands (at least I did, on my forehead like Mc Enroe, over long hair). I still recall going to the Pallavur temple with a head band and the staid old mama’s in ‘mundum veshityium and onnara beneath’, looking at me like I was from Mars. They would ask me, are you not Chella’s grandson? Just to make sure.

Belts were broad like hell, big buckles and all, shoe heels were inches thick (men’s heels), RD Burman was king and Dum Maro dum was the anthem. In Malayalam and Tamil, Kamal Hassan was the person to copy, for style & looks. Riding aYezdi, an old Java or a Bullet mobike with a smoky & noisy exhaust was cool. Smoking cool (mentholated) was not cool, but smoking Charminar, Charms or Gold Flake was. Liril soap was to hit the scene soon, to take over from Rexona and Hammam and Lifebuoy, and Karen Lunel would become a national heart throb for a while, followed by Nafisa Ali…Go to this old blog of mine, if you want to heat that old Liril ad music..

Then the hair style went from long flowing hair to a mean step cut, which was horrible actually, come to think of it, but then we all did it for a while. The moustache drooped, ala Charles Bronson, for those who sported one.

They have all been relegated to fond memories, for Imprint (I read ‘Anderson tapes’ and ‘Elephants can remember’ serialized in Imprint) which had the Achanak story is no more, Blitz is no more, Protima is no more. Achanak is still around, if you care to look for it in some video shop. And memories are always there, to take you back to those romps in the good old days..

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Back home

After the ruminating sojourn at Changi, the full flight to Cochin was uneventful and mercifully not too long. As expected most of the Mallu crowd in the trip had a couple of bottles of booze each, safely clutched in their hands. Later I found out from my BIL that the Far East tour packages were nowadays affordable for so many to travel around. The Cochin airport formalities were quick, though the health crews were at work scanning our foreheads (people from California were on the hot list) with infra red scanners for signs of H1N1 fevers. A form had to be filled up and I was quite prepared for all that from Singapore itself where warnings of Swine flu were being broadcast in all languages, including Tamil.

My brother and our old driver Mani were there to receive me at the airport and it was great seeing the old driver after so long. He had left us as the driving assignments tapered off and everybody flew the coop. Working multiple jobs as cinema operator, money collector and driver for a Chetty was not fun it appears, so he came back to Pallavur and now freelances as a driver. Almost like family, this chap Mani, we knew him since childhood. The drive back was a bit scary even though it was well past midnight, I could see that the crowded roads, bright halogen headlights and ageing were catching up with the driver.

Also, I was getting hungry as I had not eaten in the plane, but there were no thattukada’s (street cart food) that night due to the rains. No problem’s, said my brother, let us go to Mannadiar’s on the way, for that is always open, but he asked again, are you sure? When we reached there eventually, the board declared Veg & non veg, 24 hrs or something like that and I saw why my brother was asking the question. It was a small place, and the last time the walls had seen paint was I believe, some time in the early 19th century. A low ceilinged hall with a dozen benches and wooden tables strewn around and a few truck drivers & drunkards lounging and chomping away, was what met my sight. Normally I do not bother too much about such things, but right after spick and span Singapore and without the local bacteria in my stomach to give me some immunity, it was a bit disconcerting. Anyway, as they say, fortune favors the brave. I cast a gingery look at my brother, who had a smile on his face. He said, it’s ok, don’t worry. We did look odd, well dressed with shoes and all, in the midst of lungi clad half sleepy drivers, but they didn’t care anyway.

Soon came the bearer cum owner mannadiar, and what I saw of him was really scary. With skin possessing a hue and texture of an elephant, his bare body with just a koya lungi round the midriff was glistening with sweat. Splotches of some ancient skin ailment mapped his back, but his smile was 70mm. Grime could be seen aplenty under his finger nails. He said, we have dosas, chappatis and eggs, but only Sambar, chammandi and Ulli chatni to go, Ok? I went for the Chappati with an omelet. As we waited, 2AM in the morning, I wondered what I had got myself into on the very first day of the vacation. But when the food did land up on the table, on the banana leaf, it was simply superb. Thin and oily chapattis, with a super double omelet, the taste was just great. I passed on the sambar, but could not resist the two chatnis. And for the first time, I ate chappati with them, quite enjoying the combination. The place where you washed hands after …well, I better not describe it.

Reaching home in the wee hours of the morning, Pallavur smelt the same, of hay, cows, trees and all that. I was at peace, finally, office and US quickly forgotten.

But first things first, as they say. You have to protect yourself from mosquitoes, which were a plenty in farming areas. If you ended up catching the endemic Dengue, Chikungunya or tomato fever, you were in deep trouble. A number of families I knew already were suffering from the debilitating joint pains that remained after the Chikungunya fever. So the ‘Off’ mosquito spray (guaranteed to ward off even the west Nile virus) that I had armed myself with, typical of NRI’s (my friend once brought a carton of bottled water from the Middle east for his vacation – I drink jeeraka vellam though) was applied with gusto at 3AM., and as I went through the motions, I saw my nieces and nephews watching me with great curiosity. I am sure they were storing these funny sights & conversations in their memory, to spread around when schools reopened after Onam. But they were all ears when I started narrating the scene at the mannadiar hotel.

