Exasperating Parents

As some strange quirks of fate, both I and Ranji have a set of parents who can be rather exasperating at times. Before anyone jumps into conclusions of the wrong sort, let me just say that they are all well-meaning, good souls. The exasperation for us kids, unfortunately, stems from the goodness of their nature. While almost all in our extended family bother about just themselves or at the most about their kids, here we have four souls who would think about the whole wide world before they take a decision. I don't know whether Dr. Manmohan Singh can do a better job at pleasing all his coalition partners.

The latest episode in this do-good saga is connected with my dad's birthday. He is turning 60 (shashtipoorthi) in May of this year, and among Malayalees, it is rather special. We had planned on this for a long time and wanted to celebrate in a big way. While I and my brother wanted to book a hall in Thrissur itself for the function, my mother wanted it to happen in Bangalore. My dad wanted his mother to be there during that day which kind of ruled out not just Bangalore but also Thrissur since she is upwards of 90 and traveling isn't such an option for her. While we were grappling with this problem of pleasing all, my maternal grandmom came up with a solution that was agreeable to all. She said my dad could spend his birth star in Painkulam with his mother and then they'll all come over to Bangalore and celebrate it yet again on his birth date.

All this happened more than 2 months back and they even booked their tickets to come here. Since none of them had seen our car, they all decided to come, including my dad and mom, brother, uncle, and maternal grandmom. We were pretty excited by it all since a visit from either of our parents is a rather rare affair. Both fathers are more committed to their mistresses - their jobs - than to their wives or children. So, even when they really want to come and visit us, they are rarely able to break away from it all. In such scenario, we were going to get a visit from both our parents in the space of 2 months, and that was indeed a cause for excitement.

The problem with bubbles are that they are always at threat of bursting, and ours burst last week. There is a cousin of ours who was slowly advancing in age (per conservative Kerala standards) with regards to marriage. Due to various factors, no proposal was clicking for her. It didn't help matters (again per conservative Kerala standards) that she had an elder sister who was almost past (as per the same standards) the age for marriage and wasn't yet ready for it. A couple of weeks back, after years of search, the younger one finally managed to get an alliance. Till now, the story is pretty good, but the twist in the tale was about to happen.

Of all the 365 days in a year, they decided to keep the engagement of this girl on the birth date of my father, when they were all supposed to be in Bangalore. Why should such a good deed be a problem? Because my cousin's parents insisted that my parents ought to be there for the engagement. My mom claims she tried pointing out that they were all planning to come to Bangalore (though I doubt it), but those feeble pointers were just brushed away by the excited relatives. That is one thing which I find exasperating among my relatives. They wouldn't care two hoots about our feelings or emotions if it had been them celebrating their birthday and us having an engagement. Since our parents strive to maintain good relations with all, they are just expected to attend each and every function in our family.

I and Ranji tried pointing out this aspect to them, but they are rather hell bent on doing the politically correct thing, which is to postpone their trip to Bangalore by a week after attending the engagement. They are worried as to what the rest of the family would feel about their absence, how it would be construed as them being uninterested in the marriage of my cousin. How or why our relatives should feel that or my parents should think they would feel that is beyond me. What I have learned the hard way is that you can never please all in the world and that there are always going to be some who aren't pleased with what you do. All that one can expect is to do what you feel is right provided it doesn't cause harm to anyone.

Then again, they are from an earlier generation where things were looked upon in a different way. Also, after initially feeling pretty angry and frustrated at it all, I thought that probably I should be going along with what makes my parents happy. I know for sure they aren't feeling too happy about postponing their trip to Bangalore for the function, but my getting angry at them was only going to make things tough for them. What makes it easier is that Ranji too has a similar set of parents who keeps their entire family before themselves. She is able to understand the entire scenario which is making things easier for me. But then, understanding an issue doesn't make it any easier to digest, I must add.

Expensive Smile

Next time when you see me and are lucky enough to receive a stretch of my lips with a generous show of my dentures, please keep in mind that you have been the recepient of a very expensive smile. The fact that a basically good intention has resulted in such an expensive smile makes it even more precious and rare. In my last entry, I had spoken about my teethache and I kept wondering how I could have so many rotten teeth. A visit to a dentist told me that I was definitely on the way to keeping up my family tradition.

