Interim Solutions

For a change one of the short stories I have penned .. needless to print copyrighted © 2009 Manoj Chennamangalam Head Shakes of a “Hair dresser” Erstwhile owner of “Ambili Hair Dressing Saloon” and once the most famed barber in Mattom ( area in square miles : nearly “four” including vast stretches of paddy and numerous basketball court sized ponds). Vasu, now lived in a thatched one room hut on the shores of the meandering Achankovil river that flows through the northern border of Mattom. The hut once the resting room / changing room for the womenfolk who worked in the adjacent lush green paddy fields was abandoned once paddy cultivation got out of fashion and unprofitable. Growing big then growing small then up and then down again , Vasu had seen most of it. The meaning in the meaninglessness of it all.Vasu was born Vasudevan in a poor ambattan family (traditional hairdressers) sixty years ( some long, some not so) ago , called Vasu by his friends and famly for the first 15-20 years...

Thanks a ton to Microsoft (finally !!) for doing something really worth while . No second thoughts or questions about the agenda this time - Project Tuva !! Damn good samaritan Mr. Gates has become. http://research.microsoft.com/apps/tools/tuva/ Get silverlight installed and enjoy the precious moments with clarity at its best - Richard Feynman on physics , nature , knowledge and everything in between. Got me going on Feynman cherry picking across youtube, wiki etc and what struck me again (been a decade since I read 'Surely You're Joking Mr.Feynman") is the vitality and the original thinking of this genius. Look up what he has to say about knowledge - epitomizes the problem most 3rd world educational systems still face . Learning the sound/word for "duck" in 25 langauages and not "knowing" a bit on what in the blue world a duck really is !! All this cherry picking brings a tear drop nevertheless to the corner of the eye , that pang that one feels tha...

I have been reading the legendary (almost mythical himself) Kottarathil Sankunni's ഐതിഹ്യ മാല (attempted translation : Garland of Myths) - all of 600+ pages and 100+ stories comprising of myths , exaggerations and arabian nightish fantasies written in chaste malayalam. For the uninitiated the book was compiled over 100 years ago stringing in the beautiful pieces of folk lore and fantasy prevalent in the social fabric of the time. An excellent bed time read for children and adults alike the myths paint a clear and real picture of the early 1900s in Kerala with strong allegiance to the ruling and elite class of the times ( rebellious writing wasn't in vogue , obviously) . May be despised today by the proletariat for strong feudal over tones and the glorification of the elite , the book can make an excellent read if one sticks to one principle "Everything is a miracle or nothing is " (paraphrased from a quote by one Herr Einstein) . I have been picking and reading stor...

First came the apartment association (which the founders claim God/s created in his/their own image) ,soon followed by apartment association founders's (AAF) wives association (gossip being the most harmless of their objectives) and then the Senior Citizen's association (yes , AAF's parents !!) and smaller and less potent kid's associations. The left outs obviously wanted their cut of the pie (Oh Yeah , there is always a pie !!) to found their own and then the mushrooming of the regional associations started .. Bongs , Tamils , Mallus , Gults (they were the first to form an association in the literal sense to share Gult movie CD and spicy food but not the first to call it an "association") followed in quick succession ( in the same order as above). There is still scope for that apocalyptic monster - an association of the association office bearers so that all associations are co-ordinated by a general sense of purpose !! M P.S: How about a common fund coll...

I am moving away from the reclusive , inward looking perspective of my initial post , quite a bit but then to keep the blog alive , I need to do that. Existentialism or Blogxtensialism, if you will. I am intrigued by how much hatred the Australian team can generate among the cricket watching non-Australian public, be it in their off-white Test outfits with 19th century design baggy green caps or in the latest golden yellow T20/One-day outfits. What is going on ? I remember getting up at 3.30 AM in the early 80s to watch Boon and Marsh thrash the Indian and Kiwi pacers and absolutely adoring the Laurel and Hardy combo. The Australian team those days were not hated for their winning habits , that came later .. Dean Jones , Greg Mathews , Mark Waugh , Mark Taylor to name a few, were good at what they did and were part of many a winning sides but definitely not hated. The hate started building I think with Steve Waugh and his steely, boring and mechanized captaincy . His protege par ex...

Okay, I know it was going to be bad but not so .. First of all it has been 17 days since my first post and I have not had a single visitor except my own alter ego peeping in over the weekends to see if the cobweb on the main door of my blog has been cleaned up by a visitor on his/her way in . Alas !! not yet , so here I go again.. Second of all - MJ - the end was as bad as it could get , I guess most of us knew it would be bad but this was tragic , sad and all that rolled into one .. So Whos bad ? or Who's bad ? or Who is bad ?

After dilly dallying for almost an eon in blog terms ( 5 years may be in simple human terms) I have given in to the urge to start scribbling on the internet. More on why the dilly dallying later .. I did my fair bit of googling to see how a first blog should be written to make sure my baby steps are right and after 10 mins of wandering in the search engine's attempt at untangling the entangled web , I gave up and decided to go on my own and therefore here I am . If the baby step analogy can be extended ay further I guess babies seldom go wrong with their first steps (from a long term perspective , of course !!) Answer of course is 42 http://www.bbc.co.uk/dna/h2g2/A997581 (Courtesy : The great master - Douglas Adams and BBC !)