A quick sleep and then started the fascinating days of playing around with nephews & nieces, catching up on the local gossip and so on. But the problem was actually food, the immense quantities that I was forced to eat. As a cook had been hired for the interim, the possibilities were endless, so all the things I liked (or the list they believed I liked from childhood days which sometimes also covered food I liked no more), were made. The problem was that I ate sparingly these days but that argument did not work with people who were making all this food specially for the starved desi from California . So by noon, with the jet lag and all, I was a physical wreck, loaded with food to the gills and my entire system rebelling. It took a couple of days and liberal swigs of dashmoolarishtam and quite a few hajmola, for all that to settle down (but I can tell you, even today two days after getting back to USA I am yet to recover completely) and as you can imagine, mannadiar’s food was not a problem at all…

Meeting a number of relatives was the next thing to do, and there were plenty of reasons, marriages in the family, illnesses, operations, old age. As I met them all, I could see the ravages of age on many of them, but the joy of meeting was greater compensation than the trouble taken in driving around. The old timers, the farm workers were all still around and alive, and many would come by to say hello. The temple was thriving and as usual, when I saw the unattended temple drums, I could not resist a couple of quick beats. Later when I met the resident (drummer) marar, he said, that he would have been pleased to come over home with the drums so I could try them out at my leisure. I squirmed in embarrassment hearing that from the stalwart drummer. The man was obviously pleased seeing me after a year, and I had written about him and his forefathers just the previous year.

My younger son was soon at home with the place, he had even been on some eye camp to the interior forests, a place called Parambikulam, where the Adivasis were treated by some eye doctors. The boy and his cousin sis were entrusted the task of keeping records, names, ages, etc during the camp.

After a week, we were off to Calicut. Wow! the place was indeed getting crowded. The over bridge work was not finished yet, the pot holes on the roads were massive (some potholes even had large saplings planted by the angry public. The pic here is actually from Chennai, used only for illustration) and the continuing Japan pipeline project had by now made the local populace, deeply resentful of Japs, as I had written earlier. Anyway, those were small things really, as I spent another interesting week at Calicut, and there were many things in store.

Attending CKR’s son’s wedding reception was fun, great food and all, then I was launched as a guest speaker to deliver a historic talk on Abraham ben Yiju and the Genizah scrolls to a bunch of unsuspecting history enthusiasts as trains chugged past the Chavara hall, It was an experiences which also got reported in the press. As this was all going on, another blogger friend was recovering from a bypass surgery, and I also established contact with bloggers Raji and Hari over the phone. It was fun to talk to them after all these months of seeing their names on the web. Blogger Nikhil, who was visiting Kerala, passed by and we had a short chat about this and that.

Meanwhile, the number of fever cases in Malabar were rising rapidly and as expected the arguments were being made with regional splits, Wise people said, last few years it was in Travancore & Cochin, now it has come to Malabar, with their southern curse. By this time, we were also expert tennis players, not because the US Open or my own familiarity with the game, but because of the frequent use of the tennis bat mosquito killer.

Armed with the electric mosquito bats, we would sit on the portico, liberally sprayed with ‘Off’, enjoying the evening rains. The mosquitoes would smell the ‘rich foreign’ blood (as relatives joked) and come in swarms, and we would be prepared to execute fine sliced backhands, forehand drives, overhead smashes, delicate back hand drops and so on. The mosquitoes would pop on the strings like a ball smacked by Federer or Klijsters, with the only difference being the smell of the burning insect that followed. It is well known that the ‘bat’ (Chiroptra mammal) controls mosquitoes, but look at the irony of it, today the bats are gone or going away, but you need a tennis (like) bat to control mosquitoes. But beware; these bats pack quite a punch, getting a shock of the strings with fresh batteries can be quite painful.

From extensive trials and experience, I can now say that the Hunter brand is the best of the lot, though not child safe. As the evenings stretched and the dusk set in, the pile of exterminated mosquitoes would satisfyingly grow. There was one problem though, the problem with people asking what perfume I used, for most mosquito sprays have a strong lemon grass scent. It is like you had thai soup or something and this scent masks even the strong scent of the ‘Davidoff cool water’ eau de cologne that I normally use.

After regular & timely food ingestions 4-5 times a day, I would recline and retire to read the immensely enthralling Brigadier stories by the great Malayatoor Ramakrishnan (BTW some people have started comparing me with Brig Vijayan Menon and his tall stories). My book purchase continued and the book bag was soon all of 25kgs. A book fair, albeit small was going on at the Krishna Menon stadium, and ironically at that very spot, I purchased a book written by Kushwant Singh, where he soundly abuses Krishna Menon, his one time boss. I got much more interesting material, thanks to the help of authors, my BIL and many others. More on all that later.

Otherwise, I would walk by Calicut roads, as usual. I skipped Balu’s as they had new and unresponsive barbers this time around and visited the popular ‘Boys saloon’ for a haircut. Now that was indeed strange, a saloon in Calicut with barbers from Delhi who spoke only Hindi. This time, I also chanced upon Calicut’s first organic shop. Well, it is strange, really, we in Kerala who were used to organic food and organic packing & recycling upto the 90’s forgetting all that in a hurry, in the throes of development, now to re-launch everything proudly as ‘organic’ once again west like. The shop is called Elements. Then one early morning, we even drove to see Pantalayani Kollam, a port from ancient Malabar history.

Onam was celebrated with gusto, the liquor shops sold over 35 crores of booze in one day ( total of 50 crores in two days) and the papers were full of news of some financier bloke Paul who got knocked off by a couple of goons. The papers also reported extensively on what could have happened to lots of money in the killer’s car, which vanished mysteriously. A movie was also announced based on all this, a couple of days after the event.

The various hotels were every crowded, but we did manage varieties of Malabar food during evenings, and the Paragon Biryani beat them all this time in sheer taste. As the days went by, I managed to speak to eminent people and writers like NM Nampoothiri and Nandan and sat back later, marveling at their simple nature & responses whilst talking to them over their writing. So much more happened, but let me get to them, later.