It was on Wednesday that I finally forced myself to go see a dentist. I took off from work and Ranji did too. Having been subjected to great torture the last time round, we decided to go to Chinmaya Mission Hospital. At the registration counter, I realized the dentist was going to be a "mallu", but it was only when I entered the examination room that I realized that that "mallu" was a rather glamorous lady. This person had the kind of unisex name which "mallus" specialize in which makes it rather difficult to guess the gender. I knew then itself that it wasn't going to be as big a torture as the last time.

It took the dentist only a couple of minutes to tell me that I had around 20 teeth with cavities. Twenty teeth!!! I just couldn't believe it. I mean, that was almost two-thirds of my mouth. Rather tentatively, I asked her what the cause was. She said it was because I was brushing my teeth. That stumped me. Weren't we supposed to do that? Wasn't it part of the dental hygiene? I asked her as much. She assured me that brushing teeth was fine so long as one remembered that you had a toothbrush and that it was being used upon teeth and not a washing brush that you use upon clothes. She was pretty confident that excessive use of force while brushing of teeth was the cause of my predicament. My mind whispered an old Malayalam proverb in my ear - adhikamaayaal amruthum visham (even nectar in excessive amount is a poison).

I was directed to the hospital lab for a dental x-ray. The x-ray added to my woes, both personal and economical, by showing up a tooth in such a bad condition that even an untrained person like me knew that a root canal surgery was required. Why all these expenses come mostly in March (a month where my company and my government join hands in stealing my money in the name of taxes) or when I and Ranji decide to save up something extra, or both, I do not know. Not having carried enough cash - after all, I wasn't expecting 20 teeth with cavities - I had to pay up using my credit card.

After the assurance that this guy with 20 cavity-filled teeth had indeed made the payment, the doctor directed me to THE chair. In that instant, I very nearly understood what a prisoner in Texas would feel while heading towards the electric chair, a kind of resignation to the torture you are going to be subjected to. As I have told earlier, it could be a low threshold of pain or the fear at seeing those dangerous instruments or a combination of both, I am just extremely scary about any dental procedure. Within seconds, I knew this wasn't going to be any different. The excessive amounts of assurance given by the doctor only helped in stiffening my body up even more.

She started off by tapping around most of the teeth and setting the tone for the pain. That was followed by cleaning of the cavities (or so I think as I wasn't able to see) with some high-pressure liquid. That made the already sensitive cavities even more so and I had to hold on hard to the arm rests from squirming. This was followed by filling up, but she was soon exhausted. She probably didn't realize that she was looking at, if not a Guinness Record candidate, at least a Limca Book of Records candidate. Due to her lack of occasion, I have missed a definite chance to be in the record books.

After filling around 11 of them, she directed her attention towards the root canal procedure. There was this drill which was pressed into action and applied at all the wrong spots around the errant tooth. Every 10 seconds or so, I would shoot up from the chair, unable to stand the pain any longer. After administering third dose of anesthetic on me, as if to soothe my nerves and give me some courage, she said that most people needed only one shot of the anesthetic and that it shouldn't pain so much because she was just drilling around the enamel where there were no nerves. I felt like telling her that the only reason I was allowing my mouth to be so cruelly raped was because she was attractive and even that wouldn't stop me from biting on her hand if she put that drill one more time on the rotten point. I don't know whether she read my mind or not, but she said that the problem area had been reached and that it was going to be better. She put some packing cement on it and asked me to come two days later.

I presented at her clinic two days. This time, though, things were much smoother. She drilled around the problem tooth a bit more and took a cast of my full set of teeth. Sitting in her clinic, it made a handsome pair, I must say. Don't get ideas folks, I am talking about the casts of my upper and lower set of teeth. I am supposed to have at least another couple of sitting before my teeth can get to its earlier glory.