Soon it was time to get back, the long long flight was murderous, but we are still alive and the good memories of the two weeks, keep us going.

Back home now, California is hot like hell, wild fires are being reported, and the economy is still going south. Meanwhile, we are getting ready for yet another relocation, this time to Raleigh, in the east coast of USA. Busy days ahead…


Pics
Pothole pic from team BHP.com
Hunter pic from manufacturer web site
Onam leaf BBC

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Breakfast at Changi

Changi airport is a personal favorite of mine. I have seen a large number of airports, but I must say this is one of the best run and homely airports ever. It does not signal aggression like American airports nor does it seem cold and aloof like the European ones. It is not chaotic like the Indian ones nor is it noisy like the Korean or Thai or other Asian airports. To put it all simply, I like it. And so after a long long flight from LAX, via Narita in Japan, yea! Finally I stepped foot on Japanese soil, if only for an hour, and then again it was another long leg to Singapore, the old colonial watering hole.

After a short rest, I went up to the Kaveri for breakfast. I knew that it was the confluence of all Indian visitors to the airport, it was where I assume they met kindred souls, smelt home and felt like at home. This time, there was a huge hoarding on the way announcing that Chutney Mary was on her way to compete with Kaveri. But she had not arrived yet and was expected by late fall. I marveled at the guy who created that name. Whew! Chutney Mary! What a name…It does evoke interesting ideas in one’s mind…I wondered was it meant to mean a gora angrez with blond hair and blue eyes and a lot of spice or chutzpah? Or was it our Malayali or a Goan Mary? I don’t know, but when you are on vacation and footloose, such thoughts fleet through your happy mind.

The guy at the counter was being harried by a queue of impatient guys who wanted to get their morning fix of caffeine and ‘nashta’. The regular staff was yet to come and he was doing his best to keep thing moving. A very pleasant man, I thought, after observing him. Well brought up, calm and dignified in his approach. I decided that he would go a long way with his attitude.

I placed my order for dosa and vada, the man was apologetic, he said, that the Filter coffee would be ready only after half an hour. I said that was quite OK (though it was not OK but you know how we are, we desi’s always say yes when we actually want to say no) and he wanted my name to call out when the order was ready. I knew what was coming when I said it. Normally Malayali’s take it on their stride, for they try their best not to show any kind of emotion (as Usha Didi explained once). I wanted to tell Usha Iyer, yes! They do show a lot of emotion, like when they hear the name Shakeela or the name Johnnie as in Johnnie Walker.

Anyway my name seems to evoke the strangest emotions in Tamilians. If it is a sales girl, they look coyly up at my face and quietly giggle, or loudly if a friend of theirs is nearby. Men take a long quizzical look and keep their lips tightly shut and the grin under control. Older men sometimes become effusive and make all kinds of great comments that make me go red. And when my wife is with me, I can see her happily grinning away, seeing my displeasure…Ah! I wonder, what made my grand uncle give me this unique name?? The chap looked at my credit card to ensure that I was not pulling his leg uttering the name (In the US, it is very tricky to explain, so I quickly say Maddy for short. Even that is not acceptable for Maddy is normally short for Madeline. So some write Marty or Matty on orders!! Anyway I have given up).

I was in a happy mood, as you can make out, so I complimented him for his lovely calligraphic handwriting and the young man beamed with pleasure. He must have remembered his dad or teacher castigating him in his younger years telling him things like ‘handwriting maketh the man’…all so silly & untrue in today’s world, where one builds up muscles on their fingers instead, typing furiously at key boards creating voluminous amount of text without any belying character and finally suffering from carpal tunnel syndrome, instead of producing fine writing that will remain for centuries (just yesterday I was marveling at the handwriting of a 12^th Century traveler, writing at Malabar). My children cannot even read cursive writing fluently and if I write with a fast flowing hand, I have heard people asking if it is another language. The world has changed, I say.

As I waited for my order to come, I observed all around. That by itself is a fascinating experience, if you are in the right mood, as you can imagine. The first person that caught my attention was the weirdest. He, obviously a south Indian, probably from Karnataka, was sitting with his wife and young kid. The lady was prattling away, the child was squealing about being hungry and the man was serenely nodding his head now and then and even replying at times. I could see that the lady was talking seriously and then I saw the silly aspect to the situation. This man had his Ipod (obviously a new acquisition) earphones, with the telltale white cords, well plugged into his ears. Now what on earth was going on? How was he able to convince his wife that he was indeed listening to her? Was he shutting her out and listening to Shreya Ghoshal singing a Mano Murthy song or perhaps his guru’s sayings? Ah! Who knows, I smiled and cast my eyes back to the busy counter. For Kaveri had lots to offer, Idli vada, sambar, roti chana, dosa…..and many people wer elining up for breakfast.

Now it was a Rowther or probably a marakkar wife, all burqa clad with just her eyes showing. She, with two kids in tow, was asking for Iddli vada, or anything that would fit within the limits of some kind of a coupon she had. It was indeed incongruous, a fully veiled and covered woman and right at the next table, a couple of European girls with those micro denim shorts showing super long and lovely legs and much more. I wished I had my camera, unfortunately even my phone was in the room. These extremes would have made a great photo of the times.

The Chettiar was back at the counter complaining, he had been waiting too long for his coffee. Looking at him, I could see how they had changed with time. Earlier days would have shown them in fantastic green & red bordered dhotis, silk shirts and great long gold chains. Gone are all that, now that was replaced by a loose and tailored white pant, white slippers (I am sure Jeetendra was his hero) and a shirt struggling to come below his great big tummy. He had the trademark Sindoor kuri on his forehead, lots of gold rings and now the latest cell phone brandished often in the left hand for good effect and lest I forget, a man Friday in tow following at his heels and taking in the orders.. The trader was getting ready for his day of wheeling and dealing, once he reached his destination, wherever that was - until then he had to use forceful arguments to get irritants out of the way, like the breakfast at the hotel, the guy at the counter or the flight or whatever. That was his hypertensive and pseudo masculine demeanor, I guess

The cute IT girl was next, with trademark looks – laptop bag – strap cutting diagonally across her bosom and accentuating the overall effect, tight jeans, a simple Kurti and short hair, no make up. She came by timidly, took a look at the menu, all the Desi crowd seated, first assessing her level to theirs and wondering if she should do the normal thing or what. After she hung around and had taken a few deep breaths, she built up her confidence and walked off, having made up her mind once again, to say no mentally - as this kind of Desi stuff is not cool, so walking next door to the burger king and surely, to order a ‘Veggie burger’ with medium fries and Coke.. Reminded me of the same lot in the US, after a month, they were desperately looking for desi food and desi shops having realized that ordering a veggie burger probably makes it even more nerdish out there. The rice burners - as Indians and Chinese are called in California…

The Udupi man was next, I am not sure about it, but it must be, fair and looking like a Settu, he had a yellow shirt, was well past his 50’s and the shirt was inserted perfectly into a high waisted pair of chinos. The clean cut man, was waiting for his order, and then my look went to his feet. Man! he was wearing white sneakers. He patiently took out his brand new sleek digital 12Mp Exlim camera and took photos of the kaveri, the menu and the steaming Iddli vada in front him. For what I don’t know, and then he got his teeth into the idli..

Then came the clincher, a security guard. Immaculately attired, in the tight fitting black uniform, a glock ( I guess) pistol in the holster with the trademark leather strap, a taser or truncheon in another holster, I don’t know which, a cartridge case, and so on. The glock pistol was riding high on the right lobe of an ample butt, giving it a majestic air and lots of moving freedom. The boots were well polished, the belt was neatly buckled and there was only one jarring note to all this. The pretty and well built girl of Tamil origin wearing all this, had a big Kumkum – Sindoora pottu on her forehead. This, I thought, one would never ever see anywhere else. For a while I was lost in thought wondering about her story, as she finished ordering her iddli vada and came by to sit at the next table. I was half expecting the dialog of Quick gun Murugan – ‘Muthal –le sambar, appurama nee…mind it’.

She took out her phone and said in characteristic Malay Singapore English Tamil lingo, I assume to her kanavar – ‘naaa (short for anna) what la, reached office la?’ And their homely conversation went on. She was probably at the tail end of her night shift..

My food came by; the man with the great handwriting brought it personally to the customer who had started his day well. He apologized for having made me wait, but I could imagine, he was probably wondering “How on earth does this customer go around with such a name??”

The food was good, the vadas were great, the dosa so so and for once the chutney (not Mary’s) made with real coconut and not ‘thenga pinnak’ (the reminder of copra squeezed dry for the oil and which one feeds cows) or desiccated coconut. The sambar had plenty of ‘hing’, which was good though a little heavy for a breakfast breath. The masala tea was miserable, making me long for that filter coffee..

As I walked back to the waiting areas and to check out the shops, I saw that the IT girl was plugging away at the Xbox parlor. I cast one more look at the pretty security guard with the big butt and the gun riding high above it and wondered how she would react when faced with a real life situation, and had to shoot somebody. Who knows? She must be well trained I suppose. She was eating her ‘idli’ demurely, putting dainty little bits into her mouth and I thought back of the beefy and aggressive lady guards in the USA chomping away at massive double or triple burgers and washing them down with large swigs of coke, talking in very loud assertive voices…I could not but help compare, the interesting disparities of this world and I wondered how she would behave back at home in the evening with kanavan…I guess, I better stop here before I raise the ire of all the lady readers…

Off to Kochi and then to Palakkad…My vacation as you can see, has started, finally

Pic - thanks Murukku_stud

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A list of 15 memorable books

Jina Joan DCruz with the sizzling mind and fiery brain cells recently tagged me on a favorite subject, reading books - Fifteen books you've read that will always stick with you! Now this put me into a quandary. There is always a top list in everybody’s mind, the top favorites. But what if the list is well over 15 and you cannot decide? So as I was thinking and thinking about it, I decided instead to just make a list of 15 ‘relatively good and memorable reads’ and not the usual all time greats. Some of these books are rather unique and are listed as they caught my fancy. Many of these have been covered in detailed blogs by me previously so I will summarize and link up to them, as for the others provide a short set of comments. Hope those who enjoy reading give at least some of these a try, they may turn out to be equally interesting to them. Readers may note something strange here – many of the books seem to be accounts of young guys in bewildering situations. Now I wonder after making the list, how come I selected these? Reliving my childhood memories perhaps? I don’t know – probably..

Shadow of the Wind - Zafon
One of the most fascinating books I have read in recent times. It actually is about a boy named Daniel in Barcelona during the 1950’s who discovers a rare book by the same name. The book is a mysterious one at that, so is the author of the book in the book, who goes by the name Carax, The blurb says it all - Hidden in the heart of the old city of Barcelona is the “Cemetery of Forgotten Books”, a labyrinthine library of obscure titles that have long gone out of print. To this library, one cold morning in 1945, a man brings his 10-year-old son Daniel. Daniel is allowed to choose one book from the shelves and pulls out The Shadow of the Wind by Julián Carax. Captivated by the novel from its very first page, Daniel reads the book in one sitting. But he is not the only one interested in Carax. As he grows up in a Barcelona still suffering the aftershocks of civil war, Daniel is haunted by the story of the author, a man who seems to have disappeared without a trace after a duel in Père Lachaise cemetery. What begins as a case of literary curiosity turns into a race to find out the truth behind the life and death of Julián Carax, and to save those he left behind.