A simple thing like brushing your teeth, albeit excessively, has cost me upwards of Rs. 10,000/- so far and it isn't over yet. After this current nightmare, I have even thought of giving up brushing teeth altogether. Thankfully, one of my team members dissuaded me from doing that. Well, not directly, but his bad breath is cruel reminder to me about the lack of brushing. Anyway, I have learnt my lessons. I brush my teeth very gently now, has given up on chewing gum, and am not smiling much, lest the stretch of my lips over the teeth result in further eroding of my enamel. I have learnt yet another lesson in life; I just wish it hadn't been such an expensive one.

Aiyooooo!!!

This is exactly how I feel like screaming on top of my voice. My teeth on the lower left jaw have been aching rather badly, and the pain has very quickly crossed my threshold and is pushing forward. I guess I might have to take an off from work and get it checked up soon.

It wasn't all that long ago that I had one of the errant tooth extracted. That was when I had paid a small visit to Hell and had come back. With that feeling fresh in my mind and the blog always there to remind in case I had forgotten, I am not too keen to visit the dentist. First of all, the dentist in our area isn't the most competent one around Bangalore City. Secondly, the rest of them aren't close enough. Thirdly, I am rather scared of dentists. Well, the reasons can go on and on, but I can't bear too much of pain too. So, tomorrow could be the day when I will get to know whether I'll have a reduction in my weight in the form of a tooth or two.

It is still a wonder how so many of teeth got so bad. As a child, I wasn't much into chocolates or things sweet. Even now, I don't have any unhealthy liking towards sweets of any form. As for brushing of my teeth, I am one of the most rigorous practitioners of that. In fact, like my dad, my brushing could be one damaging factor for my teeth. My dad had managed a few years back to successfully scratch layers of enamel with his brute strength and a few toothbrushes. Nowadays, he doesn't have to worry much since there is hardly teeth left in his mouth thanks to his administrations. Having seen him in action as a child, I picked it up the way children pick up the most unwanted things from their parents. Very soon, I was attacking teeth with greater vigor than my dad. I wouldn't rest till I saw blood when I was brushing teeth. That, more than anything else, might be returning back to haunt me now.

With the visit to a dentist inevitable, my only wish now is that the dentist turns out to be a beautiful female. Now, don't get me wrong. The only reason why I wish for that is because if your mouth needs to be raped by someone, the least one can hope for is that it gets done by someone beautiful. With that thought in mind, I will be surrendering myself tomorrow morning.

Pressures of Humor

As I start off on this article, I am reminded of what I read about Dustin Hoffman a few years back. There was this magazine which was classifying the greatest actors of 20th century. On Dustin Hoffman, they had quoted a critic that Dustin Hoffman was a great actor, then someone called him a great actor, and he had been struggling from that point on. My humor sense isn't in the same level as Hoffman's acting, but as you go through this, I guess you might find some parallels.

During the early parts of my life, I wasn't considered a person with a great sense of humor. It didn't help matters much that this was despite being in a family full of people with great sense of humor. I was almost an outcast. This continued until my early teens when I finished my schooling and reached the college. This was the time when my reading had graduated from the Amar Chitra Katha, DC Comics, and Hardy Boys etc. to slightly more serious comics like Tintin and Asterix. Also, I was reading books with slightly more sensible content than those by Franklin Dixon. I had chanced upon a quote in one of the Alistair Maclean novels (definitely not where you would expect sensible content) where the heroine claims that sarcasm as a form of wit was wasted upon her (for those curious, this is Breakheart Pass). For the first time, I felt I could try developing sarcasm as my brand of wit. This was also during the time when I was beginning to understand the nuances of dialogues in movies. I was influenced by Srinivasan of Malayalam movies, a dark, short, not-so-handsome chap, who made laughing at himself an art form. I felt that wasn't such a bad idea. I had his kind of skin color, height, and looks, and I didn't have to worry about hurting others' sentiments if I were to pass comments on myself.

While I thought this would be a hit with the fairer sex, there was a small problem - myself. I realized that I couldn't come up with those crackers while in front of the girls. The main reason for this was I wasn't sure whether deriding myself would work in favor or against me. With guys, there wasn't any pressure of impressing them, while that was not the case with girls. I had developed humor, but it was a unisex humor.