Nalukettu – MT Vasudevan NairI must admit that I would be one of those rare Malayalees who had not read it until recently, for most know of it, talk of it, dream of it and again talk and talk about it. But well, I purchased it recently and read it with gusto. Even though every scene plays out like it is from your own house, it was captivating. The characters, the prose, the simplicity of the textual flow are to be experienced. It is something that anybody who can read Malayalam should read. I am not sure about the English translation by Gita Krishnamurthy, but go for the original if you can. Naalukettu ( 1958) is the story of a young boy Appunni, set in a joint family (tharavad) of the Nair caste in the author's native village, Kudallur(Palghat), Growing up without a father and away from the prestige and protection of the matrilineal home in which he belongs, Appuni spends his childhood in extreme social misery. Fascinated by accounts of the grand 'naalukettu tharavad' of which he should have been a part, Appuni visits the house only to be rejected by the head of the household. With vengeance boiling in his heart and the pain of disappointed love a lingering ache, Appuni claws his way up in life to reach his goal which is ……I will leave it here for the reader to find out.

Life of Pi – Yan Martel
There are reams of articles and critiques on this very special book. It is very different indeed from the normal fare. This book is a fantasy adventure. In the story, the protagonist Piscine "Pi" Molitor Patel, an Indian boy from Pondicherry, survives 227 days after a shipwreck, while stranded on a boat in the Pacific Ocean together with a Bengal tiger. Interestingly it is a product of hard work for the Canadian author spent days interviewing the director of the Trivandrum Zoo amongst others and explored the urban settings of South India, taking voluminous notes before he started the work. Greer a reviewer puts it succinctly - Yann Martel keeps the story of Pi's long voyage moving at an interesting pace. You know from the beginning that Pi will survive, but at times you wonder how he will overcome each challenge he faces. Martel doesn't allow Richard Parker to be anything more than a dangerous Bengal tiger and Pi never to be more than a desperate boy lost at sea. As Pi's long days at sea take a toll on his health and mind, the story begins to strain credulity. Martel then challenges the reader at the end to disbelieve it all. In the end, it becomes a matter of faith.

The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night time – Mark Haddon
I watch a pretty decent tele-serial these days; it is called ‘Aap ki Antra’ – the story of a little girl afflicted by Autism. I enjoy most of the episodes, but this is not about Antra, but an Autistic (actually Aspergerism – a cousin of Autism) boy called Christopher. A simply fascinating account of a boy, who sees a murdered dog and decides to find out the story behind it, and even more, to write about it. So, well, that is the complex route you take with Chris once you get the book in your hands. Sometimes you even wonder, Is Aspergers a boon? Anyway as he progresses, he is drawn into the complex non-Asperger world…and this bewildered boy’s, orderly and mathematically assisted quest becomes the engrossing tale! Read my old blog about this book for more details

Londonstani – Gautam Malkani
Another book that caught my eye and bowled me over. It is again the story of a boy and his friends in today’s London desi crowd. Set close to the Heathrow feed roads of Hounslow, Malkani shows us the lives of a gang of four young men: Hardjit the ring leader, a violent Sikh, Ravi, determinedly tactless, a sheep following the herd; Amit, whose brother Arun is struggling to win the approval of his mother for the Hindu girl he has chosen to marry; and Jas, who tells us of his journey with these three, desperate to win their approval, desperate too for Samira, a Muslim girl, which in this story can only have bad consequences. Together they cruise the streets in Amit’s enhanced Beemer, making a little money changing the electronic fingerprints on stolen mobile phones, a scam that leads them into more dangerous waters. Read my blog about this book for more details

The Lost German Slave Girl – John Bailey
This one is about a slave girl, not a boy. But probably one of the best reads of recent times. What a superb book this is. It tells you the strange story of a slave girl who lived around New Orleans, the real story of a young Sally Miller who left Germany with her parents bound for better luck in America, during the black days of the second decade of the 19th century. Read my blog about this book for more detailsl

Chowringhee – Sankar
When I met an old pal of mine with similar reading tastes, recently, he recommended that I read Chowringhee, a book about Calcutta, for he had been fascinated by it. Well, I finally found a lone copy after a tedious search in Gangaram’s on MG road Bangalore and have since then finished reading this glorious book. What lucid writing it is, and more than that, what a fabulous translation work from the original Bengali. It was simply impossible to put down the book. You enjoy the story telling, meeting and getting to know each character in the book, be it Sankar himself, or Bose or Sutherland or Connie or Rosie….Read my blog about this book for more details

A Town like Alice – Nevil Shute
This book has never left my mind. Even after reading many great books, this simple tale by the master story teller remains in my mind as a perennial favorite. I have never been to Australia and I do intend to go, but when I do, I must try & see the place called Alice Springs. This is an old fashioned but a superbly crafted novel. It tells the story of Jean Paget; as a prisoner of war in Malaysia during World War II and then her return to Malaya after the war where she discovers something that leads her on the search for romance and to a small outback community in Australia where she sets out to turn it into 'a town like Alice'. Some may not find this too interesting, and some people tell me that going to Alice Springs is not like going to Sydney or anything, but it remains in my mind and came up again, just now, for me to jot it in this list.

Kite runner – Khalid Hosseini
I had heard about the book and so I purchased a copy, but that was about when my son kept telling me that I should actually listen to the audio book. He had finished the audio book and insisted that the audio book in this case gave a better feel to the words, place and persona…With great trepidation, I started on this audio book for the first time, complaining all the time that I could listen to the book only when I was in the car, that I could not go back & check things now & then, that I could not feel the pages and all that (or drift away into my own world between words). My son would not let go, he pushed and pushed. It took me two chapters to get into the groove and then I was hooked - to Khaled’s own voice narrating his touching novel ‘Kite Runner’. Thus it was during the many miles back & forth between home & Carlsbad that I got acquainted with Kabul, Freemont, Amir, Hassan & Sohrab. The miles flew by and the story grew in my mind. Gone were the half sleepy & dreary rides back home, as I heard the book, I was looking forward to getting behind the wheel each day and hoped that the drive stretched a few more miles, as I neared the destination. Sometimes I had teary eyes, and the paper seller at the Vista traffic signal who met my eyes on more than one occasion would have found it pretty odd, I think…Read my blog about this book for more details

On the beach – Nevil Shute
What might appear to be a pessimistic tale actually turns out to be a fabulous document about hope and love. The story is set in what was then the near future (1963, approximately a year following World War III). The conflict has devastated the northern hemisphere, polluting the atmosphere with nuclear fallout and killing all animal life. While the nuclear bombs were confined to the northern hemisphere, global air currents are slowly carrying the fallout to the southern hemisphere. The only part of the planet still habitable is the far south of the globe, specifically Australia and New Zealand, South Africa, and the southern parts of South America, although all of these areas are slowly succumbing to radiation poisoning as the fallout continues to circulate southwards. A group of people living their last days, tell the tale of human fallacy…and soon enough the world goes dark for them too. It is one of the finest in the list and one that will remain in your mind for a long long time.

A Painted house – John Grisham
All his books are great, no doubt about that, though the recent crop are not at the usual levels. This one is different, is set in the late summer and early fall of 1952, and its story is told through the eyes of seven-year-old Luke Chandler, the youngest in a family of cotton farmers struggling to harvest their crop and earn enough to settle their debts. The novel portrays the experiences that bring him from a world of innocence into one of harsh reality. An only child, Luke is introduced to two migrant groups, the hill people and the Mexicans. His childhood is turned upside down when they interact with the Chandler family. As usual, suspenseful, and is a record of the times, when the people of America faced different challenges than the ones today.

To Kill a Mocking Bird – Harper Lee
A classic in American literature and one great movie is how I describe it, if you ask me. I am not sure which is better, the movie or the book. But well, go for either, it is upto you. As before, the story narrated by a little girl, the narrator, six-year-old Scout Finch, lives with her older brother Jem and their widowed father Atticus, a middle-aged lawyer. Jem and Scout befriend a boy named Dill who visits Maycomb to stay with his aunt for the summer. Atticus is appointed by the court to defend a black man named Tom Robinson, who has been accused of raping Mayella Ewell, a young white woman. Although many of Maycomb's citizens disapprove, Atticus agrees to defend Tom to the best of his ability. The story takes twists and turns and tells you the travesty of justice meted out to Tom Robinson and how Atticus argues it in court.

River God - Wilbur SmithSome purists find Wilbur Smith books just not right. I remember discussing this with a colleague of South African descent while living in the UK. When I told her that I enjoyed Smith’s books and the Courtney family’s adventures, she scoffed at me. She said, ‘he writes crap, that is not real Africa’. Maybe she was right, but River God is about the times of the Pharos of Egypt and the tale of a young pharaoh and his eunuch teacher Taita. Pure escapism at its best, it will take you merrily along on a trip up and down the Nile for many weeks. Set some 2000 years before Christ, this book became very popular, but naturally being a fast paced adventure story, and has three sequels, Warlock, Seventh Scroll and Quest.

Drifters – James Michener
A book I read ages ago and still possess. Most of the thrillers or other books have changed hands or been disposed of while traveling across the many continents and living in all kinds of places, but this one, I kept safely. A very interesting tale about a time in the 70’s - hippie’s, drugs and the such. I love most of Michener’s books; they are meaty and will keep you occupied for weeks. This one was an eye opener and pretty interesting. I did not read it again but I think for those who remember the 60’s and 70’s, it could be a great book to peruse. Sinclair, a reviewer summarizes- "At the height of the Vietnam War, young men had to make decisions too complicated for them to know the repercussions of their actions. Should they evade the draft, or take their chances of avoiding the war by becoming professional students? The protagonist makes his decision to make a run for it. His heart's broken, but so is his future if he's drafted into the Army. He travels around the world, and along with six runaway drifters join in an orgy of dreams, drugs, and a dedication to hedonistic pleasures of every kind. "

Suzanne’s diary for Nicholas – James PattersonNot heralded in such lists ever, many would wonder why I put it up here. Well, try reading it and you may figure out the reasons, it simply caught my fancy, maybe the time was different, the mood was right or whatever, I liked it. Patterson usually writes crime thrillers and is most famous for his ‘Detective Alex Cross’ novels, which are great by themselves, but this one is completely different. Trinkle reviewing the books says - Katie Wilkinson's boyfriend Matt dumps her; not a total cad, he leaves her a gift, a diary kept by Suzanne, his first wife, for their son Nicholas. Though it's not exactly the diamond ring Katie was hoping for, she's unable to make herself destroy the diary--against her better judgment, Katie begins to read. Patterson sustains suspense through clever plotting and by Katie's wondering about the fate of Suzanne and Nicholas; what's finally revealed pushes her, and the novel, to a bittersweet conclusion…

I must admit that I would have liked to list my usual favorites from RK Narayan, Ayn Rand, Leon Uris, Jeffrey Archer, Ken Follett, Bill Bryson, Irving Wallace, Kipling and so on…but this will then become a dreary and long list of the usual suspects, It is now close to midnight and time to see if I can get some sleep. But for the courageous, there is one other book I would recommend, especially to kids who want to go to medical school – the ‘House of God’ by Samuel Shem.