Just as I was getting the hang of humor, things took a turn for the worse in my professional life. Coming out of the cocoon of my house in Kerala, living under the protection of my parents and grandparents, I was exposed to the harsher realities of life. It was also the time when I first attempted poetry after repeated failures trying to write prose. My depressed mind churned out depressing poems, the quality of which depresses me nowadays. I feel that it is easier to write depressing stuff when you are depressed than writing happy stuff when you are happy.

Well, the wheels of time turned and so did my fortunes. As my fortunes changed, my mood turned brighter with my old sarcastic, self-deprecating style coming back. To this, I added a generous amount of raunchiness and honesty. I was rather late to realize the capabilities of honesty, how it was far better than a lie, if told in the right manner, to fool people. Very soon, my quips were looked forward to. When I realized that most people don't read as much as I do, or at least don't recall most of the stuff they read, I started plagiarizing quotes and passages of others generously.

When I started writing, I realized that it was even better to come up with a funny line than while speaking because you could work and rework on it before the final output comes. This resulted in giving others an even better impression of the humorist in Hari than ever before. And when I started this blog, the few readers just loved it. That is when the pressure started. When I wrote something serious, they were cross that I was serious. This could be either because I was pretty pathetic in my serious writing or could be that they were expecting humor from me every time (I believe the latter, it is easier for my ego). That prompted me to find humor where it didn't exist. Needless to say, my writing was affected.

Now, I am being a victim of my own creation. This pressures of living up to writing humorously is definitely affecting me. I am reading quite a few books of funny quotations, lots of Bill Bryson, etc. to get inspiration for my new writings. If things don't get better soon, it won't be long before I shave my head and check in to a Rehab Center, a la Britney Spears, as a victim of humor.

Ploughing Through Rich Fields

A journey through Marathalli at 10 a.m. is the closest you can get to hell. If you can pass the 100-m stretch within an hour, you can consider yourself to be lucky. Today, I and Ranji decided to try our luck and found it to be not too bad.

My cousin resides in the Vanshee Rich Fields at Marathalli, and it had been ages since we had visited her. In fact, both the families tend to visit each other when either of our parents are in town (my father happens to be the younger brother of hers). Blame it on the present-day lifestyle with more stress on work and career than on anything. It is funny how we tend to have friends mostly from our offices and that we tend to spend time with the same set of people both at and outside work.

As mentioned, her parents were in town visiting, and we went there. Their daughter, who is 2 years old now, has this usual routine whenever she sees us. It starts off with hiding behind her mother, my cousin, and then she starts crying. At this point, we have to dish out our mobile phones and keep it at a safe distance from us. Then, she would slowly peep out between her crying and then slowly take a few tentative steps towards the mobile. If we attempt to grab her, she would rush back and continue with the same routine, but if we allow her to take it, we are friends from the next moment on. I don't know whether she follows this routine to get hold of our mobiles or not, but it is rather amazing that we go through these same motions each time we meet.

Once a friend, there is no stopping the little one. Today, she had spread out a few toys and a couple of her books. She was quick to climb all over me in the eagerness to show her new kitchen set. I was made to drink liters and liters of soups and forced to eat loads of toasted bread. The plastic bread was near its breaking point after repeatedly popping out of the toaster. The bottomline was that she was just enjoying herself.

My cousin then treated us to what she called as snack and what was equivalent to a meal for me and Ranji. We aren't good eaters at best of times, and after being force-fed for a month thanks to Ranji's mom's presence, we are trying hard to get back in shape. So, on top of the breakfast that we had, we were given a whole lot of things ranging from jellies to cakes to potato chips to rosogollas, paayasam, and juice. As we were eating this, the little one forced me to take her into my lap. She then proceeded to taste every item in my plate before returning the saliva-filled variant back. I just loved it. She knew she couldn't have her way with her mother, so she kept staying close to me and ask me for the various food items. It is amazing how kids catch on to these things. They seem to know how to get things done so very quickly.

I don't know whether it is stemming from the fact that we still don't have a child of our own or from an inherent love towards children, but both I and Ranji just love spending time with kids. It is so thrilling to see the various stages of their growth, how they pick up things, how they utter their first words, how they form thoughts and sentences, etc. Also, after watching Look Who's Talking, we really wonder what the kids must be feeling seeing us making faces at them, at our various attempts to keep them engaged.

An hour passed by so very quickly that we didn't realize it. Since we also had to go to offices, we reluctantly wound up our visit. After the harvest at Rich Fields, it was time for us to head back home and from there office. We had to compensate precious hours from our sleep for the visit, but I have to say the child more than compensated for them.

Ooty and Back

It was sometime late in January that our friends from the apartment suggested a vacation. Since we hadn't gone on one for a long time, I and Ranji decided to go for it. The initial plans were for a trip to Goa, but we were unable to proceed with that plan. That didn't deter us though and we decided to go to Ooty. The thrill for them was a drive in their car all the way there, for us it was being away from the tensions at work. We planned on starting the journey on February 28th, but then had to change it to March 1st since I didn't get leaves from my manager.

On March 1st, we all started early in the morning around 5:15 a.m. Our friends didn't miss the chance to taunt us that we were running late by 15 minutes thanks to us not turning up early enough. We turned a blind eye to that as we so often do and were on our way. After filling up the gas, we hit the Bangalore-Mysore highway at full throttle. This road is a proof to the fact that Karnataka Government is capable of doing an excellent job if they want to; unfortunately, most of the times, they don't. We stopped at Ramanagaram for the morning cuppa and then at Maddur for our breakfast. We didn't have the famous Maddur vada from there, but we all managed to have a fill of our stomachs. Since lunch wasn't going to happen until we hit Ooty, we all had more than the usual portion.

We took the diversion from the highway just before Mysore towards Ooty. The road was still pretty neat, though not exactly smooth, but the lack of vehicular traffic ensured that we had a pretty quick drive. Our next stop was at Gundlupet for another round of coffee for me and tender coconuts for the rest. From there till Bandipur we had a relatively easy drive. At Bandipur, we were treated to quite a few deers which slowed our journey. The fact that our friends' 1-year-old daughter, Sameeksha, had particular liking towards anything on 4 legs made sure that we didn't miss any of those animals. Monkeys were also aplenty, sitting at the roadside and watching the vehicles go by with total disinterest. We did see one elephant but found out that it was the chained, domesticated variety.

After Bandipur, there was a small confusion as to whether to take the shorter route through Kallatti which had around 36 hairpin bends as against the one through Gudallur, but which was shorter by around 30 kms. We debated and decided to take the shorter route. Very soon, we realized that it was pretty exhilarating to go through all those bends. The climb was pretty steep and the Santro Xing was literally crying for mercy. Switching off the air conditioning didn't help much as this car wasn' t exactly made for these kind of drives. We had to take 2 breaks before the car would take us to Ooty.

We reached Ooty around 1:30 p.m. and directly went to Hotel Lakeview where we had called earlier to book the rooms and had been assured that it was off-season and there wasn't any need to book rooms in advance. When we reached there, it was a totally different tune, though, that we had to listen. They said that all their rooms had been booked over the weekend and that they could provide us a room only for a day. Since that didn't make much sense to us, we left there, but not before I gave them a piece of my mind. In case any of you is planning to go to Hotel Lakeview, PLEASE think twice.

Since we were all pretty hungry and reasonably tired, we decided to first have our lunch before searching for an accommodation. We found this Hotel Villa Park which had an excellent setting on a tiny hillock overlooking the Ooty race course. Just when we thought it was the ideal spot, we realized that they don't have non-vegetarian food there. We were too tired to worry about that then and had our lunch from there. After that, we decided to scout for a place to stay. We roamed around entire Ooty, but couldn't find one which met with our budget and cleanliness standards. So, we were back at Hotel Villa Park. We decided to compromise on our meat-eating ways and took 2 standard double rooms there. The luxury rooms were much better, but we decided against it after both the wives gave us husbands the kind of looks which dared us to take those costlier rooms. So, wishing for a peaceful married lives, we settled for the cheaper and less attractive standard rooms. The impressive thing, though, was the bathroom and toilet in the room. I have never seen a cleaner hotel bathroom in my life, I must say. The toilet was literally shining and there was not a spot on the toilet seat. Even Ranji, who has rather exacting standards when it comes to cleanliness, was impressed with it. We decided to have a short nap before proceeding with our Ooty sightseeing.