And finally if you want to remember one for a long time to come, and a testament of our times, the widely aclaimed and powertful 'Flowers for Algernon' - Daniel Keyes

Next week, I am off to Kerala for a couple of weeks, and will be back in Sept. Until then, keep the comments coming and enjoy the summer…I will be back with more tales, soon

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The cookers

No, I am not writing about the prestige or the Hawkins varieties or the newfound space age stuff which one sees these days. I wanted to actually introduce to you a very special variety of people, the ‘Dahannakkaran pattar’ of Palakkad. Of course many know of them after the lovely Kamal Hassan movie Michael Madana Kamarajan where he and his father represent one such cooking team. Here is a small youtube video (The Palakkad pattar enters the scene after 1’30”) to introduce their special Malayalam and mannerisms, half Tamil, half Malayalam.

We see movies of Malabar weddings, we see movies of North Indian weddings, but a real Palakkad wedding is incomplete without this cooking team, and I myself cannot forget Parthan Pattar and his entourage. When a festivity was planned in our Nair Tharavad, our family matriarch, i.e. my grandma fondly called Amma, a slightly stentorian person herself, would send the Karyasthan to summon Parthan the cook, the previous morning. Parthan would then be seen hurriedly ambling along the road destined for our house. A lean man, with a slightly discolored dhoti, umbrella in one hand and a set of cooking implements in his other hand all the time, he was one who walked with a worried countenance, Parthan in spite of his busy life, was in reality a humble chap and would come through, pushing open the creaky front gate with peeling blue paint and walk across the gate pillars with twin elephants into the Nalu kettu. Sometime I wonder how those elephant statues got there, maybe a symbol of lost glory of the Tharavad, perhaps. It was in that area, many centuries ago that a wealthy Nambuthiri Illam existed.

My grandma, who was arthritic, would be seated in her chair on the portico, grandly overseeing the activities around and Parthan would stand in front of her, arms crossed. She would say, ‘Parthan we need all the usual for the feast and plenty of snacks (Palaharam), laddu, jilebi, mysore pakku, murukku, muthuswaram, thenkuzhal, etc for the snacks. What new things have you learnt for the main courses?’ And Parthan would come up with something new each time, after all he had to innovate to stay in business, and the crafty man always did that, learning all kinds of new things from his Bombay connections. He would come up with some new type of sweet like Badhusha, or some multicolored vegetable biryani, pulav or chana masala - poori and so on - all exotic vegetarian (only vegetarian fare has ever been served at home) stuff to the wide eyed people of a land around nowhere, Pallavur, somewhere in the shadows of the Palghat Western Ghats section, some 12 miles off the town, as the crow flies..

These Bombay connection pattars had relatives in Bombay. As time went by and the temples and Tharavads became poorer, the need for pattars for festivities and other matters were shrinking. Many migrated to Bombay or Madras, though mercifully Parthan did not. Some families did well and did not want their fathers to continue in this ‘useless’ low level business. And so, this was a dying breed even in those days. But for us in Pallavur, we had the great cook Parthan (though he lived in the neighboring village – Kudallur), a genius who could cook for a few hundred people with his two to three man team. When elders crossed on the road and talked of the upcoming festivity, the question always was, ‘who is cooking, is it Parthan?’ And the wise karanavar would nod his head in the affirmative.

The Pattars of palakkad are a special breed as I explained already; I need a whole blog to write about them, how they came, how they settled in a few gramams, the connections with the Zamorin and so on. It would be interesting only for certain people though. I must also mention here in passing that the community produced so many famous people that I can think of. Remember Sheshan, MS Viswanathan, and now Vidya balan? And for a select few who like history there is a wonderful history teacher and writer. My uncles had been his students and he wrote the books ‘Zamorins of Calicut’ and ‘History of Kerala’ the renowned teacher of history at Zamorins College Calicut - KV Krishna Iyer. I still have in my possession an autographed history book he gifted to an uncle, and by the way, he was from our part of the world. I guess, that after him, and probably my uncle, very few have shown interest in history of Malabar. I hope I am doing some justice to Iyer’s memory at least blogging on historic topics…

Ah, I am digressing, but just one more line – Sheshan mentioned that Palakkad has a number of pattars, they make the best bureaucrats and cooks. The Palghat Brahmins, said Seshan another time, came to excel in four fields, as civil servants and musicians, cooks and crooks. I wrote some time ago about the last variety by introducing Swaminatha Pattar. But now I am finally back to the topic, the cookers of Palakkad.

The next day Parthan would arrive early in the morning. It took me a while to get into his good books; normally kids just flashed by grabbed some snack and vanished off the kitchen area before Parthan could react, for they knew their home territory better than this cook. Having seen this at every house he cooked in, he came up with his own crafty plans, he would put the vegetable cutter near one door and the other at a second door doing murukku or something so that the area was well cordoned off. Parthans implements that I referred to were simple, they were a collection of knives, long handled stirrers, Janghri karandi for lifting cooked stuff from oil or making boondhi for laddus. I can still picture them at work, Parthans veggie cutter sitting at the muttu kathi and slicing away. It was awesome for me, this guy was sliding the vegetables across the razor sharp vertical blade between his legs, not even looking at it. They dropped at a blurring speed on the tray below, to be hefted off into the boiling pots…Parthan’s Sambar and rasam or lime pickles are the standard, I guess, if I were to set one.