We realized how tired we were when we hit the bed and decided to skip going out that night. Instead, I, Ranji, and my friend decided to have some drinks. I and Ranji stuck to our wines while he went for whiskey. We played dumb charades for some time before we decided to have our dinner and go to sleep.

The next day morning, after a quick breakfast, we went to Dodabetta Peak which is around 7 kms from Ooty town. The drive was amazing, but we were pretty surprised to find out the peak crawling with tourists. There was a huge group of girls who had come from Bangalore (I guess since they were speaking in a mixture of Kannada and Hindi). I and my friend devoted more time looking at the young ones who were brave enough to face the cold with rather minimal clothing. Since it was pretty foggy, the telescope view wasn't available. I purchased one cap from there.

After Dodabetta peak, we had our lunch and then went to the botanical garden in Ooty. It is just amazing!!! Sameeksha just loved the lawn. She literally crawled all over the place. I laid in the grass and thought it must be like this in heaven - no work, no worry, clean air, greenery all around, a person you love (my wife, in my case) to give you company, and only happiness in your mind and being. But well, good things don't last too long, and as hunger began gnawing at our insides, we left the garden in search of food.

Stomachs filled, we went to a children's play area so that Sameeksha could crawl some more. We also found karting track there and did a few rounds. I had an incident-filled ride the second time round, though, when the front wheel broke off and stood at an angle till I could maneuver the kart back into the stands. We also had a ride in a toy train before we decided to go back. Our friends wanted to go for horse riding and we wanted to go boating, so we reached a compromise and went back into the room and slept off for the rest of the evening. The night followed the same pattern as the previous one, with drinks and dumb charades dominating the proceedings.

Saturday morning, and we were up and ready to leave Ooty. Just as we thought we could start off in time, we were delayed by the only sour incident in our stay at Villa Park. They billed us two separate amounts for the Kichady that we had ordered for the kid, once charging us Rs. 90 and the second time Rs. 24. They gave us different reasons, but since it was getting late for us, we weren't in the mood to listen to all that and we just paid up and left.

This time, though, we decided to take the longer route through Gudallur. That road was absolutely pathetic and we had a bumpy ride till we passed Gudallur. Our journey through first Mudumalai and then through Bandipur was similar to our earlier one with deers, monkeys, and a couple of tuskers waving us on. We had decided to spend the night at Mysore and reached the city at around 1:30 p.m. We checked into Mayura Yatri Nivas. The room there had an old-world charm about it, but since it was a government establishment, it had all the drawbacks of such. After a lengthy lunch, where we were joined by my friend's colleague, we decided to go to the zoo. Since Sameeksha has this great attraction to animals, we decided to curb our likes and dislikes for the small one. She just loved the various animals that were there and was most impressed by the giraffes. I thought the zoo wasn't in the best of conditions with most of the animals looking rather jaded and tired.

Since the time was too short for a visit to either the palace or the art gallery, we decided to enjoy a siesta. I had already seen the Mysore Palace multiple times though Ranji hadn't, but I felt our friends weren't exactly interested in such stuff and assured Ranji that we could have a Mysore trip soon. In the evening, we went to see the palace all lit up, had a toga ride around the palace, and then had dinner at Yatri Nivas before hitting the bed.

Sunday morning and it was pack up time. We started back to Bangalore with mixed feelings - happy for the trip, sad that the usual grind would start soon. Well, there were major plans in our apartment for Holi, so we were needed to find some extra energy to get through the festivities. Within minutes of reaching our place, we changed our clothes and hit the festivities. It was a real wild celebration, unlike last year when we had a very formal celebration. After the tiring trip and mad Holi celebrations, I and Ranji needed 4 baths to start looking human again. Two more baths later, sitting in front of this computer typing out this blog, there is still considerable amount of color on my hands though I have managed to clean off the rest somehow. It will probably take another couple of days before I can get back to my old self.

I don't have any photos right now, but I will try uploading a few from the trip soon.