Oh I forgot, the previous day morning, he would have given a long list of provisions needed for the feast and naturally conducted a lengthy argument with my grandma on why so much of each was needed. Grandma would then ask the second level Karyasthan cum cart man to get the bullock cart ready and head off to Alathur. Now some of you may not know the place, it is about 5-6 miles from Pallavur and has a market and some shops. So Eaacharan the cartman would head for this area on the cart, slowly humming under his breath and talking to the bullocks. I had the good fortune to be permitted once to go in the bullock cart for that purchasing spree. There he would take me to the chips shop where a Koya made heavenly coconut chips ( It has been a bone of contention with my wife who is from Calicut – she says Calicut chips set the gold standard and I would maintain that the Alathur version is in no way inferior – actually I would say they are better). Now after many years, we have agreed to disagree, but the secret was that this Koya had come from Calicut in the first place. OK, where were we, ah! I would be given a small sampler packet with 50 gms of chips to munch. One or twice I tried to get the bullocks to try a couple of chips, but they looked away in disdain (probably hated coconut oil) and dripped saliva all over my chips making me throw them away with much sadness.

By the way some years back I had written about the incredible trip that this very bullock cart took from Pallavur to Tampa in Florida. Those who are interested may check this out.

And thus the laden cart and we retraced the steps to Pallavur, the metal lined wheels grinding the tar road and the rhythmic tap tap of the bullock’s iron shoe clad feet lulling me to sleep. Sometimes it was the sonorous or was it tunelss nadan pattu from Eacharan who had a quick swig of Kallu(toddy), which did it.

Soon we were back and the sacks were put in the kitchen. The women cleared the kitchen by 6PM the previous evening. Parthan came by in the evening and set up some of the stuff for the next day and did some of the grinding work etc. I would sidle up to the chap and ask questions, how much chilli, how much color or sugar and so on. Soon he found me harmless enough to let me into the kitchen as he and his assistants cooked. He would ask me about Calicut where I had studied. Parthan always wanted to know about these new places. But he himself strayed only some 10-15 square miles around the village in those days.

The next day, at the stroke of dawn, or shall I say the first rays of dawn, Parthan would come, accompanied usually with two or sometimes three understudy’s. Soon they would get to serious work. I do not remember anymore the exact progression, but I think they made the sweets first, Boondhi, Jalebi or Jhangri and Mysore pakku. Then he made the hot mixture and started with the Thenkuzhal, Murukku and Muthuswaram. Later he experimented a bit and he would try out some banana chips, some quarter banana chips, sharkara varatti chips and so on (I would be nearby asking questions, chattering away and sampling the cooked stuff. Strange as it may seem, all my life I have loved watching cooking and I am a reasonably good cook as well). After all the Palaharam work was done, he would start with the special dinner items. Sometimes his commission ran into the next day and he had to make breakfast (Medu vada, Iddli, chatni, Dhideer Upma, Poori masala and so on) and the grand lunch – usually a marriage reception under the shamianas in front of the house for a relative where the entire desham attended (Some other day I will tell you about my own wedding and my wife’s thoughts of all this, coming from a more modern Calicut city atmosphere).

Parthan was indeed a fantastic cook, he cooked for probably two or even three of our generations, I am told he still is going strong and even doing parallel wedding sessions with his brother and two or three ‘shingidi’s’.

Parthan’s modern experiments were Ok, though not spectacular. The people of Pallavur who were so used to his food of course liked the change, but for us who came for Parthan’s originals, the badhushah or the stiff jalebi were a disappointment. We would end up complaining to grandma and she would bawl at Parthan and Parthan would sulk, casting a forlorn glare at me since I did not support him. Ah, all those memories, grandma is gone, my mother is no more and the Tharavad nalukettu stays locked. All we are left with are fond memories of many a great festivity in that home and people like Parthan who enriched and enlivened it. Parthn’s story is typical of many nice people who worked behind the scenes, and made all our memories richer. Little did we know about their own lives or families, guys spending day & night in kitchens and hot firewood stoves, bleary red rimmed eyes and sometime a racking cough from the smoke & dust…The thin and gaunt frame, the bent back and the man on a trot, Parthan actually came up in my thoughts when I read Abe’s blog on Anna Chedatti – the village savoury maker.

These were the people who brought Tamil cooking to Palghat and Carnatic music to our daily lives…The priestly class who were not allowed to conduct poojas & prayers at the temples by the Namboothiris, living a special life in their small and dark agraharams and madams.. Ah so many stories on them…but another day. I will tell you about my trip to Palani to attend a Brahmin wedding..

And now something about the Ambi community – Let me first introduce you to Shenha’s blog a Palakkad Iyer herself talking about them, or read this lovely piece from KV Krishnan.

So they are the cookers – Sorry guys, this is a classic unstructured rambling, please forgive the style, but it was just that I felt like it…Think of it like you hear it from an old and wheezing uncle you met after many years…Some might ask why I titled it cookers, the reason is the following, I heard somebody, some visitor from some other god forsaken village (of course), ask Parthan what he did as Parthan was sitting at the table after his efforts and eating the food like some other late comers. Calmly he answered ‘naan oru cooker aakum’.

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